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Join
the National Youth Service Mr Donald Charumbira
Tinashe Chimedza
March 09, 2004
In an
article that was recently published in the Herald of the 4th
of March a Mr. Donald Charumbira goes to indescribable length to explicate
and defend the National Youth Service here in Zimbabwe. If it is the Donald
Charumbira that I know or have heard of, then he is writing this diatribe
in the comfort of his office in Malaysia where he is a guest of the World
Assembly of Youth that is supported by the Malaysian government. Donald
endeavours to dispel the factual expose that was recently made by the
BBC Africa Service about the militia-training bases that the ZANU PF regime
has established in the name Youth Service.
Interestingly in one of the articles that Donald Charumbira wrote previously
the young man blamed the British, the Americans and the Rhodies for the
‘bad’ publicity and sabotaging the Zimbabwean economy and yet in another
one he commends Mugabe for cracking the whip on the real saboteurs of
the economy, those in the Central Committee like Mutasa, Makamba and Chiyangwa.
So who is who here? Is it the Britons, the MDC, the Republicans, the ZANU
PF Central Committee members or is it the Vingirayis who are rumoured
to have been the single biggest donor to the 2003 ZANU PF Annual Conference?
As a youth leader
Donald is involved with a lot of young people from all over the world
and is necessary for him to tell us in which other country has he witnessed
the regimentation of poverty stricken and unemployed and hungry youths
into military camps? Has Donald or any of his relatives ever met the militias
in their green fatigues harassing and demanding ZANU PF cards? Have you
ever met the militias demanding sex from innocent girls and infecting
them with sexually transmitted diseases and HIV & AIDS? Has your mother
been raped by the green bombers in the name of discipline and patriotism?
Has your home been burnt and your sexual organs beaten with hot iron and
barbed wire in the name of the Third Chimurenga? Donald might need to
tell us why he is not a ‘proud’ graduate of the youth service that he
despicably defends? Why don’t you tell us if your sisters or nieces are
graduates of the militia development program and perhaps show us their
certificates?
Have you, Donald,
been to the camps that you write about? Do you have any pictures that
show what goes in the camps? Have you any video footage of what really
goes on in the camps? You further state that the media and journalists
are allowed into the camps, how misinforming your statements are? The
facts we know and have been made bare by testimonies of young girls and
young men who have been gang raped, infected with HIV & AIDS and have
had their future destroyed. Have you ever met one of the ‘trainers’ boasting
that virgins are in abundance at the camps? Have you met them boasting
of how they don’t repeat the same girl twice? Of how they enjoy a ‘virgin
only’ policy? Well if you have not I have. The camps you write about in
the luxury of your borrowed office are hell on earth. They are no go areas
for any other citizen even for those with ZANU PF cards, worse for the
journalists who are not affiliated to the state media.
The first thing that
the camps do is to eradicate the independent and or inventive thinking
of young people. The young people are punished for thinking independently
and rewarded for acting without thought. Yet we all know that the basis
of human development is its ability to think, to invent, to create, to
critique and to provide solutions to problems. Without the ability to
independently think and to critique a human being is reduced to an android,
a non-thinking zombie status where an individual is reduced to the status
of a machine that awaits orders. If this is the type of ideas that Donald
Charumbira pontificates and supports then as young people we must question,
challenge and demystify such irresponsible so called ‘youth’ leadership.
Is it a coincidence that Mr. Donald Charumbira has never written about
the distress in the education system, the pandemonium at ZIMSEC or at
the University of Zimbabwe, the mayhem in the hospitals or in the public
transport sector? We have never heard his voice when workers are heavily
taxed, when a murderous police force butchers students and when residents
have their mayor suspended by a fake Commission? Will you begin to see
beyond what you are told and what you are taught? Is it not that as youth
we must begin to think for ourselves, act for ourselves and walk for ourselves?
We have not heard you talking about the need for reforming the Lancaster
House Constitution that has been amended and patched up more than 20 times?
For all we know the
graduates of the Border Gezi training camps have been known to be violent
gatekeepers and marshals at ZANU PF rallies, the youth are used to ‘herd’
unwilling villagers to ZANU PF campaign rallies. The green bombers have
been well known for pillaging and marauding villagers and demanding ZANU
PF cards from any person at any time of the day. In some cases they have
set up de facto roadblocks, harassing travellers, stealing people’s property
and burning down homes in the name of the ‘Third Chimurenga’, national
integrity and sovereignty. Innocent villagers and mothers have been assaulted,
killed raped, harassed, abducted and tortured at bases set up by the graduates
of this program. A girl confessed being routinely gang raped and infected
with HIV/AIDS.
The youth militias
have been storming people’s houses, stealing their property, taking livestock
and force-marching old women to their bases where they take chances to
rape them and release them in the wee hours of the morning. In areas like
Rusape, Rushinga, Mutoko and Zvimba they have been searching buses and
private vehicles for independent newspapers. All this is done while the
youth are singing liberation struggle songs so that they are made to think
that they are continuing a genuine liberation struggle whose success has
been hijacked by gory plutocrats that have little care for the future
of this country.
There is a better
national service that the citizens of this country want and we going to
demand it. We need a functional education, health, housing and social
services system. We need to freely express ourselves, to associate with
the organisations and peoples we want. Are you not able to do that in
Malaysia? Are you not sitting benefiting from the better economy that
others have constructed? Why don’t you Mr. Donald Charumbira display to
us the ‘certificate’ of the program that you say instils discipline and
patriots? Give us the lists of the graduates and point to us the names
of sons and daughters of the ministers, of the politburo members, of the
Central Committee members, of Chief Fortune Charumbira’s nieces and daughters.
Until then we stand
to see the militias rehabilitated, the camps disbanded and the regime
gone and buried. This we are going to see happen and if you have the guts
of coming home please do not forget to come and join the youth service
and display your certificate so that we know that you are not part of
the ruling elite who design and implement projects that are meant to keep
the poor, helpless, subordinate and excluded from decision making processes
in the country.
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