War Veterans Disrupts Human Rights Public Hearing

The chairperson of this committee is Zaka’s member of parliament from the  Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Senate is moving around the country’s major cities gathering the views of the people on the proposed bill as a way of consulting the public before it is taken to Parliament and senate for debate but rogue war veterans led by retired Colonel Claudius Makova blocked Marava from starting, ordering him to do the bill reading in shona  as it was in English version.

The war veterans with the help of a few  female supporters from Zanu (PF) ‘s Women’s’ league disturbed Marava from  a second attempt to read in English demanding him to do it in shona. They suddenly broke into song and dance belting “zvemadhisinyongoro Zanu yaramba’’.

The hall turned into a circus as the war veterans started to shout obscenities to Marava accusing him of leading the committee of human rights in a bid to push western countries agenda. They howeverattempted to attack members of the MDC party in the committee who included Marava and Gutu Senator, Emperor Makamure but were restrained by officials.

 The committee members were later forced  out of the hall to their Parliament bus where they hurriedly left fearing for their lives as there were threats to beat up them.

In an interview with VOP Marava said the behavior by war veterans and Zanu pf was a disgrace to the progress of business in Senate, Parliament and government.

“This was a planned thing by Zanu (PF) actually it hired these thuggish war veterans to disrupt the meeting. This is dangerous to the progress of both government and the house of assembly as you can see we have aborted the meeting how could we go ahead with the people doing this,” he said.

He said Zanu pf planned the issue because it is trying to block the issues of 20008 political violence and Gukurahundi from being discussed by the people.

“They are afraid about their dark past, issue of human rights will include violence in 2008 and Gukurahundi so Zanu pf is afraid that the people will call for justice to the perpetrators that’s why they
are blocking it but this is a disgrace to the party,” Marava said.

The committee has also been blocked in Chinhoyi and Kwekwe by the same party as Zanu pf intensifies effort to block the bill that is set to end its culture of violence if it succeeds.