Ex-Zipra combatants takes properties fight to Mugabe

EX-ZIMBABWE People's Revolutionary Army (Zipra) members say they have resolved to appeal to President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to facilitate the return of their properties seized by the government soon after independence.

In an interview last Friday, Zipra Veterans Trust chairman Buster Magwizi said they would soon approach Mugabe and Tsvangirai to expedite the return of the properties, which include farms and commercial buildings.

The properties were registered under Nitram Investment Holdings.

Magwizi said they suspected some of the properties had already been privately sold to senior Zanu PF officials.

"We must be given back our properties for purposes of peace and prosperity in the country," he said.

"We know some influential people in government took them.

"We appeal to the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe and the Prime Minister to use their authority to enable us to repossess the properties."

He said as long as the properties were not returned, there would be no peace as Zipra veterans and their dependants would continue to campaign for their return.

Magwizi said in 2008 Zipra wrote to Mugabe reminding him that the late Vice-President Joseph Msika at some point had indicated that the properties would be returned to them but nothing had happened.

"We are asking the President to push the Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs Patrick Chinamasa to legally facilitate the official return of the properties and provision of title deeds to us," he said.

Zipra veterans mooted the hunt for their properties at an annual general meeting held at one of their properties, Castle Arms in Bulawayo on September 30 last year.

Magwizi said the property seizures had plunged many ex-Zipra combatants and their dependants into abject poverty as they were no longer able to derive direct financial benefits from the properties.

Magwizi said investigations had established that another property, Ascot Farm in Solusi, was sold to a Bulawayo businessman whom they spoke to and he allowed them to use the farm after he noticed that it had been sold to him clandestinely.

He said another Zipra farm, Youth Gland in Nyamandlovu is used by some people who were put there clandestinely by some war veterans who did not consult the Zipra properties board.

Some of the properties include Nest Egg building in Bulawayo and Hawton Farm in the Midlands province.

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