"War Vets Will Never Negotiate Power With The Opposition", Mahiya

The Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association (ZNLWVA) said that the European Union (EU) should know that they do not want war but if it comes, they will accept it.

This was said by ZNLWVA spokesperson Douglas Mahiya on Wednesday during a national executive meeting in Harare. He said:

We know why the EU is doing that, we know why the EU is supporting the opposition. It is because it is the same war that they were fighting against us and we are prepared to take it up because it’s a struggle.

We never wanted war, we never want war, but when war comes, you have no option, but to accept it. We want the EU to know that.

Mahiya also said that the war veterans will never sit down to negotiate giving up power at it was attained through struggled. Said Mahiya:

War veterans sat down today to be able to tell the nation, to tell the world that we are there and unmoved.

The question of power, what we went out there to do was nothing else but to get power and the question of power surely will not be negotiated.

It will never be negotiated. It will never be gotten in any other terms other than struggling, and so we struggled and got that power.

It is misdirection to think that the power we got, (that which) other people struggled to get, the African person who get power from the white man … Where it concerns power, we will never stop fighting.

In other words, we will defend the political power that we got.

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