Posted on 11/07/2001 2:05:20 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HUNDREDS of Zanu PF youths are undergoing clandestine military training at various centres around the country in preparation for a violent presidential campaign, The Standard has learnt.
The youths, recruited from the ruling party's youth wing, are undergoing intensive training at the hands of the war veterans. They have been promised army jobs at the end of their training.
Some of the training is being coordinated by the ministry of youth development, gender and employment creation, which is also running the national youth service, sources said.
The youths are not part of those recruited for the official National Youth Service programme currently underway at the Border Gezi Training Camp in Mt Darwin. Youths from this programme have also been promised army jobs when their training ends.
According to information in the hands of The Standard, most of the training is being undertaken at farms invaded in a blitz by war veterans before last year's parliamentary elections.
Contacted for comment, Shuvai Mahofa, deputy minister for gender, youth development and employment creation, denied that her ministry was coordinating clandestine military training.
"We do not know what you are talking about. We are currently training youths for national service. They are learning a lot of practical subjects including carpentry, metal work, building and agriculture. People tend to associate the programme with a military programme and that is wrong," she said.
The Standard has, however, established that a number of camps have been set up in Manicaland at Muchena in Penhalonga, on the outskirts of Mutare and at farms around the Old Mutare area and The Grange area of Odzi. Other youths are camping at Hauna Growth Point in Honde Valley. Sources said similar military training bases are dotted around the country.
MDC shadow minister for defence and MP for Mutare North, Giles Mutsekwa, confirmed that military bases have been set up by Zanu PF activists in his constituency adding that he had personally seen youths training at the farms.
"It is evident that these activities are taking place everyday. I have physically been to one of the farms where this training is taking place. I woke up early and visited the farm. They start training as early as 4 am with the youths clad in camouflaged attire and doing military drills. The sad thing is that farm workers are being forced to join the drills," said Mutsekwa, who is also a former soldier.
The MP said the youths were being prepared for next year's election. "The aim is to shut the MDC out of these farming areas and frighten the villagers. They want to scare the villagers into thinking that if they vote for the MDC then a war will break out.
Said Mutsekwa: "This is affecting our campaign because villagers and farm workers are now afraid of attending our rallies. We are now employing a silent campaign which is working very well. Come next year, Mugabe will not know what hit him," said Mutsekwa.
Some senior Zanu PF officials have already declared that they will wage war if President Mugabe loses next year's presidential election to the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai.
Zanu PF secretary for external affairs, Didymus Mutasa, is on record as saying his party would not accept an MDC victory and would "go back to the bush" to reclaim power.
Since the emergence of the MDC, Zanu PF has revived its Youth Brigade, last remembered for its terror of the 1980s.
The brigade is mainly active in the rural areas where its members go about intimidating villagers into supporting the ruling party.
A CRACK unit of Libyan intelligence officers is in the country to beef up President Robert Mugabe's security and intelligence system as the nation lurches towards the 2002 presidential election, now only five months away, the Zimbabwe Independent has learnt.
Intelligence sources told the Independent this week that over 20 Libyan nationals were booked at a local hotel and could be seen driving around in government vehicles. They are understood to be re-training intelligence personnel and President Mugabe's close security unit.
As the presidential poll draws near, Mugabe is wary over his security in the event of losing the do-or-die election that pits his 38-year-old Zanu PF party against the two-year-old opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The Libyans' role in the election has been unclear, though suspicions abound that they could play a crucial role in perpetuating the reign of Muammar Gaddafi's closest ally in the southern African region if the vote went against him.
"As far as I know, they are just involved with monitoring and improving the security of Mugabe who envies Gaddafi's intelligence network," a source said.
The team will be in the country up to the time of the presidential election next year.
"There are strong fears that something terrible could befall Mugabe if he loses. There is need to ensure his maximum security," the source said.
A British paper this week said "hundreds of Libyan troops", part of Gaddafi's elite forces, "known for their terror tactics, were being housed in secret locations scattered across the country".
The Daily Telegraph, quoting intelligence sources, said there was a growing number of intelligence officers turning against Mugabe, forcing him to turn elsewhere for protection.
The Libyans were to be issued with Zimbabwean passports by the Registrar-General's office to help Mugabe's presidential election campaign, the paper said.
Other press reports from South Africa suggest that Pagad, a Libyan-funded vigilante group which campaigns against drug lords on the Cape Flats, would be unleashed on the white commercial farmers in a terror campaign.
The development takes place at a time when the country has mortgaged itself to Libyans after it sought a US$340 million loan to purchase fuel.
The Independent reported recently that the Libyans were going to acquire major stakes in the country's two financial institutions and a major hotel group in addition to receiving 8 000ha of land for industrial and farming purposes.
I am taking the liberty of flagging others.
Something called JUSTICE!!!
The mongrel bastard is EVIL!
[As is the bloody awful terrorist monster whose thuggees comprise his praetorian guard -- Oh where is President Reagan now that we need a few F-111s need to take another trip to Kaddafi's pre-medieval tent?]
He will, thank God, soon be dead.
And can take his Brownie Points with him to the only place they -- and he -- then and now -- have any viability.
Straight to Hell!!
Expect the UN to try to take over and rule with a globalist satrapy, however.
-archy-/-
In effect Gadaafi seems to be making a bid to save Mugabe which, if successful, would create a virtual Libyan client state at the far end of Africa. Already there is evidence of direct Libyan involvement in the violence which racked Zimbabwean farms in the last ten days. [End Excerpt]
(mean-spirited smirk);^)
For if he and they are not [And you had better be paying attention, Mr Bush!] then American [Human, that is!] Civilization is doomed.
Once before in recent history we allowed dead and decadent European "morality" and "thinking" to cloud and obfuscate the depth of Evil which Our Nation and our First and Best Ally, Australia, were courageously confronting in Vietnam -- and to focus only on the tools with which we were righteously engaging that Evil -- and the effect of those tools upon the 10-year-old girls behind which the mass-mudering Viet Cong was gutlessly crouched.
The effect of the importation of that particular mix of dead and decadent and failed European "morality" and "thinking" was that the Evil which was and is Communist Vietnam was permitted to prevail -- and to cause the slaughter and/or displacement of millions of innocent lives.
Please God -- and especially given that we have allowed that excreable appeaser of terrorist Evil, relentless destroyer of British sovereignty and KKKli'tonian Neo-Axis partner, Blair, to intricate himself into Our life and death struggle -- we do not allow his obscene cabinet and government and/or any of Europe's other failed socialist plutocracies to influence our remembering the Evils perpetrated upon the thousands of AMERICANS wilfully murdered -- on AMERICAN soil, AMERICAN ships and AMERICAN installations -- and/or to shift Our Nation's Righteous Focus from the Evil done to Our Nation -- and the Human Civilization -- and on to [For example] a few of the accidentally bombed innocents among whom [Surprise! Surprise!] crouch our craven and Evil enemy!
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