Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe will commemorate Heroes and Defense Forces days on Monday and Tuesday next week, at a time relations between President Robert Mugabe and his erstwhile defenders are at a low.

As per tradition, Mugabe will on Monday lead thousands of mainly ruling party Zanu-PF supporters and families of fallen heroes in laying wreaths on their graves and give a speech praising the fallen heroes.

Many war veterans are also still in the defense forces but have not openly aired their sentiments because of their conditions of service.

However, of late there has been bad blood between Mugabe and some of the non-serving war veterans as succession issues in the ruling Zanu-PF party take center stage.

Two leaders of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association are currently before the courts on charges of attempting to destabilize Mugabe's rule after they allegedly issued a statement accusing the President of dictatorship and vowing not to support him in future elections.

The two are part of a group of five war veteran leaders who were recently expelled from the ruling party for allegedly not toeing the party line and joining scores of other cadres who have either been expelled or suspended from the party since 2014.

These include former Vice President Joice Mujuru, former war veterans chairperson Jabulani Sibanda and several former cabinet ministers.

War veterans have in the past campaigned for Mugabe especially with the advent of the opposition MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai in 1999.

They also led ordinary citizens in seizing land from white farmers for the resettlement of formerly landless blacks.

An official in the party's information department at the national headquarters who declined to be named acknowledged that all was not well and that the disciplinary action being taken against some of the cadres did not address the root of the problems bedeviling the party.

"People will watch and see as these purges go on, but as long as the leaders do not want to deal with the succession issue then the problems will continue unresolved," he said.

The Heroes and Defense Forces Days commemorations also come at a time Zimbabwe has been rocked by protests as civil leaders and churches rally the people against prevailing economic hardships and high level of unemployment.

War veterans have also accused Mugabe of spewing vitriol against perceived enemies, including war veterans and protesters who have been using social media such as WhatsApp and Facebook to mobilize support.

The use of the internet this week prompted the commander of the Zimbabwe National Army to warn citizens that the military was ready to deal with anyone who sought to use cyber space to destabilize the government.

"As an army, at our institutions of training, we are training our officers to be able to deal with this new threat we call cyber warfare where weapons -- not necessarily guns but basically information and communication technology -- are being used to mobilize people to do wrong things," army commander Philip Valerio Sibanda told state controlled newspaper The Herald.

Most of the heroes buried at the National Heroes Acre in Harare - where the commemoration of heroes will be held - and the various provincial shrines across the country were veterans of the country' s war of liberation which ended in 1979.

Source:
courtesy of XINHUA NEWS AGENCY

by Xinhua News Agency

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