Own Correspondent| Latest reports from within the ruling ZANU PF party in Bulawayo indicate that former PF ZAPU members in the party threatened to boycott both the National Heroes Acre and ZANU PF if one of their own Misheck Velaphi Ncube was denied national hero status.
Highly reliable party insiders revealed to ZimEye.com that party heavyweights who were in the former PF ZAPU structures under the late Joshua Nkomo defied a ZANU PF politburo decision which had declared Ncube as a liberation war hero a status far lower than that of a National Hero and even lower than a provincial hero.
According to the sources, the former ZAPU members sent a delegation to President Emmerson Mnangagwa declaring that if Ncube was not declared a national hero they would also all write in their wills that they not be buried at the National Shrine.
The sources revealed that the party’s secretary for administration Obert Mpofu had been sent by the politburo to to convey the message that Ncube had been declared a liberation hero status against the party’s provincial request for National Hero.
An emergency provincial executive committee meeting was convened in Bulawayo on Friday where a delegation was dispatched to raise the concern with Mnangagwa.
Ncube, who died on April 29 from diabetes at the age of 82 and was one of the pioneer ZIPRA fighters during the 1970s independence war after receiving military training in Egypt in 1962.
He was one of the top Zipra fighters and ZAPU intelligence officers during and after the liberation war. In 1984 he was arrested with Dumiso Dabengwa and Lookout Masuku by former President Robert Mugabe’s regime and convicted on treason charges. He was pardoned in 1987 at the signing of the Unity Accord between ZANU and PF ZAPU.
The ZAPU members declared to Mnangagwa that former ZANU PF Bulawayo Provincial Chairman Callistus Ncube, who was buried at the National Heroes Acre did not deserve a National Hero Status ahead of Ncube.
The former PF ZAPU members blasted Mnangagwa for giving priority to former ZANU and ZANLA members ahead of them in according hero status.
Zanu-PF politburo member, Munyaradzi Machacha, who was appointed by Mnangagwa to oversee the restructuring of the party in Bulawayo, was so alarmed by the strong objections among ex-ZAPU officials that he called Mnangagwa during the meeting to tell him that “people are angry down here” the sources revealed.
Mnangagwa subsequently overruled the politburo and directed officials to declare Ncube a national hero.
Ncube is expected to be buried at the Heroes Acre in Harare on a day still to be announced.