Former Zipra fighters have dismissed Jonathan Moyo’s protest over the removal of Cain Mathema by President Emmerson Mnangagwa from the Home Affairs Ministry as spitting on the 1987 Unity Accord.

The Unity Accord brought together Zapu and Zanu then under Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe respectively and ended the Gukurahundi massacres targeted at Nkomo’s supporters in the Matabeleland region and Midlands province.

In a cabinet reshuffle last Friday, Moyo said the removal of Mathema whom he claimed was an ex Zapu for the first time saw ex Zapu members in Zanu-PF shut out from security portfolios.

But the Zipra veterans said Mathema joined Zanu before the unity accord.

“When Mathema was sent to school after he and his friends staged a mutiny during the war, he joined Zanu and ceased being Zapu. It is wrong for Moyo to say Mathema represents ex Zapu/Zipra cadres. Mathema just like Obert Mpofu defected to Zanu long before the unity accord was signed so technically, they are Zanu people,” said a Zipra veteran.

“He is right when he says ex Zapu people are no longer in the security ministries but that basis should not be on the recent removal of Mathema from the Home Affairs ministry.”

Mathema was removed from Home Affairs and was assigned to the ministry of education as Mnangagwa replaced him with Kazembe Kazembe.