Thursday, May 19, 2011

ASSEMBLY PASSES STATUTE OF VETERANS

The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Wednesday passed a bill granting rights to veterans of both the national liberation struggle against Portuguese colonial rule, and of the 16 year war of destabilisation waged by Ian Smith’s Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa against Mozambique.The bill enshrines rights already granted to veterans of the anti-colonial struggle under previous legislation, and for the first time grants bonuses to demobilized soldiers who fought on both sides in the war of destabilisation.Veterans of the liberation struggle are entitled to a “participation bonus” varying in accordance to the military position they held in the war, and in addition to the statutory minimum wage in the public administration. Those who were wounded in the struggle for independence are also entitled to an invalidity pension.These veterans who benefit from a military retirement pension must choose between the pension and the participation bonus.Demobilised soldiers who fought in the post independence war, both in the government army, the FAM/FPLM, and for the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels, will receive a “social re-insertion bonus”, if they spent at least three years in the army.Former FAM/FPLM members who spent at least ten years in the army are entitled to a military pension, under the same rules as are applied to the current Mozambican armed forces (FADM).Veterans from both wars and their dependents are entitled to medical care, fully or partially free of charge, in military health units or in the national health service. The exact terms of this right will be regulated later. Disabled veterans are entitled to wheelchairs or artificial limbs paid for by the state, and the state must provide housing for severely disabled veterans.The state will also subsidise veterans’ funerals, and provide them with free or subsidised public transport. The state must also give priority to veterans’ children in access to education and to scholarships.Renamo deputies attacked the bill as “discriminatory, unconstitutional and unjust” because it grants more rights to veterans of the liberation struggle than to demobilized soldiers of the post-independence war.The group from the majority Frelimo Party on the Assembly’s Constitutional and Legal Affairs Commission pointed out that what would really be unjust is “putting on the same pedestal those who are considered veterans because they defended sovereignty and democracy, and those who dedicated their lives to the national liberation struggle. For you cannot defend sovereignty and democracy in a country which does not exist”.Without the sacrifice made by the guerrillas who fought against Portuguese colonialism, there would never have been an independent Mozambique, Frelimo said. “It would be simply irreverent for legislators to wipe out the existence of veterans of the liberation struggle and legislate for them to be treated the same as others”, the Frelimo deputies argued.
Renamo also protested against the clause limiting the “social reinsertion bonus” to people who had spent at least three years in the army. It did not want that clause to apply to the Renamo demobilised, who should be paid regardless of how much time they had spent as Renamo fighters.For the government, the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, Mateus Kida, pointed out that the government was excluding its own conscript soldiers who had only spent two years in uniform from the concept of veteran. It would be grossly unfair to pay a bonus to Renamo fighters who had spent two years or less in the war, while nothing was paid to conscripts demobilised after two years.Kida said the “Social Reinsertion Bonus” was designed particularly for those who did not qualify for military pensions. That applied particularly to the Renamo demobilized who could not claim pensions because they had never paid contributions into any pension fund.
The Minister was surprised to find Renamo deputies objecting to a clause which said that time spent in the ranks of either army could only be counted as from the supposed veteran’s 14th birthday. By demanding that this clause be dropped, Renamo was admitting that it had recruited into its ranks children even younger than 14 – something which it had previously always denied.
Two of the Renamo speakers in the debate, Leopoldo Ernesto and Anselmo Vitor, were careful to restrict their complaints to the allegedly discriminatory and unconstitutional nature of the bill, and not to attack the national liberation struggle.With Armindo Milaco, however, the Renamo mask dropped and he launched a bitter attack on the veterans of the independence war. “Those who came from Nachingwea (Frelimo’s main training camp in southern Tanzanian during the anti-colonial war) destroyed this country”, he claimed. “They brought communism, they brought re-education camps, they brought public executions”.Milaco’s tirade was cut short, because he ran out of time, and his microphone was switched off.
When the bill was put to a vote, it passed its first reading by 175 votes to 44. All the deputies present from Frelimo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) voted in favour, and all those from Renamo against.

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