A group of liberation movements’ former combatants’ failed attempts to secure a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa to raise their plight has soured relations with the country’s highest office.
The Tshwane metro refused to grant the group permission, in a letter on November 15, to march to the Union Buildings to hand over a memorandum.
According to Concerned Military Veterans (CMV) spokesperson Mangaliso Petse, the group comprised former members of Umkhonto weSizwe, the Azanian Peoples’ Liberation Army and Azanian National Liberation Army who want to stage a march in the hope of being “heard by the president”.
Poverty-stricken and claiming to be “on the fringes and marginalised” by the post-democracy ANC-led government, Petse said yesterday that although they had sent letters to Ramaphosa, no government official had assisted them to access military pensions, housing, vocational training or support for the exhumation of fellow cadres who had died in exile.
“Despite having made sacrifices by contributing to the liberation of this country, we now often have to go begging to the Gift of the Givers and to Sassa (South African Social Security Agency) for food parcels.
“We are not being treated in the manner a government should treat its military veterans,” said Petse.
Among other demands, the former military veterans want:
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