National youth service training - Solidarity Peace Trust

F. State accounts of militia activities
This report has already touched on many occasions on the state-proclaimed policies of what the
National Youth Service training is aimed at achieving. Coincid ing with the Presidential election, there
were a couple of articles which are worthy of attention, both for what they say, and for what they do
not say, when considered in conjunction with the overwhelming evidence compiled in this report, of
activities of the militia, from politically motivated arson, torture, and murder, to all sorts of petty
criminal acts.
Soccer balls
On 6 March 2002, there was a militia-related article in the Bulawayo Chronicle. A photograph
entitled “Big Boost” shows 10 soccer balls worth Z$50,000 being donated to youth militia camps in
Bulawayo, which are listed as Pumula East, Bulawayo City Centre, Entumbane, Njube, Nkulumane,
Sizinda, Burnside, Nketa, Sauerstown, and the main youth training centre of Ntabazinduna.
The balls are to be used in the Presidential Trophy that the militia will compete for the next week
(the week of the Presidential election), announces the article. This portrayal of the youth militia as
playing soccer in the very week of the Presidential election is mind-boggling. The picture of
smiling ZANU/PF officials handing over soccer balls deser ves to be viewed simultaneously with
photo 6 in this report: the victim in this picture had his feet severely burnt, his skull fractured and
his arms burned with cigarettes, by youth militia in one
“National Youth Service Vindicates Government” 174 of the above named camps, a mere two days
before the Chronicle article was published.
An article was published in The Chronicle, on 12 th March, the day after voting ended in the
Presidential election. By this time, an estimated 9,000 youth had completed formal militia training in
one form or another. This article is an account of the progress made in employment creation linked to
the training. It enumerates 250 youths who will in the future benefit from a “paraffin starters
enterprise” and another 200 who are soon to be empowered by starting a “sewing enterprise”. 175
An earlier article on 6 March in The Chronicle referred to 25 youths in a “paraffin starters enterprise,
which was expected to expand in the future. It continued by saying the “remaining group [of militias]
will be absorbed into civil service”, including army, air force and police. 176
The government’s own statistics of 450 jobs possibly created (selling paraffin and home sewing)
reduce to absurdity all claims of the national youth service as an empowering experience, and of
employment creation as the genuine intention of the training. One can speculate that the “vindication”
the national youth training has given the government, has nothing to do with a handful of jobs created,
but is rather an oblique acknowledgement of the pivotal role the youth militia played in the Presidential
election.
175 The Chronicle, Bulawayo, 12 March 2002: “National youth training vindicates government”.
176 The Chronicle, Bulawayo, 6 March 2002: “Paraffin project launched”.
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