Trainee Green bombers starving in youth camps

By Tichaona Sibanda
24 May 2007

Recruits at the notorious Border Gezi youth camps live in substandard barracks, get very little food and may be at risk of sexual abuse, according to a report released on Thursday.

The Parliamentary report tabled in the legislative house said trainees at the National Youth Service camps set up in 2001 supposedly to instil patriotism in young Zimbabweans frequently go to bed hungry and are fed a monotonous diet of sadza and beans or cabbage for lunch.

The weekly Financial Gazette said members of parliament, including some from Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu (PF) party, toured several National Youth Service camps and vocational training centres, which are also government- funded.

‘The MPs were horrified at what they found and it was the first time ruling party members have ventured criticism of the National Youth Service,’ the paper said.

Critics of Mugabe’s government have long accused the authorities of encouraging rights abuses inside National Youth Service camps, alleging that trainees are brainwashed into beating up opposition supporters.

Deputy Youth Minister Saviour Kasukuwere recently maintained the programme was a noble idea and said that soon all youths would have to undergo training.

But the parliamentary report paints a bleak picture of dilapidated dormitories, minimal rations and for females the fear of sexual abuse.
At one camp, in the southern Matabeleland region, the barracks had no doors or windows, the report said. Some youths complained they had found snakes inside the building.

At Kaguvi Vocational Training Centre, MPs heard how one youth had his arms broken in a scuffle with army personnel over delays in the provision of meals. There were worrying reports that some female recruits to the National Youth Service had been sexually abused by male instructors and trainees, said the Financial Gazette. The MPs have called for a police investigation into the allegations of violence.