The Citizen reports that the failure of a group of former combatants in liberation movements to secure a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa to raise their plight has soured relations with the country’s highest office.  

In a letter on 15 November, the Tshwane metro refused to grant the group permission 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 the 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 on Sunday 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 for food parcels.  We are not being treated in the manner a government should treat its military veterans,” said Petse.  The report lists the military veterans’ other demands.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Brian Sokutu at The Citizen

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