Zimbabweans yesterday responded with disdain to government’s announcement that it plans to recruit at least 10 000 young people for the controversial National Youth Service (NYS), now rebranded to Youth Service in Zimbabwe.
Political analysts who spoke to NewsDay yesterday said the programme was part of Zanu PF’s coercive strategy to stay in power.
The NYS programme, initially launched by the late Youth minister Border Gezi in 2001, was introduced with the aim of drilling revolutionary and patriotic ideologies into the country’s young citizens.
But Zanu PF was later accused of turning the graduates into a militia for the purpose of harassing political opponents.
The programme came under a barrage of attacks, with some questioning why children of top government officials never enrolled at the institutions.
Speaking during a post-Cabinet media briefing on Tuesday this week, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services minister Jenfan Muswere said government was setting up an inter-ministerial implementation committee to oversee the implementation of the programme.
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Muswere said going forward, youths who complete training would receive priority in employment in public sector and enrolment in higher and tertiary education institutions and for financial support to establish new projects and businesses.
“The development of a six-month training programme which will target youths between the ages of 18 and 35. The programme, which covers three months of institutionalised training and three months of community attachment, will commence in June 2024 with an enrolment of 750 youths across the country,” he said.
“Those who undergo the training will be issued with certificates on completion of the programme. The new curriculum will infuse national orientation with life skills training and entrepreneurial development; new uniforms, signage and logo have been designed and will be registered; all production units are expected to fully utilise available land and engage in commercial production units for self-sustenance.”
The move has, however, been heavily criticised.
Despite the criticism, Zanu PF is on the verge of completing the construction of another controversial project, the Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology in Harare.
The school is designed to offer ideological orientation to all sectors of the Zimbabwean society.
Research and policy analyst Mziwandile Ndlovu said the NYS had a terrible legacy of human rights abuses and partisan attachment to Zanu PF.
“For this reason, most citizens are likely to view it in the same light as the Border Gezi programme, whose recruits campaigned for Zanu PF in previous elections and were associated with perpetrating human rights abuses in the process, especially in the rural areas,” Ndlovu said.
“The government bureaucracy already has a bad reputation that is sullied by allegations of partisan recruitment in favour of Zanu PF activists, some of whom are hardly qualified for their jobs.
“If the aim is to use the revived NYS programme for priority employment of graduates in the future, then this problem will only get worse by further compromising the public service.”
Added Ndlovu: “In fact, it is likely to spread the cancer to institutions of higher learning that seem to be a new target of the programme regarding future placements.”
Political analyst Rashweat Mukundu dismissed the programme as a waste of national resources.
“The NYS doesn’t need the military barrack training style that Zanu PF always pushes for, which is, of course, meant to make young people political cannons that can be deployed for political violence as we saw with the past NYS,” he said.
Another political analyst Ruben Mbofana said the NYS was part of Zanu PF’s strategy to keep the ruling party in power as it has failed to deliver on election promises since independence.
“The main problem we have with this Zanu PF government is fear. It is paranoid especially, when you (those in power) have failed the people that have entrusted you to lead them and provide them a better life,” he said.
“They will use those youths to indoctrinate them on what they term ‘patriotism’. Patriotism for them is about brainwashing those in the country, especially the youth to blindly follow them.”