Zuma rekindles ZAPU alliance
by Lindie Whiz
07/06/2009
SOUTH African President Jacob Zuma has moved to recognise the re-emergence of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) by inviting the party’s leadership to his home-coming celebrations at his rural Nkandla on Saturday.
ZAPU donated two beasts to Zuma at the massive party attended by some 20,000 people. Zuma, elected as South Africa’s new leader in April, said ZAPU was a strong ally of the South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC).
The South Africa leader also thanked ZAPU for helping the ANC during the liberation struggle, the South Africa Press Association (Sapa) reported.
ZAPU joined President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party in 1987 in a unity pact to end five years of government-sanctioned killings in the south western parts of the country where Joshua Nkomo’s supporters were targeted.
The uneasy partnership with Zanu PF ended last month after ZAPU’s congress in Bulawayo voted to pull out.
ZAPU’s interim chairman Dumiso Dabengwa was at Zuma’s inauguration on May 9. The two men also met in Bulawayo in December when Zuma attended his daughter’s wedding.
The ZAPU-ANC alliance was founded in the mid to late 1960s. The ANC’s military wing Umkhonto Wesizwe assisted ZAPU with military strategy (read ANC-ZAPU armed actions in Rhodesia).
Both ZAPU and the ANC were supported by the Soviet Union during the two countries’ struggle for independence from white minority rule.
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