HARARE – Finance Minister Tendai Biti on Thursday promised to resume pension payments to veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970 liberation war after meeting the representatives of the group.

The government suspended the pension to the war veterans last year.

The undertaking by Biti comes after the war veterans, who two weeks ago started lobbying for more compensation, finally held a meeting with the finance minister yesterday.

Biti, who has turned down demands for salary increament by civil servants, told the veterans led by the Joseph Chinotimba that the country's economy was not performing and explained that the government had no money.

“Our economy is not performing,” Biti told the veterans, adding; "You cannot eat it (your chicken) while it is still a chick but you wait for it to mature first.”

The finance minister told reporters that the meeting with the war veterans was “very friendly”.

Chinotimba, who led Mugabe’s chaotic and often violent farm invasions and has been fighting to seize control of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA), said the war veterans were not fighting with the finance minister but only wanted their grievances addressed.

“He is an MDC (member), I am ZANU PF but he is in the GNU (government of national unity) so he deals with everyone, we did not come here to fight Biti, what we want is our money,” Chinotimba said.

His splinter faction of the ZNLWVA a fortnight ago placed adverts in newspapers to launch what it dubbed the “Heal Our Wounds Campaign”, claiming that over “27 000 comrades were massacred during the liberation war by the Rhodesian security forces”.

Rhodesia was Zimbabwe’s name before independence.

The former fighters' group said the government and the country’s political leadership had done nothing to ensure that parents, children and relatives of fallen freedom fighters were compensated for loss of their loved ones.

The war veterans have over the years been receiving government financial support in appreciation of the crucial role they played in the fight against colonialism, which subsequently led to the country’s independence in 1980.

Critics blame the war veterans for the country's economic mess after in November 1997 President Robert Mugabe bowed to pressure from the former fighters and paid off Z$50 000 plus monthly pensions of $2 000 each to the more than 50 000 war veterans triggering the crash of the Zimbabwe dollar on the stock exchange.

The payouts were not budgeted and the economy responded with a bang, resulting in the infamous “Black Friday” crash of 14 November 1997 when the Zimbabwe dollar plunged on a single day from $14 against the United States greenback to $26 to the US unit.

The secondary contagion effect was a sharp 40 percent crash of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. The stock market lost 46 percent of the value of shares as investors scrambled to dump the Zimbabwe dollar.

By Zimonline