With the warring post-congress Zanu PF's ambitious Young Turks, the Generation 40 (G40) faction, cranking up the heat on Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle have joined the fray, questioning the embattled VP's struggle credentials.

Speaking in interviews yesterday, three distinguished war veterans who were commanders during the liberation struggle, claimed that Mnangagwa was never part of the famous Crocodile Gang that was led by the late William Ndangana as the VP has consistently asserted.

They also claimed that Mnangagwa was a peripheral figure during the protracted liberation struggle and that his "only possible claim to fame" was that he was once allegedly married to the sister of the late decorated war commander, Josiah Magama Tongogara.

The claims come amid the worsening bad blood between Mnangagwa's faction and the G40, who appear hellbent on thwarting the VP's presidential aspirations — even going to the extent of roping in President Robert Mugabe's increasingly influential wife, Grace, and the other VP, Phelekezela Mphoko, in the plot.

Until Grace and the G40 recently teamed up against Mnangagwa, the VP was well-poised to succeed Mugabe following last year's brutal purging of former Vice President Joice Mujuru and her close allies from both the post-congress Zanu PF and government.

The liberation struggle veterans yesterday said they were raising their doubts about Mnangagwa now because they were worried that Zanu PF was about to be led by "a person with a hazy history", and who was allegedly "a stowaway who fled the country claiming to be a Zambian".

One of the veterans, Retired Colonel Bastian Beta, said he had only met Mnangagwa once during the liberation struggle, "and then he was just a family visitor to the camp".

"I only met him in 1978 when he came to the camp and we asked who he was, and we were told that it was Comrade Tongogara's visitor. We were later shocked when we returned home to find that he was heading the security ministry," Beta said.

Speaking in a recent interview with the UK-based New African magazine, Mnangagwa said that he was the head of security of Zanu and that he had conducted check-ups on recruits, something that war veterans now describe as a "bizarre" claim.

"The three check-ups were done by the commissariat department and included assessing someone's background," another war veteran, who preferred to be referred to only as Taitezvi and who was in charge of intelligence then, said.

A former member of the Zanla High Command, Parker Chipoyera, weighed in saying Mnangagwa had allegedly left many war veterans dispirited when he refused to assist them in 1976, "preferring rather to complete his academic thesis first".

To augment their claims, the former freedom fighters also said that there were only five members of the Crocodile Gang and Mnangagwa was not one of them.

"The five were Sipho Ncube, William Ndangana, Cde Mlambo, Cde Dhlamini and Cde Master. They later scattered after they killed a white man at Nyanyadzi, with some going to Zambia. Sipho actually has a crocodile tattoo on his arm," Chipoyera said.

Taitezvi added that he and Ndangana, who led the Crocodile Gang, had once done a documentary on the activities of the crocodile group and Mnangagwa's name had not featured in the narrative.

"We went to Manicaland with Cde Ndangana where the Crocodile Group operated from. They gave me names of the members and there is no mention of Mnangagwa's name.