Our democracy is restricted by our politics
and our efforts to attain mature politics restrained by pseudo-democracy,
manifested through selfishness of thinking that only those in government have
national interest at heart. Opposition leaders are seen as enemies of the state
to be controlled by the same laws that are meant to punish criminals and
vandals who threaten by public peace and destroy public property.
By Nyalubinge Ngwende
Think of the idea of one day not having a
home, displaced because you need to be on constant run from possible instant
death or being imprisoned in sordid conditions and suffering excruciating
torture. Fearing to stay in one place because those who will kill or imprison you
think you are not of their tribe or you oppose their political ideologies and
undemocratic government. So that fear of thinking to lose your life or freedom
for another individual’s political gain just makes you to keep on running
until, without a place to hide in your
country, you find yourself living in a foreign land, wandering and going days
on end without food and sleep. Thereafter, think of waking up among thousands
of other people that are not even your family but also running away from your
own country for the same reasons; queuing in front of a home office of a
foreign country subjected to security screening, before being declared a
refugee. Next you are loaded like bags of grain on a lorry and sent to live in
a camp of plastic tents.
Just like the idea of being killed for
political or tribal reasons seems remote—almost meaningless—so does the idea of
having to leave this beloved motherland, your good job, a comfortable home to
run away from tribal or political persecution. That your country, Zambia, has
an international brand-tag of a peaceful nation, imagining a day that a person
you share a beer with and kneel down together in a church pew becoming your
executioner or collaborator who hands you to state security agents the next day
appears to be from a fairytale, a primitive myth. Isn’t it?
And that may well be a problem of trying
to imagine the reality about what size and nature of political and tribal
differences other countries have experienced that lead to serious bloodied
political skirmishes, including genocide. We have read and watched on satellite
television about these things, and know they are truly happening. This country
is even hosting most of the refugees. But their situations do not affect us;
they are far from making us victims.
Yet our own political independence founding
fathers have hinted that political instability and tribal wars are possible
anywhere when political intolerance becomes a practice of governance by those
in power.
Vernon John Mwaanga, author, diplomat and
veteran politician said everything about tolerance in a country starts at
political level. “Politicians must not talk on each other, but should talk to
each other.”
Appearing on a ZNBC television a programme
to reflect on the Heroes and Unity day on July 1, 2013, Mwaanga said a country
must practice politics of inclusion and not exclusion.
“There must be space for others to
participate,” he said, warning that exclusion of others from effective
political participation leads to alienation which has led to many conflicts in
other countries that are not politically stable today.
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Vernon Mwanga, Zambian Veteran Politician
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Mwaanga’s statement is not void. The way
our politics are arranged in Zambia, since the second republic under UNIP,
hardly promote tolerance and mutual respect between those in government and the
opposition groups. A ruling government personalises everything, including
forcing all citizens to tow its line of thinking. Those who are rightly or
wrongly perceived to be dissenting are persecuted; their private businesses
destroyed while others are dismissed from public jobs on flimsy grounds.
Our democracy is restricted by our politics
and our efforts to attain mature politics restrained by pseudo-democracy,
manifested through selfishness of thinking that only those in government have
national interest at heart. Opposition leaders are seen as enemies of the state
to be controlled by the same laws that are meant to punish criminals and
vandals who threaten public security and destroy public property.
Up-to-date, the woman Inspector General of
Police Stella Libongani has not been made accountable of her statement that
defended bias application of the Public Order Act (POA). She and her senior
officers, mainly women across the 10 provinces of the country, have been
blocking opposition leaders to hold public and indoor meetings while cadres
from the ruling Patriotic Front carryout public demonstrations at will and
anywhere without being curtailed by the POA.
Libongani told a media briefing at Lusaka’s
Southern Sun Hotel on December 28, 2012 that the POA allows the police to
enforce the law appropriately.
She accused opposition political rallies of
being a danger to the enjoyment of rights and freedoms of the [Patriotic Front
leadership and its membership].
“It is able to allow us to ensure that
every person in this country is able to enjoy their rights and freedoms. For
political parties, those are not the only opportunities they can have to
communicate with the public.
There are always other effective ways of political
participation other than through political rallies,” she said.
Nine months after there has been no word
from government to distance itself from Libongani’s outbursts. Could this be a
sign that President Sata agrees with her appointee in totality to deny the
country’s opposition space to conduct their business?
While people in countries like Rwanda and
Congo have a practical grasp of the realities of civil conflict due to
political intolerance, Zambians find it hard to grasp how and why such things
happen.
In Rwanda the political intolerance that turned
into genocide, with Hutus maiming and killing Tutsis, came as a result of one
group of people thinking it was the majority and superior over the minority
Tutsis.
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| Scenes from the slaughter of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda |
The survivors of the genocide remember
spine numbing atrocities that left the world reacting too slow and too late
after 800,000 Tutsis had been killed, thousands of women raped and taken as sex
slaves for Hutus.
Over the years, as the world through the
ICC (International Criminal Court) in The Hague tries to seek justice for the
victims shocking revelations have emerged about people heading important
institutions, such as the police alongside government ministers, being involved
in the brutal massacre of innocent men, women and children.
Zaire and now Congo DR is a country that
has never known a stable political and democratic government.
What has carved the Congo DR into ruinous regional
battle grounds is mainly the politics of greedy. Greedy politicians only take
development to the regions where they come from and command political
popularity.
Regions that have rich natural wealth like diamonds and gold have in
many years remained neglected while those in power and their corporate crooks
continue to harvest this wealth, building empires in their regions leaving the
owners of the minerals with ‘husks’ to subsist on. In the end the Congolese
have continued to experience unending war.
If Zambia is to avoid going on the similar
path that other countries have continued to straddle and struggle to detour
from, citizens must ensure they build a culture of tolerance.
There is little that a small group of
politicians can do to set brother against brother to defend their narrow
political ambitions if citizens are all in agreement to be ruled properly, with
equal law for equal rights. The citizens must all refuse weak standards of
governance that tend to rely and depend on an individual leader’s good will.
In unison the people, as One Zambia, One
Nation, must all agree to construct a good constitution and strong transparent
institutions that will be feared by those who govern. For now institutions of
governance cower before the omnipotent Executive President.
As a people, of 72 or more tribes, there
must be categorical refusal to pander to tribe politics. Annoying jokes that
leaders of certain political parties will never be President of this country
because of their tribe must be discarded. The media, the politicians and silly
citizens have always taken these as mere words, but no one knows how much
tension it causes among the group affected. Remember it was the simple thought
of political dominance by sections of a tribe that led to the genocide in
Rwanda.
God forbid, but any form of intolerance
that subdues the pride of one group of people can inflame the whole nation into
xenophobic attacks. What is even highly
inflammable is when leaders choose to make government positions a preserve of
their tribal men. Without a slight of shame, when every appointment
announcement carries the same tribal name is a subtle but human right violation
equivalent to genocide and could cause fissures in the political stability of
the country.
Further political participation of the
citizens must not be curtailed by any form of stupid law. Free press, like
public assemblies, is one of the biggest ways through which citizens participate
in the governance system of their country. However, as often said, that alone
is enough because ‘wily despots develop insidious ways of controlling the
private media and curtailing opposition leaders from interacting with
electorates’.
Zambia has lost the Post Newspaper, which
until 2011 had remained a vanguard of checks against bad governance. The
newspaper has become a megaphone for the ruling Patriotic Front.
Public political meetings have almost
disappeared, not out of fear of going to jail by opposition leaders, but it has
become costly for them to pay legal fees to lawyers to defend them on cases
that government deliberately instigates against them and end up withdrawing
from court. All the government wants to see is its opponents embarrassed in the
eyes of those who cheer its senseless abuse of power and suffer legal costs.
The intolerance runs deep. It does not make
governance any easier but everyday drags the country to tittering edge of
political conflict.
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