In Rwanda the most potent and devastating
weapon used to carry out genocide was a machete. In Zambia its look-alike, the
Panga, has become a weapon of intimidation and political violence that starts
where political tolerance and reason fails, but police and lawmakers seem to
wait for the worst to happen before they can do anything to outlaw the weapon
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PF Matero youth Chairperson Heita Bwalya displays Pangas
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By Nyalubinge Ngwende
Pangas have become the most
potent and dangerous-easy-to-acquire weapons to conduct political violence
under the Patriotic Front.
In Matero when church pastors,
political leaders and civil society activists gathered to demand for ‘Black
Friday’ to press government over a people driven constitution and respect for civil
rights, among them the freedom of association, a group of brutes entered the
church with Pangas and planks to break up the church vigil. The ruling party PF
youths, displaying their choice of weapon before Muvi TV cameras, later confessed
to have been sent by area ward councilor, Morris Pio to carry out the act of
violence.
It did not just end there and not
just with their opponents. Because when the PF power brokering tactics that saw
two groups emerge, differing over the endorsing of President Michael Sata as
the sole candidate for 2016, the opposing groups resorted to use of Pangas. To
show that nothing is settled through dialogue in PF, the factions resorted to
settling their difference with Pangas on the road to Kenneth Kaunda
International Airport, as they tried to block each other from witnessing
President Sata laying a foundation stone for the new plane terminal
infrastructure.
The PF members hacked each other
as ‘scare-crows’ in police uniform stood-by musing at the orgy and doing
nothing. One life was lost and a PF Lusaka youth leader is facing charges of
murder in the High Court.
The PF has now earned itself an
infamous tag of Panga Family because of the frequency and prominence that its
members resort to use the machete-type sharp weapon hacking and maiming others
they have differed with in opinion.
The reason that a mob of ruling
party cadres can get around our townships wielding Pangas, waving these weapons
in front of television cameras, as they goby wrecking havoc shows how relaxed
the law restricting dangerous weapons like this has become.
Or is it that the police are just
unwilling to strongly deal with lawlessness involving members of the ruling
party? If not, but why, apart from the
case of murder in high court, no one, not even those who appeared on Muvi TV
confessing to breaking up the Black Friday church gathering, has ever been
arrested for carrying dangerous weapons that are capable of maiming and killing?
It raises a lot of questions on
the part of the police and how they treat political violence in relation to
public peace. They were quick at arresting and detaining Alliance for Better
Zambia leader Fr Frank Bwalya for rightly defining President Sata as ‘Cumbu Mushololwa’—a bemba tribe jibe meaning
someone who does not take advice, like a crooked sweet potato that cannot be
straightened unless it breaks. However, they have lamentably failed to cite
anyone of faces that have appeared in newspaper and television pictures with
Pangas in raised hands. At the same time they have been brutalizing opposition
members for peaceful demonstrations.
Worse more are the levels of
denial among the politicians, especially the government leadership, to fail to
see
the danger the presence of Pangas in the hands of political thugs from the
ruling party are posing to Zambia’s political peace.
In the last sitting of parliament
vice president Guy Scott was in complete denial that those who were involved in
the killing of a cadre on the road to KKIA were not PF members, but opposition
hooligans who had infiltrated the ruling party.
Though Scott did not want to
accept the problem of the Panga Family and its violence as squarely lying on
the ruling party, at least, if he were a serious leader of government business
in the house, the man was going to propose to parliament the need to seek stiffer
regulation over the presence of Pangas in public.
Pangas are an essential tool for
domestic use for pruning overgrowth of trees, cutting sticks and thatch for
fencing and also as a potential weapon for security against buglers in homes
that cannot afford firearms.
However, its presence in the
hands of political thugs, around and during any place of political activity, a
panga has proved to be a devastating weapon of merciless violence. It replaces
any sense of tolerance and has assumed the basest means by which political
dissent is intimidated into silence.
When politics got bad in Rwanda,
the machete—which is the Panga type—became a weapon of genocide. It is
dangerous, but cheaper and easier to acquire because blacksmiths all around the
townships can easily make it. The equally quite heavy steel it is forged from
and, given its sharp edge, it means any youthful effort of attack on another
human being can cause serious wounding or cut off a limb or kill instantly.
As already seen, the Panga is
becoming a potential weapon of intimidation and unspeakable violence that can
undermine free political thought and decision. With it around and with no
deliberate measures taken to forestall its entry into any arena of political
competition, the way it will play out during 2016 when the country returns to
general elections shall only be told by those who will face the sharp side of
this machete.
It is for this that our lawmakers
should seek to outlaw this weapon in public and anyone found in its possession
must face the wrath of the law, enough to deter would be offenders. It would
not be extreme if anyone were found with a Panga nearer any political activity
to face a charge of being in possession of a weapon of murder and political
violence which should carry not less than 25 years jail term.
Maybe in this way we can reduce
the violent type in the Panga Family, save them from killing their own at this
time and also turning the same senselessness on members of the opposition as
the political things get thicker for the ruling party towards 2016.
NN
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