Storella settled for the lesser value of
peace and stability to praise the political leadership in power taking after
Kenneth Kaunda’s old times, instead of equal rights and justice as aspired by
this generation
 |
| Outgoing USA envoy Mark Storella with Zambia's first President Kenneth Kaunda during USA National Day |
By
Nyalubinge Ngwende
Mark Storella was always going to leave
this country one day. His three-year-stay as USA envoy to Zambia was going to
expire and he was going to pack his bags and catch that next flight. Storella
and his family were not going to be part of Zambia forever. He, and not even
any of his relatives, was ever going to make Zambia their permanent home. Never!
For this fact there was nothing to lose if
he said things and behaved in ways that were not truthful to what is
politically obtaining in the country at present. He would have been an
important voice to persuade President Sata and his government to do things
right, other than what we have come to know of him—a consummate hypocrite! The
kind that chooses to tell king that the barn is still full of stock, when in
fact the canker worms and the grain borers were slowly working their way and
destroying the storage.
Even when thousands of Zambians in the
rural areas were going to be going hungry, failing to put food on the table, due
to unaffordable bag of mealie following the removal of subsidies by Patriotic
Front government, Storella would still have his bread buttered and his burger
well sauced, coca-cola chilled for the next and other day.
While an old widow in the rugged hills of
Katete would fail to raise money for a bus fare to send her only daughter to
attend high school in town because Sata’s government removed a subsidy on fuel,
Storella would still have his air-ticket and that of his children and relatives
paid for by the American government to go on picnic in Mount Rainier National
Park. His children would still get their car tanks filled and drive to their
respective schools.
This is why Storella never gave a second
thought when he came out and supported the absolute withdraw of subsidies,
without advising the government to consider phasing the prices of fuel for
different groups in the economy.
The transport sector needed an elaborate
policy that would have been provided some kind of adjusted subsidy. This is
because of how each form of transport, from goods haulage to passenger buses, largely
affects the economy in Zambia. A little thought was needed and the plight of
the poor and middle class was supposed to be protected, instead of being
bundled and punished together with the bigger mining corporations and the rich.
Storella never saw all this. The thought of
overloading the executive with unnecessary deputy ministers at the expense of
sparing the money to cushion the needs of the poor never crossed his mind. This
is because he hardly can put a face on the members of the households who today
cannot raise a K250.00 to put their son on a bus from Zambezi to attend college
in Lusaka. He cannot even know a family that has to get one meal a day because
they cannot afford to get two more bags of mealie meal as their income purchasing
power is overstretched by high food prices.
The American envoy knew Zambia would not be
his home forever. This is why he cared little or not at all about the
aspiration of a Zambian who honestly loves this country and wants to see it
properly governed beyond the disaster that Kenneth Kaunda and his bad politics
caused it to be. So Storella settled for the lesser value of peace and
stability to praise the political leadership in power taking after Kenneth
Kaunda’s old bad habits, instead of equal rights and justice as aspired by this
generation.
Zambia has been stable and peaceful for
donkey years. But what is there in stability and peace if it cannot progress
into advancing people’s liberties? The myopia of Storella failing to see how
Zambia is being badly governed today is not love for this country as the Zambia
Daily Mail of August 6, 2013 suggests in its editorial ‘Lessons from Mark Storella’.
The envoy was blind to the harassment and
arrests of journalists because they were not doing the noble duty for a country
that would be his future home or that which was to be shaped by a free press
for his children to inherit. His inheritance is in the USA. He failed to tell
the Patriotic Front and its police force that criticising a head of state is
not sedition, not even a journalist reading a copy of military tactics book a
crime in the face of a civilised government. This is why I will not apologise
calling Storella a consummate hypocrite.
He did not care how the last two years of
the government he has showered praises with has turned into a nightmare the
existence of our opposition political groups, rendering them almost irrelevant
to the political activity of the country. He did not even care to surmise as
dangerous the many actions that have reduced our 83 pages, 15 parts and 139
articles constitution to nothing less than a comic magazine under this
government. Our parliament and the judiciary are mere staircases to the
wish-throne-rule-them-your-way of President Sata.
All this tinkering of Zambia’s democratic
governance under the Patriotic Front did not unravel Storella from being a balloon
buoying an ill-fated PF bwato (boat) in the face of rising local and international
concern over the diminishing rule of law and basic tenets of democracy. This is
because the outgoing USA envoy thought we do not deserve progress and growth in
our democratic dispensation. He thinks what we have is enough and we never want
to get better. He failed to see beyond the limitations that the Patriotic Front
is imposing, callously so, on our democratic progress.
Such myopia cannot come from someone who
loves the country, as the Zambia Daily Mail tries eulogising the USA envoy.
Storella is a goat of not this kraal—Zambia,
so his tail was never going to be the best to brush where we rest.
NN
NN
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