the ruling patriotic front is cracking into pieces as the factions in the party violently attack each with pangas, exposing the sins of the leaders at the centre of the divisions in the party. but the party top leadership is in self denial. vice president guy scott chooses not to accept
the truth about individual and collective sins of violence in the ruling Party
By Nyalubinge Ngwende
The Vice President Guy Scott is in
denial. President Michael Sata continues fiddling while his political party is
ablaze with violence that defies logic.
When faced with the question in
parliament of the violence in the Patriotic Front, Zambia’s vice president
Scott wished he was on the other side of politics other than the ruling party.
Then he would have tried more to be truthful about the individual and
collective sins that caused cadres from the two factions that have emerged in
the ruling party to fight street battles with pangas, leading to the death of
at least one cadre and leaving several others maimed with severed hands and
deep head cuts. Unfortunately he belongs to the ruling
party that is so violently divided.
party that is so violently divided.
And instead of being remorseful about the
deep divisions in the ruling party, to which Scott himself has given classes of
A-Team and B-Team, he laboured with nonsensical excuses that the violence of PF
members against each other is not a new phenomenon. We say nonsensical because
he is not being honest to himself. He suggests that the previous ruling party
faced the equal measures of violence and those people who used to commit
atrocities on other party members in the MMD or maybe UNIP are now associating
themselves with the ruling party and brought with them their bad habits.
Home Affairs minister and chairman for
the PF disciplinary committee Edgar Lungu is also bluffing: saying the problems
the PF is going through are normal teething problems, with some people who are
not PF, wanting to wear the party regalia and foment trouble.
These statements are not true. They
present a terrible weakness of leadership failure to face the truth and boldly
and honestly settle glary political-in-house implosion.
Guy Scott knows that he has made false
observations about the divisions in the ruling party.
Not long ago when Chikwelete, one of
the party members who was at the centre of leadership controversy for Lusaka district
apologised for ‘insulting’ PF secretary general Wynter Kabimba, Scott came out
cheering that the confusions in the PF were over. Scott must have known that Chikwelete
was just a disciple in one of the two factions that have emerged due to
differences between Wynter Kabimba and Godfrey Bwalya Mwamba (GBM), two senior
members of the ruling party. Each group has sympathisers within the party’s
central committee and farther down the unruly youths of the party. No measure
has been taken to establish real reconciliation between these factions from the
top to the root—and the street skirmishes are evidence to this.
 |
| Vice President: Guy Scott |
We know that UNIP cadres fought over
who should take over the reins of the party after Kenneth Kaunda lost power to
Frederick Chiluba of the MMD in 1991.
But never at anytime did we witness cadres heavily armed with pangas
amputating each other on the streets. Scott should give us the pictures of UNIP
members hacking each other with pangas if we are to agree with his theory he is
using to defend the murderous violence that has engulfed the ruling Patriotic
Front.
We know the Movement for Multiparty
Democracy (MMD) was violent, but this was at the time of Michael Chilufya Sata as
the party’s secretary general. We saw youths being mobilised to block and beat
up senior members who wanted to challenge Frederick Chiluba as party President
at conventions. We also did not see pangas. We first saw pangas become popular
in political violence when Sata, as MMD national secretary, commandeered a park
of brutes in Chawama during parliamentary by-elections. This is after Sata had
caused senior members of the MMD leave and went to form the Forum for Democracy
and Development (FDD). FDD won that by-election, which remains blotted with
blood most political pundits blamed on Sata.
If under Levy Mwanawasa (MHSRIP) and
Rupiah Banda, the MMD saw almost negligible violence mostly with people
dragging each other in jackets or exchanging slaps, then who should we say was
an architect of the violence in the MMD similar to what we have seen happen
among PF members just three days ago? Water follows the stream; and the violent
cadres who were in UNIP, MMD and now PF must be doing the same. Which or who is
that stream?
Guy Scott must not forget that during
the run to 2011 elections campaigns, Wynter Kabimba had instructed PF cadres to
hit back on opposition members who would provoke them. What next, Zambians saw
in front of their televisions pictures of PF cadres sharpening pangas on the
tarmac close to the Freedom Statue?
Wynter is violent. And if Guy Scott tells us that this
violence is coming from previous regimes, he is putting his own boss, President
Sata, in the limelight of being guilty. Sata’s has saved in both previous
regimes under UNIP and MMD. Therefore if UNIP and MMD were violent, then Sata’s
political career is chequered with intimidation and violence.
Something is blinding Guy Scott and all
of the PF top leadership to this truth and want to find scapegoats to blame for
their own problems.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a better
description for the problem that has inflicted the Patriotic Front leadership
and its political party. “Rationalisation and incessant search for scapegoats
are the psychological cataracts that blind us [Patriotic Front] to our [its]
individual and collective sins.
President Sata has never known to reconcile
people! His management of problems end up in a break up. We saw it in MMD over
the third term debate, we saw it during the PF-UPND pact and now we may be
seeing the so called B-Team led by Godfrey Mwamba being ostracised from the
ruling party because the A-team to which Wynter belongs is untouchable.
NN
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