NO MORE FRUGAL LEADERSHIP: MAY THE BEST TAKEOVER AND RULE

By Nyalubinge Ngwende
AS we have entered 2014, ZAMBIA does not deserve FRUGAL KIND of LEADERSHIP. At this time and era when NATIONS are making PROGRESS with GREAT IDEAS of CREATING NATIONAL WEALTH and their LEADERS are admired for taking 21st Century DECISIONS and INSPIRING their citizens to be ENGINEERS who forge TOOLS for production, ZAMBIA cannot afford to REMAIN BEHIND.

As we wake up this 2014, may we look to the GREATEST HOPE that our FAITH will not FAIL US to see DIVINE INTERVENTION for the WRONGS that those who were hard to hear made in 2011 when on that September 20th day went to vote for the PATRIOTIC FRONT.

May the SPIRIT of this GREAT NATION ARISE and SPREAD its STRONG WINGS and SOAR like an EAGLE!

SOLUTIONS to young people's problems of UNEMPLOYMENT must not be stage managed on television WITHOUT any SUSTAINABLE POLICY DIRECTION for JOB CREATION. CASUAL WORK must not be the PRIDE of ZAMBIA; the country needs CLEAR TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRAMS that have a MULTIPLIER EFFECT to give hope to every USEFUL YOUNG PERSON to see OPPORTUNITIES that are CLEAR and NOT GUESSES. WASTING OF RESOURCES on youth programs that GIVE LESS RESULTS must be ABANDONED forthwith. If Constituency Development Fund has not turned FORTUNES for young people to be PRODUCERS, may it be REDIRECTED to buy TRANSFER of KNOWLEDGE and SKILLS from China, India, Japan and Malaysia. We cannot have polytechnic institutions that NEVER INVENT or produce HUMAN RESOURCE able to forge not even DECORS for a MODERN BUILDING.

WE need NEW THINKING in ENERGY PROGRAMS that do not just take away space and change the RESOURCE BASE on which our RURAL ILK depend for their lives without giving them the PRIDE of OWNERSHIP. This country is a SHAME of its ENERGY DEVELOPMENT, power lines pass over several villages and that GRANDMOTHER will pass on not KNOWING ALTERNATIVE cooking energy, when all around her there are abundant means to produce the COMMODITY cheaply and put it in her hands.

NEW ENERGY PROJECTS must give our YOUNG PEOPLE hope like that of a TONGA boy in SOUTHERN PROVINCE who wakes up every morning DREAMING to be an animal husbandry expert or VET DOCTOR because he grows up UNDERSTANDING COWS and BULLS so WELL; It must EXUDE HOPE like that found in a NGONI boy that wakes up to be an ENTREPRENEUR in agriculture commodities like COTTON and GROUNDNUTS, because he grows up knowing the DYNAMICS of growing these CROPS.  

OUR ENERGY programs must INSPIRE young people to become part of the BREAKTHROUGHS—finding and engineering new sources from whatever material that exist around their BACKYARD like the BILL GATES of this WORLD that are putting everything that they turn their eyes into IMPROVING the COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY. Our graduates in ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING must be scouring our peripheral areas for OPPORTUNITIES to setup GREEN ENERGY projects to supply tourism sites, fisheries ice plants and wild fruit beverage processing plants. If it means stealing or buying technology so that our GRADUATES can have it, may ZAMBIA go into deeper DEBT than at this time when BORROWING is for paying back POLITICAL FRIENDS for favours they rendered during ELECTIONS!

This NATION needs ENTREPRENEUR opportunities that give a LUSAKA boy the courage to BECOME the RICHARD BRANSON—owner of the Virgin Group of Companies. If it means government finding a way to GROW such youths, then we need a MINISTER of YOUTH who does not just talk SPORTS or become a SANTA CLAUS of distributing money. We NEED to put MONEY in projects that are GROUND BREAKING and become MODELS of WEALTH and JOB CREATION.

The INSPIRATION for a GREEN REVOLUTION is already there on our NATION FLAG. MAY we invoke the spirit of our GREEN BACKGROUND of our FLAG to INSPIRE us doing something GREEN that will make this country PROUD.

BUT it must be realised that the PATRIOTIC FRONT lacks what it takes to do this. Already it has showed that the only way to BUILD our country is by running around to borrow. It is far apart from DIALOGUE so that it can LISTEN to citizens with the HEART FOR THE PEOPLE and HEARKEN PASSIONATELY and work together with the AFFECTED to find solutions to PREDICAMENTS. How would one mean if the IMPASSE with the NURSES has ended up in DISASTER? This was all the MISTAKE of taking WRONG DECISIONS. If government leaders create problems in an INSTITUTION that did not have problems and FAIL to RESOLVE those PROBLEMS, it becomes very HARD to see how they would identify INHERENT problems that have kept OPPORTUNITIES from its people.

There is NO COURAGE that CAN SURPASS that of THE HEART that BEATS for the GOOD LIFE of the PEOPLE

May the SPIRIT of this GREAT NATION ARISE and SPREAD its STRONG WINGS and SOAR like an EAGLE AGAIN!

All hope is not lost for new constitution in Zambia, but...

With signs so far, the Zambian government has tricks to stop the content of the draft constitution that unseats their interests from being included. However, the Technical Committee seems to know this so well and its members are not ready to be duped by those tricks

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

All hope is not lost for Zambia to finally have a constitution that reflects the desires of the people after 49 years of Independence, but threats abound as the technical committee constituted to write the document fights back government tricks to hijack the process and obliterate what for once could be Zambia’s best constitution.

Not long ago, Justice Minister Wynter Kabimba instructed the TC (Technical Committee) writing the constitution to print and sign 10 copies of the constitution for handing over to President Michael Sata.

The spokesperson of the committee Enerst Mwansa later issued a statement that the TC had refused to heed the instruction because it would be going against the terms of reference given to the committee. Mwansa asked the Justice Minister to arrange a meeting between the TC members and the appointing authority. 

One of the terms of reference President Sata gave the TC is that it is supposed to release the final draft of the constitution simultaneously to him and the general public.

However, Kabimba told the nation that Sata had directed that the committee signs and releases 10 copies of the document for purposes of handover.

GBM resignation: retribution for Sata’s ingratitude

The resignation of Zambia’s Defence Minister Geoffrey Mwamba from his position should not astonish anyone and should not be taken as a ‘choice of family over politics’ as he has portrayed it. It shows a feat of courage, but it is more to do with retribution for President Sata’s ingratitude to disrespect him for Justice Minister Wynter Kabimba and Post Newspaper Owner Fred M’membe 

President Michael Sata and Former Defence Minister Geoffrey Mwamba

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

According to Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba, his resignation as Zambia’s defence minister was a choice of family over political allegiance after a telephone altercation with President Michael Sata. This is after the defence minister visited his grandfather Paramount Chief-elect Chitimukulu, Henry Sosala, whom Sata does not want to ascend to the throne.

However, it appears completely a calculated retribution against Sata by GBM, as the big man is fondly known among political colleagues and those in the streets who revere him for his business acumen.

His resignation should not astonish us, and should not even be seen as a complete action of ‘blood is thicker than water’ stance. 

There is more to it than meets the eye emanating from deteriorating relationship between the former defence minister GBM and his counter party at the Ministry of Justice Wynter Kabimba, who seems to be President Sata’s henchman. 

GBM was the last person expected to ditch a top job in the Patriotic Front government barely two years in office. The opulent politician bankrolled President Sata’s 2011 election campaign including chartering a plane and rescuing the PF leader from being arrested for money laundering when he told  authorities that the money with a questionable source found in Sata’s Finance Bank account was in fact a gift from him. 

For some time the public has seen GBM as a close confidant to Sata. He has been linked to a number of contracts that have overlooked tender procedures, including a tender to transport controversial hundreds thousands of litres of government fuel to Malawi to help that country mourn its President Bingu Wamutharika who died of a cardiac problem. Apparently Wamutharika had hounded Sata out of Malawi, declaring him a persona-non-grata, when he went to meet his Taiwanese financiers from that country. The fuel donation for your enemy ‘s funeral could only be a cruel joke from President Sata, maybe mockingly saying ‘rest in peace to Bingu and welcome Joyce Banda’. Whatever, it still provided an opportunity to repay GBM. When people raised concern over the granting of GBM a contract to transport fuel without any tender procedures, State House insiders said Sata’s retort was: “let GBM recover his money”.

That is the kind of relationship Sata enjoyed with GBM. 

EFF Leader Julius Malema is a Divisive Demagogue

Although some people in Zambia admire South Africa Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, the outspoken young politician is a divisive demagogue who does not practice what he preaches. He cannot speak for poor South Africans because his wealth seems to be a loot off government contracts

Malema is a dangerous Demagogue (source telegraph)

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

Malema is a tax evader. When he talks of economic liberation, he does not speak for the poor but for himself and his cohort of the Economic Freedom Fighters.

In February this year his household goods went under the auction hammer in an attempt by the sheriff office to recover R16 million in tax debt he failed to remit to Sars (South Africa Revenue Services). This is after a report by audit firm PwC (Price Water House Coopers) revealed that the former ANC Youth League leader spent R291 000 on clothes at an Italian boutique store and more than R31 000 on Louis Vuitton designer clothes.

Apart from under declaring taxes to the South Africa tax authorities, Malema is highly believed to have made his fortune through corrupt activities involving Limpopo government contracts.

Malema  is powerful and influential, but his political objectives are misplaced; mostly driven by the selfish of improverished upbringing which has not yet matured to understand that poverty cannot be blamed on those who work to build their businesses.

Julius Malema is divisive figure and wants to emerge as a Madiba for South Africa’s economic emancipation. What he is to South Africa is not the asset Mandela was, has been and will remain to be in posterity, but a true replica of Adolf Hitler to German. Robert Mugabe in the neighbouring Zimbabwe could even be dwarfed by the damage Malema might wreck in Subsaharan Africa’s most developed country.

Fancying Opening Mansa Batteries: An Economic Myopia

Unless Spark Batteries evolves to the new technology, it may just be another political nostalgia that turns out a failed venture, like Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia which will soon be on rocks because it survives on government grant to produce and the customer who bought the fertiliser is the same government

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

Zambia once produced dry cells at Mansa Batteries

When Mansa Batteries was closed, Luapula province in Northeast Zambia was left without any manufacturing industry. A lot of jobs were lost while the country lost its only dry cell making company.

Lately there has been some fancy about reopening the battery-making plant. The fancy is so high on the minds of the young people, who want employment in the Luapula province, and on the minds of politicians, who seek to garner political mileage out of the venture that gave Mansa a sparkle of economic development. The company built beautiful houses and accommodate its workers and gave the town a two storey building guest house where the affluent spent their evenings dinning and winning.

  

Vice president Guy Scott has announced plans by government to resuscitate Mansa Batteries.

While on a campaign trail in the just ended Mansa Central parliamentary by-election, Dr Scott said government envied that state owned companies like Mansa Batteries were brought to life like in it has done in the case of Nitrogen Chemicals.

Dr Scott told Mansa residents that government is convinced that there is still sufficient Manganese in Luapula Province to resuscitate Mansa Batteries.

Dr Scott believes by bringing to life Mansa Batteries, government will be fulfilling its promise of reducing unemployment levels in the province and the country as whole. “The PF government will now cut down on making rhetorical speeches about what it is able to do to concentrate on implementing developmental projects it has planned in fulfilling the promises it made to the people in the country.”

Sata Must Not Continue A Constitution Curse Zambia Has Suffered

When we say Zambia needs a good constitution with adjusted powers of leadership, the recent case of 160 nurses who were dismissed by a hubristic health minister is the reason why. In a country where the constitution serves the interests of its citizens and not protecting the selfishness of leadership, differences like protests over entitlements of working citizens are adjusted by legislative and judiciary establishments. In the end it was supposed to be the courts or parliament deciding over the fate of nurses and not brute force of ministers—Dr Joseph Kasonde and his Labour counterpart Fackson Shamenda

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

The political inheritance of this country remains a curse that makes the yet so near  people driven constitution continue to seem so far and unattainable from one political administration to another. 

 Through out its election campaigns in the opposition the Patriotic Front promised the Zambian people a good constitution. In fact, it gained more sympath from the electorates when it condemned the colossal sums of money that the Movement for Multi-party Democracy  was spending through the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) to amend the country’s 1996 constitution. 

The Patriotic Front leader Michael Sata also refused his members of parliament from participating in the NCC, while those who went ahead to defy the part position in the name of fulfilling their parlimentary duty were ostracised from the opposition party and tagged as rebel MPs who had joined the ruling MMD in the plunder of national resources while Zambians continued to wallow in poverty. 

At one public meeting, Sata even witnessed one of his confidants, Samuel Mukupa, tear a copy of NCC draft constitution, portraying it as a useless document that did not represent the aspirations of the people. Sata promised the country a new constitution adopted through a constituency should he be voted into office. The stance of Sata and his party attracted the sympathy and support of religious institutions like the Catholic Church, the civil society and workers among teachers and nurses.

Political, Economical Orderliness Eludes President Sata

Euphoria at Sata's inauguration on September 25, 2011

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

The euphoria of winning the September 20 elections two years ago by the Patriotic Front seems to be quickly evaporating. The abilities to smoothly manage Zambia politically and economically by ensuring these are done in an orderly manner and ensure respect among the people seem to be eluding President Michael Sata and his ruling Patriotic Front party.

These are difficult facts to realise by the ruling inner-circle and accept as truth, but a few critical moments can reveal this. 

President Sata said a lot about the constitution, promising to deliver it in 90 Days, but done so little thus far. 

Already the technical committee drafting the constitution has differed with the Justice Minister Wynter Kabimba over the document. Kabimba wants the committee to sign and release ten copies of the constitution to President Sata, a request that the committee members have refused demanding that the government should first give them a road map on how the constitution shall be distributed and adopted. I do not find any piece of order in all this.

Only The Truth Shall Set the Patriotic Front Free

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.

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

But he, Scott, chose to overlook this truth. There is also no truth in his statement that the violence being experienced in PF is a spill over phenomena inherited from previous ruling political parties—UNIP (United Independence Party) and MMD (Movement for Multiparty Democracy).

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

Emmanuel Mwamba, Scapegoat for Sata’s Indecisions

Battles in the ruling party have reached irreconcilable extent.  Every day the battles will be fought in the national press and every passing day cadres from the A-TEAM and B-TEAM will kick and panga hell out of each other. The imbroglio puts Sata’s chaotic leadership of divide and rule into the limelight.

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

There is a saying ‘do not trust a politician and ask him for a favour, he will want to control you forever’. It is true because those who win the trust of politicians also lose their liberty and get shackled. But those who want to keep their liberty by choosing to do what is right never stick so long around the circles of politicians, especially the authoritarian type—they get kicked out from appointments. 

As someone who has been around politicians for some time, this, Emmanuel Mwamba would have known about President Michael Sata. Mwamba was fired from the position of permanent secretary at cabinet office in a most chaotic way, just hours after he was transferred from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

The day he was transferred from Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Emmanuel Mwamba suffered the anger and rebuke of authority that reigns so powerful in the mouths of President Sata’s type than the jovial jester which comes with the moments of swearing in of appointees.  

Sata castigated Mwamba, like a master chides a garden boy, during a recent pre-cabinet meeting. “Do not use his ministry to fight his political battles. Go outside, stand on a platform and we can meet you on the ground,” he told Mwamba.

He also castigated Mwamba for ‘issuing’ national wide licenses to QFM and Phoenix the two privately owned radio broadcasters.

Looked from the deeper eye, in both accusations, Mwamba is just a victim of a political party and government that believes less and less in itself. He is a scapegoat of a leadership that does want to accept its shortcomings and chaos, but seek to blame others.

Trying to blame Mwamba or rebuke him over his chaotic sacking from government by President Sata will not help to end the chaos that continue to engulf the Patriotic Front. The chaos is due to Sata’s own mediocre leadership. It will not take away the failures of leadership in the ruling Patriotic Front, not even end the primitive bloodletting between cadres belonging to the Wynter Kabimba camp and the Godfrey Mwamba camp. 

The accusation that Mwamba was using the Ministry of Information to fight personal political battles emanates from the factions that have emerged among the Patriotic Front top leadership over the endorsement of President Sata as sole party candidate for 2016 national elections.

Those who were advancing President Sata’s endorsement include Defence minister Godfrey Mwamba, Community Development, Mother and Child Health deputy minister Jean Kapata, Willie Nsanda and Samuel Mukupa—all senior members of the ruling party.

This group has been enjoying public media coverage of their attacks on Wynter Kabimba, who has been against the endorsement, which Sata has also agreed is not necessary.

Wynter Kabimba, on the other hand, enjoys the positive coverage of The Post Newspaper and the paper’s editorials all point at sympathising with him even in the midst of making terrible outbursts, accusing those opposed to him as being tribal and corrupt elements.

The Patriotic Party is seriously divided that with or without Mwamba at the information ministry. 

In the midst of all this news paper owners remain beneficiaries to make money from sales of headlines. Therefore if the private owned newspaper chooses to prop Wynter Kabimba, the other ruling party officials look to the public newspapers. The public media knows that it cannot make money by going with The Post newspaper’s slanting of the news towards Kabimba’s favour. It also knows that a balance of views is needed in the whole imbroglio. Like this they have a share of the readers who want to read what The Post newspaper down plays.

 

Instead of accusing Mwamba of allowing this, President was supposed to tell the two groups never to give any information concerning the other to the newspapers, whether private or public. Like that the two groups were going to stop fighting each other and bringing the ruling party’s image in disrepute as the most unruly political organisation in the country.

Emmanuel Mwamba

Sata must come to know that what is happening now in the ruling party is the camps emerging and wrestling for favours from his office and for power about who is supposed to be close to him as president for the possible takeover.

Sata has shown greater inclination to Wynter Kabimba in all the infighting taking place in the Patriotic Front, but has come short of telling off Godfrey Mwamba that he is not his favourite. Wynter might have worked hard with the President to mobilise support for the 2008 and 2011 national elections, but Godfrey Mwamba bankrolled the Patriotic Front.

Some political pundits believe that this gives Sata a nightmare to openly tell Godfrey Mwamba that he is not his next heir. So to scare off Godfrey Mwamba and his likes, Sata cut the neck of Emmanuel Mwamba and spilled the blood in front of everyone, instilling fear that should they continue getting to Kabimba they will be the next.

Wynter openly called those who want him out of the ruling party as a tribal and corrupt clique. He has been asked on several occasions to apologise, but arrogantly repeated the claims indicating that he has evidence.

Unfortunately Sata has failed to castigate Wynter Kabimba for his utterances, a sign that confirms Sata’s divide and rule leadership style.   

Making the issuance of the national licenses to private radio operators, Phoenix and QFM, as a reason to fire Emmanuel Mwamba is self indictment against the Patriotic Front as a government that little believes in itself.

“The private radio stations are used by opposition political parties...why didn’t you ask the previous governments why they did not issue national wide licenses to private radio stations other than those operated by Christian institutions,” Sata was quoted chiding Mwamba.

A government that believes and has confidence that it is on the right course and doing what the electorates aspire for cannot fear the voice of opposition being heard with the same coverage and frequency those in government use to get to the masses.

Sata’s move to ask for the revocation of the national wide licenses to Phoenix and QFM shows that his government is not strong on the fundamentals of policy delivery and fears that “if small media start telling the people where government policies are wrong, the people will become more curious and arrogant that they will never be keen to vote for the Patriotic Front in 2016”. 

But the worst that Zambian people will not tolerate is a violent political party that has cadres who can mercilessly spill each other’s blood over matters that were supposed to be democratically sorted out.

NN

List of People Killed in Politics

According to the Human Rights Watch report vol. 8. No 4 (A) of 1996 under sub head ‘Deaths in Disputed Circumstances’, by 1996 Zambia had experienced killings of political opponents blamed on the government agents. This largely showed failure for the government to the individual’s right to life set forth in article 6(1) of the ICCPR: “Every human has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrary deprived of this life.”

 

Human Rights Watch/Africa believes the deaths of opposition members   were commissioned

1.      Baldwin Nkumbula  died on August 27, 1995. Patrick Mubanga Kafuti, who was in the car at the time of the accident said Nkumbula was killed by State House agents. No inquest was carried in the killing

2.    Clement Busa Bulanko, a National Party candidate in Luapula constituency for 1996 November elections, was murdered in July 1996. No inquiry was instituted in the killing.

3.    Rex Mushamushi, a National Party provincial treasurer, was shot dead by unknown assailants in suspicious circumstances on August 31, 1996. No inquiry was undertaken

4.      Harry Kamima, a former director general of intelligence died in early 1995 of unknown causes. He was one of UNIP Stewarts and his opposition political party colleagues suspect government agents killed him.

 

*We may have among ourselves people who have killed for political reasons and all other motives.  They are guilty and their conscience is troubling them. To find comfort they are trying to please the family members of those they might have commissioned assassins to kill.

Good cannot come to bad. If our country has been infected with dishonesty, hatred and selfishness of killing others just to secure a political tenure in office.

If all these injustices exist in a nation, there are no ways we will get a good democracy, a good government and development that is desired. This is because a sense of insecurity for those opposed to government cannot allow them to raise their voices. The hurt of not allowing others with a different view from ours to speak to the nation through formal media carries almost the same hurt that can lead one politician to kill those who hold sensitive information about them.

This is why the people of this country must demand total independence of investigative wings of the State and all suspicious looking deaths of every citizen must never be a closed case and until a proper inquest provides answers to all the questions that the public may have on their mind.

 Real killers must be exposed and brought to justice if the right to life of their victims is to be seen to be a concern of the State to protect.

*Brutal Journal comments