Africa-Press – Zambia. Electoral malpractices aside, if there was one person who single handedly salvaged the 2015 & 2016 elections for the PF it was the tall, handsome, well dressed, aging gracefully, humble to a fault man in the person of Edgar Chagwa Lungu. With his silent chalm and unassuming, almost apologetic mannerisms, ever walking softly with hands clasped together in front of him, Lungu left his supporters awestruck and constantly chanting Lungu ee Lungu ee, Lungu eo tule fwaya (it’s Lungu, it’s Lungu, it’s we want)!!
So where did his humble man from Chawama disappear to over the years following his ascendancy to power? As the 2021 elections drew closer, it was like the two leading contenders, Lungu and Hichilema, had swapped personalities. The aggressive and combative Hichilema became mellow and entreating while the soft and unassuming Lungu became loud, aggressive and threatening. Was Lungu really humble or it was just a posture?
As soon as he was declared winner of the 2015 election, Lungu set his sights on the hitherto influential Post Newspaper. He said of the controversial proprietor of that paper, Fred M’membe, ‘ale fwaya ukwa fwila’ (he is looking for an excuse to die) and ‘I will fall on him like a tonne of bricks’. And for sure, within a few months of Lungu winning the 2016 election, the Post Newspapers was closed and its assets sold in a quick auction with govt disobeying a Tax Tribunal (high court equivalent) order in the process. EL’s operation third term was in motion.
After being outshined by Hichilema and GBM at the 2017 Kuomboka ceremony, Lungu sent innuendos in the direction of Hichilema, ‘umwaiche bala mu bala nokumuma’ (a child is provoked and beaten for reacting to the provocation). In no time Hichilema’s homestead was raided by a combined team of police and PF cadres who tear gased the property the whole night, broke items in the house, beat up the Hichilema workers and eventually dragged Hichilema to the police station in the morning like a vanquished drug lord.
Over his presidency, the supposedly humble Mr Lungu would go on to say other things that left the nation shocked. Statements like ‘ubomba mwibala, alya mwibala’ (one who works in a field, eats from the same field – construed to encourage theft and corruption) and ‘mfwiti mfwiti’ (witch witch (hunt) – as he threw his own FIC under the bus and refused to defend it from PF surrogates attacking it for listing their dubious transactions in its reports), ‘ulya nga nikumbi nga alifwa’ (in another country that guy would be died in reference to Hichilema) and with only a few hours before the 12 August 2021 poll ‘I will holdover power to myself’.
Majority Zambians grew more and more uneasy as they noticed their president’s seemingly ever growing and insatiable appetite for opulence. His taste for the finest clothes aside, Lungu started agitating for a new grand statehouse to be built for him saying the existing one was old, dilapidated and in fact ‘a death trap’. When that vanity drive was defeated by public outcry, Lungu assuaged its lose by purchasing a Gulf stream G650. That story was embarrassingly broke by a Swiss newspaper which wondered how the President of a poor nation, surviving on donor funding, where people lived on less than a dollar, could buy one of the most expensive private jets in the world.
But as the curtain finally drew to a close over his presidency, Zambians again had a glimpse of the ECL that had once enchanted most of them those many years ago. Lungu appeared on national TV, humble and mellow, to read his concession speech. ‘All I wanted was to do the best for my country. I congratulate my brother His Excellency the President-elect Mr Hakainde Hichilema and wish him and the people of Zambia all the best’. Even though those around him were prepping him for a disputed election, the humble Mr Lungu took his final bow without as much as raising a finger. Where had this guy disappeared to over his presidency?, one is left to wonder.
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