By zambianobserver
Africa-Press – Zambia. Zambia’s Ambassador to the United States of America Chibamba Kanyama was over the weekend embroiled in a dispute over tribalism with prominent historian Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa. Below is their full exchange on X (formerly Twitter):
DR. SISHUWA: Hakainde Hichilema may well be the first and last Tonga-speaking President of Zambia we will see in our lifetime because he has taught the other groups a lesson in proper ethnic entrenchment and exclusion.
AMBASSADOR KANYAMA: The election of a president in Zambia is not based on regional or tribal quotas. There is no system in which one ethnic group “takes its turn,” nor is there any mechanism by which an entire tribe is barred from the presidency for a century simply because one individual is judged to have failed to meet the benchmark.
This kind of thinking reminds me of a man who once insisted that his daughter would be first and the last in the family to marry a man from tribe X because of alleged mistreatment. Yet by 2022, all three of his daughters were married to men from tribe X. The point is simple: your personal choices cannot — and should not — become other people’s choices.
DR SISHUWA: Hello Chibamba Kanyama. I hope you are well and enjoying the luxuries of diplomatic service in the United States, away from the 21 consecutive hours of daily load shedding and other burdens that the administration of your boss has inflicted on our fellow citizens back home.
To your post: You are missing the point I am making and responding to an argument I did not make. For the sake of clarity, let me reiterate the issue I raised: The rampant tribalism that your boss is promoting in government will make it difficult for other ethnic groups to vote for a Tonga in future. This is because the reality of electoral politics is that voters formulate assumptions about other groups based on the behaviour or conduct of individuals they see as representatives of those groups.
It is akin to how we blacks are seen by other races based on the behaviour or conduct of those who belong to our group. If Barack Obama, who like your boss was the first person from his ethnic group to become president of the multi-ethnic nation, had packed his administration with African Americans, he would have severely undermined the future ambitions of blacks from other groups who voted for him on the premise that he would not entrench his group when elected.
In relation to Zambia, I would like to believe that many people, including the Bembas and Easterners whom your boss now think they hate him when they hold him to account, voted for him on the premise that he would be a national president above ethnic politics when elected. Unfortunately, and unlike Obama, your boss has proved them wrong, as he is entrenching his group and largely excluding others, mainly Bembas and Easterners.
If you do not see this pattern, it may be because you belong to the group that is not affected. I struggled to get some Bembas and Easterners to see the discrimination and exclusion of Tongas from certain positions under Lungu because they, perhaps like you, were not affected. For some, it was because they, perhaps like you, had food in their mouth. For others, it was because they, perhaps like you, were loyal to their ethnic group rather than to Zambia. I do not know for certain.
What I know and know to be true is that when it comes to electoral politics, the ethnic power play in Zambia will always favour the larger demographic of the north-east coalition than the south-west-northwestern alliance. This stark reality explains why your boss struggled for a very long time to win the presidency. For far too long, his support base predominantly consisted of the same groups: Tongas in Southern Province, Lozi speakers in Western Province, the groups in Northwestern Province and Central Province. But the support of these groups proved to be insufficient to win him the presidency. It was only after the Bembas, Easterners, and the urbanites in Lusaka and the Copperbelt came to the party that he finally crossed the line.
Today, when Bembas and Easterners criticise the person they voted for, they are told that they hate him. Today, certain positions in the civil service appear to be out of reach for Bembas and Easterners. Today, you and I, as people who hail from the region where your boss comes from, can insult Bembas and Easterners as we wish and get away with it. Let a Bemba or Easterner insult a Tonga and see what will happen to them. When Catholic Bishops criticised Bill 10 under Lungu, your boss failed to see they were Bembas or Easterners and praised them as principled people who love Zambia. When Catholic Bishops crictise Bill 7 under your boss, your boss sees them as Bembas or Easterners and as people who hate him because of where he was born. Are you seeing the tribalism and sheer hypocrisy of your boss, Chibamba?
I have long cherished the ideal of an inclusive, united, and fair Zambia in which no citizen feels shut out or excluded from any public opportunities on account of their ethnic identity or region of origin. This explains why I continue to criticise the lack of adequate ethnic-regional diversity in your boss’s public appointments. Take for instance the top leadership positions of Zambia’s five security services – Zambia Police Service, Zambia Security Intelligence Services, Zambia Army, Zambia Air Force, and Zambia National Service. Under Lungu, four of these positions were occupied by individuals from Lungu’s Eastern province or from one of the three Bemba-speaking provinces that supported the PF. Zambians from Southern, Central, Western and Northwestern – who voted for the opposition – were marginalised.
Your boss promised to do things differently if elected but his record on this score is even worse than that of Lungu. The Inspector General of Police, the Director General of the Zambia Security Intelligence Services, the commander of Zambia Army, the commander of Zambia Air Force, and the commander of Zambia National Service are individuals who hail from ethnic groups that have typically formed the core of your boss’s support base: those in Southern, Central, Western and Northwestern provinces. Bembas and Zambians from Eastern Province continue to be grossly underrepresented in the top leadership positions of the five security services.
There has been a near complete inversion whereby yesterday’s victors have become today’s victims and vice versa. Among other things, this adds to the risk of a vicious cycle whereby each new leader from the outside group continues this trend and makes it more likely that the next election will be driven by ethnic rather than policy considerations. Are we together, Chibamba? Are you seeing the point I was making about the unintended consequences of ethnic entrenchment and exclusion?
The best way of securing the future presidential ambitions of individuals from the south-west-northwestern alliance is for elected presidents who hail from there to provide effective leadership that can inspire voters in the north-east alliance to abandon regional loyalties, as they did in 2021, in favour of better leadership. Unfortunately, unlike Levy Mwanawasa, your boss has been a terrible disappointment, so far. The so-called economic achievements are mirages; Lobito is merely a paper construct; there is zero contract credibility for FDI; the economy is a shambles; corruption in his administration appears to be policy; democracy is essentially nonexistent, and the man is, as I said, entrenching his Tonga group and excluding the others.
Your boss has messed up big time. The best thing about electing him president was that we are no longer distracted by his threat or potential to be better than those who came before him and we can now start looking for suitable, if better, alternatives. If your boss did not become President of Zambia, we would have lived with some degree of guilty for not giving him the chance to govern.
We could have also succumbed to certain narratives that suggest that some regions of Zambia can provide better leaders than others. To some extent, it is not regrettable that the man got the opportunity to lead. Now we know that in order to develop, Zambia does not need a given region or an individual from a particular ethnic group in State House. The country simply needs competent men and women who are patriots, have a feasible plan, and are committed to restoring the nation’s dignity, where they come from notwithstanding.
In a certain weird and perverted sense, it is good that Zambians gave your boss a chance to reveal who he truly is. The Chewa-speaking people of Zambia have a saying that “The best way of proving the potency of a man who claims that he is able to achieve an erection is for the woman to undress for him.” In August 2021, Zambians undressed for Hichilema after a decade-and-half of claiming that he is capable of taking them to greater heights!
AMBASSADOR KANYAMA: ‘The country simply needs competent men and women who are patriots, have a feasible plan, and are committed to restoring the nation’s dignity, where they come from notwithstanding.’ You have stated it well Sishuwa. Apparently this is the criteria people use to make choices. That’s what you should have stated. Zambians are far more discerning and intelligent than just focusing on one item of your concern.
DR SISHUWA: What I wanted to state, which is precisely what I stated, is that your boss is a tribalist and that his tribalism will have unintended consequences. I understand your wilful failure to see this point but there is a reason why the four ambassadors of Zambia in the Americas are all from one region: Kennedy Shepande (Ottawa); yourself Chibamba Kanyama (Washington DC); Chola Milambo(New York); and Sitali Alibuzwi (Brasilia).
Like many Zambians, I woke up very early on 12 August 2021 to go and vote for your boss, but I find his tribalism and ethnic politics extremely disgusting. I thought he had matured enough after many years in opposition to be a national leader. Sadly, your boss has proved to be a sectarian leader, and this, as I said, has unintended consequences.
The Bembas say “umusuku ubi utusha impanga”, meaning a bad fruit tree brings dishonor to the rest of the forest. Your boss himself, when rejecting Bill 10 and the views of those who said it had a few good clauses, taught us that when you are consuming or eating groundnuts and you chew a rotten one, you spit out everything! That is the human reaction: we hardly take the time to separate the tree from the forest, the rotten nut from the healthy ones.
Please tell your boss to stop the tribalism he is practising. In addition to the need to promote diversity and build social inclusion because it is the correct thing to do, my fear is that his divisive actions may inspire an extreme scenario where it becomes a fight between the Zambezi region and the rest. This is dangerous, especially when you throw in the divisions he is creating in the security services.
To be clear, we have slowly been walking the path. For far too long, we have lacked national leaders who understand our complex history, the fragility of our peace and the importance of building a cohesive society. To a large degree, Michael Sata set us on this path. Lungu accelerated the pace. Your boss may be the one who finally sets ablaze the heap of inflammable material that has long accumulated. I see him with a match stick in his hands, moving towards the heap. I am trying to stop him for our collective good and I ask you to join me.
Source: The Zambian Observer
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