Africa-Press – Zambia. Last week Friday on this column, I said nothing best illustrates the total contempt and disrespect the UPND and PF leaders have for the majority of struggling Zambians than the illusion they both have that Zambia has no choice but to choose between these two thoroughly selfish, greedy, rotten, corrupt, thieving, lying, hypocritical same kind of government and foreign money parasitic post-independence Zambian politicians.
I emphatically concluded that they are both wrong; absolutely wrong. As expected, I have been wholesomely insulted by UPND and Hakainde Hichilema praise singers, now joined by a good sprinkling of PF supporters! I sincerely thank them both, for letting me know their feelings. However, I still await their considered critical thoughts of my article’s contents; otherwise I will diagnose them as pitiful patients of cognitive dissonance in need of urgent psychiatric medical help, and, from me, nothing but great sympathies.
One response to my article pierced my heart with a hot iron of sorrow, at the great betrayal and disappointment HH and the UPND have turned out to be, to the almost three million voters and even more Zambians who expected the UPND not only to be fundamentally different from the PF, but to immediately actually lower the already too high cost of living and doing business, as they had promised.
“l shed tears when l see what is happening. l thought HH would turn things around but the opposite is happening. HH is so proud of the whites because they sponsored his campaign but it is the Zambians who are suffering. HH is a total……. We don’t need him in 2026 and PF should never bounce back. To defeat UPND in 2026 the small parties must form a coalition. Among the opposition who do you think can be in the driving seat, Fred M’membe or Hamududu?” read the civilised response.
In our current political set up and its state, government, economy and society, it is perfectly logical, once one discards and precludes both the UPND and the PF from winning the elections in 2026, to ask: “To defeat UPND in 2026 the small parties must form a coalition. Among the opposition, who should be in the driving seat, Fred M’membe or Hamududu?” It could just as well be any of the other owners and leaders of the political choirs (political parties) in the opposition, other than Fred and Hamududu. And this, in my opinion, is part of our problem, we Zambians.
To decide to fully and properly resolve all our major crises including hunger, malnutrition, poverty, unemployment and inequalities which afflict the majority of Zambians I am not sure the starting point is to defeat HH and the UPND using any combination of “opposition parties”, at the head of which must be the owner of a political party, a current opposition politician. I do think we need to think deeper than this first, understand the history of our politics which has brought us to this painful mess and determine how best to deal with the underlying class, systemic, structural and world causes which have consistently produced governments which have terrorised, defrauded and impoverished the majority of Zambians.
It seems to me even if you put an angel in State House today with the existing state and government institutions, current civil servants, work cultures, a timid population which goes to sleep even before the election results are announced, a national cultural, religious, social, economic and political climate pregnant with lies, corruption and stealing, and without first agreeing upon the state transformation, political, social and economic programmes and how implementation of the same would be monitored and enforced by the millions of ordinary Zambians, nothing much would change other than the angel becoming lucifer, very quickly, upon becoming President of Zambia!
If there is anything our 59 years of independence and seven presidents have taught us, it is that we need to get away from the illusion and misunderstanding of politicians as our “political saviours”. It is clear they have all failed us and we Zambians, the majority of us who are working class and poor rural peasants can only redeem ourselves if we actually employ politicians and political parties to carry out our programmes which then we must demand implementation. To make sure this is done, we the ordinary Zambians must have the political will and constitutional and legal means to supervise and monitor implementation and have the power to recall any politician we deem unfit to perform according to our expectations, at any time; even before the expiry of their term of office.
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