UPND’S SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS
All the bad press surrounding Zambia and the UPND government is self-inflicted. It’s born of a poor conceptualization of governance on the part of the UPND government.
A few months ago, a UPND senior official was on television and revealed that the party was involved in ‘special operations’.
He said he couldn’t unpack what those operations where because they were sensitive matters.
I knew immediately that that was the source of UPND’s problems. A political party that engages itself in activities beyond its traditional functions is bound, sooner or later, to mess itself and the country up if it carries them into government.
It’s not uncommon to hear UPND officials speaking in coded language.
There was the Mapatizya formula which turned out to be homegrown terrorism of some sort.
They talk of imingalato and ‘ukufyanta pamukoshi’. They snatch and abduct people.
When they are talking of how they win elections, they speak like there’s something mysterious about their strategies.
And yet electoral strategies are normal things their architects talk about in television interviews in other parts of the world.
This is not pre-1964 when independence movements would be involved in clandestine activities.
This is not the 70s and 80s when the liberation movements we hosted had armed wings such as Umkonto Wesizwe and their own intelligence wings.
We are in a different era defined by transparency, accountability and the rule of law. To behave otherwise is to drag the country decades back.
And when you draw a country back like UPND has done, you attract the ire of the global community – you stick out like a sore thumb or the odd one out.
This country had moved on regarding its democratic credentials but UPND has dragged it backwards. We are no different from a person who decides and insists on wearing an animal skin covering the essentials only and walking while holding a spear on Cairo Road in this time and age!
Obviously that would attract attention. And that’s exactly what UPND has done to this country.
Unless and until UPND sheds off the pre-independence tendencies, the politics of this country will continue to be ugly.
UPND may feel comfortable that Zambians are not reacting and that they are intimidated. No, they are not intimidated.
They are just bewildered at the fact that someone can behave so strangely in a country that is supposed to have moved on.
Anyway, if it be of any comfort to anyone reading this, individuals that like playing and toying around with a sword when they need not be doing so, oftentimes fall on their own sword and incur self-inflicted wounds.