SOCIALIST Party president Fred M’membe says there is no witchcraft needed to prove that people’s living conditions in the country are very poor.
On Wednesday when commissioning the Munali flyover in Lusaka, President Edgar Lungu said some people were deliberately not seeing developments in the country because their eyes saw things differently.
“People will tell you that the economy is not booming, yet activities which indicate that there’s money in the economy and people are living well are there for all to see. This is the contradiction of our political activity where we see white, you see black,” said President Lungu.
Reacting to the Head of State, Dr M’membe argued that monthly statistics are there from the Zambia Statistics Agency to show the true living conditions of our people.
“There’s no need for guesswork, witchcraft or voodoo. Things are not good for our people. It’s not a question of seeing black where there’s white; it is seeing black where there’s black and white where there’s white,” he said yesterday. “Is President Lungu seeing a mirage and mistaking it for a river? Are these bridges that are being built where there are no rivers confusing him – making him to see water where there’s bitumen? But we know that the ‘bent light from the sky’ is refracted as it passes from cooler air into hotter air and back up to your eye. Combining all of this together, refracted light from the sky is interpreted as straight, letting us see an image of the sky on the ground. This is why many mirages appear as blue water.”
Explaining President Lungu’s interpretation of the country’s economic situation, Dr M’membe said it is more about memory than colour.
“Why do some people see black while others see white before their eyes when they are about to pass out? Why does the colour that is seen differ from person to person? This is about memory not colour. You can only be sure that it is the memory people have created that differs, not the actual experience,” Dr M’membe added. “We know human brain does not record or play back a linear stream of events like a machine does. We don’t fully understand any of the processes of memory or recall. But we are pretty certain that a memory is in some way edited each time it is recalled.”
He said President Lungu might not appreciate the problems because he gets everything free.
Dr M’membe said under such comfort it is very easy for the Head of State to ignore people’s suffering.
“It’s not in dispute that the President is living a comfortable life – no problems about food, no education problems for his family, no water and electricity problems, no problems with medicines, he doesn’t have problems with rentals and transport. There’s no joblessness in his family,” said Dr M’membe. “But this is not the case with the great majority of our people. What he sees about himself and his family is not a reflection of the living conditions of all our people. Poverty is not reducing. Despair is growing. Hopelessness is on the rise.”