By: Anthony Bwalya – UPND Member
Mr. Hakainde Hichilema, is a man who has relentlessly been building our collective Zambian dream since 2006, and without any signs of giving up.
This is the kind of leadership Mwine – Lubemba is invoking; the kind of leadership that is resilient, focussed and uncompromisingly determined to serve the national interest.
It has taken me quite a bit of time to fully grasp the context and meaning of the recent remarks of the Mwine – Lubemba, Chitimukulu Henry Sosola.
First of it is important to both understand and appreciate that the Mwine – Lubemba, like most of our traditional leaders, is very intelligent and often tend to speak freely and liberally when he or indeed other traditional leaders do speak.
But then again, the Chitimukulu, was “in principle” addressing a national audience largely made up of politically poisoned, poorly educated Zambians, often incapable of decoding the subtlety of aggressive wisdom.
But let us be very clear: the fundamental message the Chitimukulu was sending across is that Zambia currently has no credible or sound political leadership necessary to deliver countrywide development for the benefit of all Zambians.
He specifically made reference to the drunken leadership of President Edgar Lungu, the same leadership that has destroyed this country, while being praised and applauded by the PF political establishment as the gold standard.
When the Chitimukulu makes reference to Chiefs selling land driving investors onto the edge, he knows full well who the principal architects of the mass plunder of land and other natural resources have been. For example, it was unheard of for chiefs to sell land before the coming of the PF in 2011.
But the Chiefs now have come to a realization, that the PF regime and its cadres have no regard for either state or traditional protocol on the management of land and other natural resources. These individuals cannot be trusted to manage our precious natural resources, including land, for the benefit of all of us.
This is why, in part, chiefs are now demanding more and better control of all natural resources in their chiefdoms as a way of fending off the unhindered greed of PF clowns.
So, instead of waiting for PF cadres to pounce on the land and sell it for profit, the chiefs would rather do it themselves – contraversial but logical.
The Chitimukulu bemoans the lack of tangible development in Bembaland and that the people of his chiefdom are not standing up for themselves. Well, there is hardly any development anywhere across the country and the people of Zambia are generally failing to stand up for themselves.
For example, how do we allow a government to steal $4 million of Social Cash Transfer funds and yet we have close to 12 million people living in abject poverty, not only in Bembaland, but throughout the entire country? How do we allow a government to steal over $30 million in the infamous Fire Tender scam when we cannot afford to put ORS in our clinics? How do we allow a health Minister to spend $11 million on Ambulances that never arrived when the whole country only has 18 ventilators? How do we allow a government to fail to account for over $1.5 billion of Mukula revenue when we cannot pay our pensioners?
Clearly, this is NOT a Bemba specific problem. We are a passive generation that has failed to stand-up for ourselves in the face of a non performing, self-service, corrupt and manipulative PF regime.
Just now, the PF are silencing the media and have closed Prime TV. I bet you, even the Chitimukulu would have loved Prime TV to cover the sufferings of his people and bring such to light, but that has been taken away from him and his subjects and yet his subjects are silent. But not just the subjects of the Mwine – Lubemba, we all are largely silent. Why?!!!
The culture of poor workmanship the Chitimukulu refers to in his chiefdom spans the whole country. We have a government that is never interested in the quality of works done around public projects. How many projects built under the PF regime, at such colossal costs, have since broken down to pieces and in need of rebuilding? Plenty.
This is what happens when corruption becomes the standard order of government business.
Zambia can be saved. But it is not only the Bemba who must stand-up and demand better, we all must rise to the occasion and say we deserve far much better in the way of public leadership, away from the political nonsense we have been subjected under the PF regime.