FACT FILE:
DID you know that Justin Mweene, an ordinary Zambian, registered UPND as a party with the Registrar of Societies in 1998 and was its leader for two weeks before handing power to Anderson Mazoka?
For details, follow the excerpt below from
(Conversations with Memorable Personalities)*
Amos Malupenga:
You can continue…
Anderson Mazoka:
… I came to Lusaka as managing director and after serving Anglo for all these years, I went to my boss in 1998 and I said ‘I want to work for my people’.
Anglo said ‘no, why do you want to leave? Are you under pressure from your contemporaries?’ I said it was my own choice. They said ‘if you are under pressure, we are going to transfer you to another country’. I said there will be a conflict because I can’t work for Anglo and at the same time be in politics.
We agreed with my boss and they gave me my terminal benefits.
And you know the formation of UPND. We started meeting here [at his residence in Lusaka East] with some people. I had spent a lot of time advising MMD. I said ‘this is not what we fought for to get rid of Kaunda’. I said ‘we need to look after our country’.
I came to a point where MMD was developing thick skin, they didn’t want to listen to people. So I said the only way is for me to join in their ranks. I wanted to join MMD as a party official. But they blocked me when I attempted to stand as treasurer in Bauleni compound at a ward level. I appealed to them to re-run the election but they refused.
Finally, I sent them a letter that I am resigning from the party and [Michael] Sata was the first one to take the letter to the newspapers that he had accepted my resignation. In fact, they would have cornered me if at that point they had reinstated the election and I was elected at the branch level. They would have closed me there and use party rules to control me. But when they decided to accept my resignation, I said hallelujah! Then I met some of my colleagues – John Mulwila, David Matongo, the late Munansangu and Kelvin Ndila was there.
I said ‘we have to form a party’, so we formed a committee and that committee was to look for the name of the party and the symbol. They also looked for the slogan and we kept consulting. Then rumours started moving so we had to give a dummy name which you guys picked and said ‘we were going to register such and such a party’.
In the meantime, we got ordinary people like Justin Mweene to register UPND. They agreed that after 14 days, they would hand-over the party to me, which they did. We then launched the party at Mulungushi Conference Centre and we announced the names of people in the management committee. …
An excerpt from
(Conversations with Memorable Personalities)