3RD LIBERATION Movement leader Enock Tonga has charged that President Edgar Lungu’s administration should not be expected to investigate fully the deaths of State prosecutor Nsama Nsama and UPND member Joseph Kaunda.
The duo was shot dead by Zambia Police officers on December 23, the day when UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema was appearing at force headquarters for questioning.
On Tuesday evening, President Lungu confirmed receiving a preliminary report on the shootings and immediately made changes in the Zambia Police Service by terminating the contract of deputy inspector general in charge of operations, Bonny Kapeso.
The President also did not renew contracts for deputy inspector general in charge of administration Eugene Sibote, and Lusaka Province police commissioner Nelson Phiri.
President Lungu also gave Inspector General of Police Kakoma Kanganja six months in which to investigate the matter thoroughly and use the same period to restore public confidence in the police service.
Reacting to the President’s decision, Tonga described it as an “admission of failure by a system to investigate itself”.
“The government of President Edgar Chagwa Lungu under which the Zambian Police Service falls, has never investigated and will never investigate to the satisfaction of the people of Zambia, anything. Never!” he said in a statement.
“The killing of those two Zambian citizens, will soon be history and forgotten like many other politically motivated deaths. In the hearts of his heart, President Edgar Chagwa Lungu is saying, ‘abena Zambia balalaba bwangu (Zambians easily forget)’.”
Tonga said expecting police under President Lungu to be professional is an impossibility.
He said with his latest reaction, President Lungu was just acting for the public.
“Once again I say, waiting and believing that the Zambia Police Service in the hands of President Edgar Chagwa Lungu will comprehensively, to the satisfaction of the people, investigate the killing of Nsama Nsama and Joseph Kaunda (MTSRIP) is as good as believing that one day Satan the Devil will repent of his sins, when he is sin himself,” Tonga said. “Overall, President Edgar Chagwa Lungu’s mind and manipulative game which he is busy playing is a serious danger to himself and the peace of Zambia! Succumbing to pressure is an identity of one Dr Edgar Chagwa Lungu – hence changes to the Zambia Police Service command, and the preliminary report received today (Tuesday) by President Edgar Chagwa Lungu is enough admission of failure by a system to investigate itself.”
Tonga said the changes President Lungu made were totally misplaced.
He described President Lungu as a bad father in the house.
“The reactive changes made to the Zambia Police Service command by the sleepy and timid President Edgar Chagwa Lungu is totally misplaced and wrong approach to running a nation. He should have waited. By his own actions, President Edgar Chagwa Lungu will have no one to point a finger at as he has left the entire Police Service, if not the entire security system of Zambia vulnerable and exposed,” said Tonga.
“President Edgar Chagwa Lungu is a very bad father in the house who does not deserve any kind of support from his own children. Remember that it is the same President Edgar Chagwa Lungu who has left 64 former ministers in the cold when it’s him who instructed them to illegally remain in office. What a leader!”
And the UPND has described President Lungu’s changes in the police as an admission that the State killed the two people.
“In the first place, these changes now confirm and is an admission that the PF government, through the Zambia Police, murdered the innocent citizens; hence trying to launder their tattered and reckless image,” party secretary general Stephen Katuka said. “But as UPND, we view these changes as cosmetic and meaningless if the real killers are not brought to book and face justice. If anything, these changes of merely dropping the deputies while leaving the top commanders such as Inspector General of the police Kakoma Kanganja, Home Affairs Minister Stephen Kampyongo and Mr Edgar Lungu himself, are a complete joke to the Zambian people.”
Katuka wondered how junior officers could execute an illegal act without receiving instructions from their superiors.
“How could the junior officers have executed instructions of whatever nature without the knowledge and authority of the top commanders who include Mr Edgar Lungu himself?” Katuka asked. “In fact, the firing of the top police officers justifies what we have always been warning officers in the security wings that Mr Lungu is just using you, but can dump and sacrifice you when things go wrong for him hence the need to be professional in their day-to-day work.”
Katuka said the dismissed police officers were sacrificed and wondered what Kanganja would do in six months to reform the police.
“The sad part to the serving and dismissed officers and all civil servants is that while Mr Lungu will use you when it benefits him, he will dump and sacrifice you and be made to live as ordinary citizens facing the same communities that he commanded you to brutalise or abuse,” said Katuka. “To us, the real culprit is Mr Lungu himself who is on record issuing very serious threats on his opponents such as ‘I will fall on them like a tonne of bricks’. The dismissed top police officers are mere sacrificial lambs while the main culprits have been left off the hook and there are no signs of bringing justice to the killers of the innocent citizens…We wonder what Mr Kanganja can do in six months which he could not do in many years at the helm of the Zambia Police Service.”