The Voice Editorial: HH Has Put Many Loyal UPND Supporters “Ku Wire”
By Daimone Siulapwa
It is now clear that UPND President, Hakainde Hichilema has put a million Zambians who put him in power ‘ku wire’ to borrow the Kaponya language that means abandoning someone.
Politics is about numbers and it is also about giving and taking. If you take or receive support, you must be prepared to give back once you are in a position to do so and this applies to all players at all levels of the political system, these are the rules of the game. Otherwise we risk losing our support base.
If new UPND Alliance members who only come with a handful of supporters at the 11th hour where rewarded with key positions for merely, standing next to HH, brandishing the UPND symbol and shouting out the party slogan, what about the true loyal members and cadres who have been with the party for a decade plus years?
Of course we are not encouraging HH to engage or tolerate corruption, but in all fairness, when we accept the truth and face reality, in all political play-outs, loyal supporters must be rewarded for the risks they took and the persecution they suffered in the line of duty to make sure their political party attained power and this silent understanding can not be negotiated, this obligation must be met fair and square.
What HH needs to understand, in case he has forgotten is that, most of his very loyal supporters lost, their businesses, property, lives and means to earn a living by virtue of being UPND members, many will need help to reset their lives and it is the responsibility of the party to provide for such and opportunity now that they have acquired the political power they wanted.
By supporters we don’t mean those gluttonous privileged big belly demagogues who have always feasted on honey and milk on the expense of the real revolutionary soldiers on the ground, we mean the ordinary supporters in the communities who stood by the reds come what may, these are the people who needs to be rewarded.
Remember, the same courage and resilience they showed against the brutal PF regime, is the same kind of fierce resilience they will show against UPND come 2026 if they are not taken care of, this time they will have a much bigger score to settle, it will be the big fish reds against the small reds, who are in large numbers.
When we talk about loyal supporters, we are talking about the old lady in woodlands and all those known die hard supporters who stood their grounds publicly, put their lives on the line and fought the war through and through, and not those social media cowards who were hiding behind fake names and the sale outs who stood with their legs spread between two camps and came at the last minute to claim victory and positions of authority, what a tragedy.
Loyalty is a wonderful human quality and a necessary political one. No president would think of moving into the state House without known and trusted advisers, in the same way, loyal members who do not qualify for any political appointments or positions due to various reasons must also be taken care of in similar manner of financial reward.
As things stand now, it is important for those in the high offices of power to note that anger, hunger and discontentment is slowly brewing up among UPND supporters, they are waiting for instruction on which direction they should take to empower themselves financially, remember these are people who traversed the whole 10 years of the PF brutal regime disconnected from the business grid of the government to earn a living, they are now hungry for a piece of cake too.
Those now sitting in those air-conditioned offices and enjoying the tax payer’s money and the luxuries that come with it, must not quickly forget where they have come from and the foot soldiers who fought the bloody war, when they where busy sipping gin and juice at east park.
Remember the bigger war was fought on the ground and not in the boardroom or on social media.
While it is recommended that the UPND government has removed cadres off the streets, as a matter of urgency, they need to find a way on how they will fuse in their loyal cadres in the business mean-stream structures, as many cadres believe their live hood, for which they fought so hard for was removed under the feet when the new dawn government unceremoniously removed all cadres from all walks of life.
Remember no one told the UPND cadres that they would not be able to work the streets if they formed government, in reality they where meant to believe the reward of forming government for them was taking over the streets government, that has always been the understanding.