Hichilema and the UPND are now terrorists running a dictatorship in Zambia – Azwell Banda

Hichilema and the UPND are now terrorists running a dictatorship in Zambia

By Azwell Banda,

Just under three years in their only term of office, Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND choir have fast confirmed that they are fake democrats, constitution vandals and serial political criminals running Zambia outside the rule of law.

Zambia is back to the dark days of rule by the terror of guns, pangas and knives brandishing party cadres, this time, UPND party cadres. Why are we, the majority of Zambians, now being subjected to terrorism by our own government, in our own country? To avoid confusion over the relationship between the meaning, definition, and acts of terrorism and Hichilema and his UPND choir, let us first explore the definition and acts of terrorism in relation to the emerging behaviour of Hichilema and his UPND. After this exploration of terrorism, we will explain why Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND choir now need to deploy terror to govern us.

“Terrorism” is a term that refers to the use of violence or the threat of violence, typically against civilians, to achieve political, ideological, or religious goals. The characteristics and definitions of terrorism can vary, but there are some common elements that are widely recognised. Terrorism is violence or the threat of violence, period. Terrorism, therefore, principally involves the use of threats and actual violent acts, such as repeatedly warning the intended target of terrorism of false arrests, unjust imprisonment, destruction of organisations or communities, organising mobs of youths armed with guns, knives, and pangas to intimidate, bully, beat up or kill civilians, arson, bombings, shootings, kidnappings, rape, murder, and other forms of attack, or the credible threat of such acts.

When announcing his change of tactics about how he would henceforth deploy “imingalato” to deal with his opposition, Hakainde Hichilema literally said he would strangle them. We have since then seen how the Patriotic Front (PF), Socialist Party (SP) and others including UKA are being strangled every day. Hichilema was not joking. He literally meant that he was going to cripple, kill, the opposition. Almost three years into his only term of office, he has sustained a ban on all political rallies, marches and other public activities outside by-elections. He has turned the Zambia Police, Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC), courts and parliament into his terrorism implementation arms, of his “imingalato” schemes against opposition political parties and their leaders, and his critics. Our “multiparty democracy” is all but dead, now.

The primary aim of terrorism is to induce fear to cause particular forms of behaviour, influence the terrorised people to behave in certain ways in order to secure political goals, spread ideological beliefs, or advance religious goals. Hichilema’s terrorism almost three years now, has guaranteed that Zambia has not identified a possible successor to Hichilema, despite Hichilema’s painfully disastrous performance thus far, as both inside his party, in the opposition and throughout Zambia it is impossible to fully enjoy our constitutionally guaranteed political rights, without fearing reprisals, from Hichilema. The threat of police surveillance, call-outs, arrests, detentions without immediate access to police bond or bail, fear of loss to the state of one’s property under the pretext that it is property believed to have been unlawfully acquired and several such terrorist acts have terrorised many good Zambians from openly challenging Hakainde Hichilema. Like all dictators, Hakainde is enjoying the illusions of being too superior and popular, to be challenged.

Terrorist acts are often directed at non-combatants, including civilians, public officials, journalists, civic leaders, religious communities and their leaders, social media activists, opposition politicians, academics, intellectuals and sometimes at symbolic targets, all aimed at creating fear and sending a message to a wider audience beyond the immediate victims. Thus “rule by terror” is established, as the targeted audience is terrorised to behave in ways desired by the terrorists. The goal of terrorism is not just the physical damage caused, physical harm to human beings, or killing of human beings: extremely important is also the mass psychological impact, the spreading of fear and insecurity in the wider population. Who would ever have thought that our fearless and principled good governance activist, extremely law abiding, incorruptible and self-confessed good friend of Hichilema, Brebner Changala, would be arrested, detained without being allowed bail or police bond for several days, for fake charges? Changala joins the historic long list of politician and other activists who have spent time in police cells, since Hichilema became president.

Terrorists generally often seek to maximise publicity for their cause through their acts of violence, believing that media coverage will amplify their message and influence. This is why the UPND now have begun making their violent party cadres to roam the streets while carrying all sorts of frightening, primitive, crude and sophisticated weapons such as stones, wooden sticks, crude knives, large sharp pangas, crude home-made and modern firearms, and so on. These violent UPND party cadres publicly verbally and physically attack their intended targets. While they may not all be in UPND regalia, these UPND terrorists inspire terror by their appearance too. They present themselves savage looking, as dirty youths looking like petty and serious violent criminals, serial rapists and murderers. These menacing mobs are carefully chosen for their terrorist appearance to inspire fear in Zambia, of Hichilema and his UPND.

Terrorism is illegitimate and unlawful; it violates national and international laws and norms. In the US for example, the US Department of State defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” The European Union defines terrorist offenses as certain intentional acts committed with the aim of seriously intimidating a population, unduly compelling a government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act, or seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic, or social structures of a country or an international organisation.

In Zambia, terrorism is illegal. The Law Association of Zambia, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the EU and many Zambian civil society activists and organisations have warned that the Zambian government has shrunk our democratic space and is violating our constitutionally guaranteed human and political rights. What none of these could clearly state is that Zambia now has a terrorist political organisation, the UPND, in government.

While the United Nations (UN) has not adopted a single definition of terrorism, various UN documents describe “terrorism” as acts intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act. Social media now carries videos of Zambians being brutally tortured by UPND cadres. The Socialist Party has lodged several complaints with the Zambia Police and the Electoral Commission, against the terrorism and violence they have suffered at the hands of UPND cadres during by-elections. Nothing has been done thus far, save for an occasional weak statement from civil society organisations or the Electoral Commission. The message behind this election terror is very clear to voters: the UPND has so far won the majority of by-elections.

Why are Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND now resorting to pure terrorism to govern Zambia? Many well-meaning Zambians, including many who actually support the UPND and Hakainde, know and understand that it is impossible to run with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and Western donors austere social, economic and political restructuring programmes without severely punishing the majority of citizens with ever rising cost of living, cost of doing business, mass unemployment, hunger, poverty and extreme social, economic and political inequalities. The extreme belt tightening demanded of the majority of citizens as governments remove subsidies and other government controls of the pricing of basic goods and services while transferring such subsidies to already rich people, local and foreign, who own businesses generally always leads to mass resistance, protests, unrest, civil strife and sometimes removal of governments and civil wars. It is for these reasons that Hakainde Hichilema has banned opposition parties from having rallies and public events.

Hakainde Hichilema is fully aware that the majority of Zambians know that he has removed subsidies from food, fuels and electricity which they badly and urgently need, and given subsidies to mines, manufacturers, maize exporters, tourist operators, and other businesses many of which Zambians suspect Hichilema himself has interests in. Many Zambians suspect that among the reasons why Hichilema, a supposed corruption fighter cannot make public his business dealings to Zambians are because Zambians will be shocked to discover that while he has removed subsidies on fuels, electricity and maize exports causing the prices of these to rise beyond the reach of the majority of Zambians, Hakainde’s and his friends and masters’ businesses are subsidised by government, making all of them extremely rich, while Zambians are dying from hunger and drowning in poverty. Hakainde knows that letting opposition politicians free to hold rallies and to frequently explain all this to Zambians, he would not have been in government today: he would have been booted out by June last year!

But the terrorism Hakainde and the UPND have unleashed on Zambians has another more sinister, darker and cruel side: Hichilema and his friends and masters have wired so many questionable deals in the mines, over fertilisers, fuels, electricity, foreign land purchases of huge tracts of Zambian land and many similar large scale deals – all of which require many years to mature fully and earn Hichilema and his friends and masters massive profits that they are horrified at the prospects of being removed from government should they allow democracy to flourish in Zambia. It is for these reasons that Hakainde and the UPND cannot allow “free and fair” by-elections or any national elections: they cannot risk being removed from government before their benefits from their deals mature. And they are mortified at the prospects of another government discovering what they have done, while in government: most of them are absolutely certain they will suffer long jail time, once a new government takes over from them. Terrorising Zambians has thus become inevitable, to silence and intimidate all of us. The fundamental question every Zambian, including many of those innocent members of the UPND must answer is: what is to be done to free Zambia from Hakainde Hichilema and UPND terrorism and dictatorship? That is our most urgent question, in Zambia today.

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