Hichilema: keep your bloody kind of pursuit of profits and blood money out of Zambia- Azwell Banda

Hichilema: keep your bloody kind of pursuit of profits and blood money out of Zambia!

By Azwell Banda,

On Friday 8th March, I said knowing full well that a private letter to Mr Hakainde Hichilema, President of Zambia, will go unacknowledged and unanswered, and nursing a burning desire to make a personal public statement as a bona fide Zambian citizen about Mr Hichilema and his UPND government, I had decided to write him three Open Letters. Below is the second Open Letter.

Dear Mr Hakainde Hichilema,

You obviously are aware that this year marks 60 years of our “independence” from racist British colonial rule. Sixty years is long enough to nurture and grow the character and personality of a person and a country. At sixty, an individual, just like a country, can easily be described by how they have lived their life. Zambia has grown an international reputation as a happy country in spite of its biting national hunger and poverty. We are known to be a very anti-war and peace-loving country. We hate the violence of war.

We have made our contributions to the liberation of Africans from brutal colonialism and apartheid in this African sub region we belong to. We housed, at great cost to ourselves, many African political organisations fighting for freedom and independence, in their own countries. We became known in Africa and the whole world as a great venue for hosting independence and peace talks. In David Kenneth Kaunda, we gave the world one of its most consummate international statesman, an internationalist and anti-imperialist par excellence.

If Tony Blair and his fellow American war criminals had listened to Kenneth Kaunda, today, more than 1,000,000 Iraqis would have been alive and Iraqis would have been resolving their own problems without fracturing into the kind of internal bloody letting Tony Blair and his fellow war criminals in the US government’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 has led to. Kaunda confirmed, after visiting Iraq and talking to Saddam Hussein, what much of the sane and peace-loving world already knew: Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair and George Bush manufactured fake evidence to lie to the world as a pretext to invade Iraq in order to protect British and American oil interests in the Middle East.

On March 20 this year, it will be exactly 21 years ago when Bush’s United States and Tony Blair’s United Kingdom led a “coalition of the willing” that launched a fully-fledged extremely savage and bloody invasion of Iraq. Tony Blair and George Bush said they were invading Iraq for three key reasons: that the Iraq regime of Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD); that it was developing more of them to the potential advantage of “terrorist” groups; and that creating a “friendly and democratic” Iraq would set an example for the region. This was after their long years of sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had collapsed the Iraq economy and killed many Iraqis, especially from lack of food and medicines.

Tony Blair, your white consultant, Hakainde Hichilema, as British Prime Minister said on September 24, 2002, as he presented a British fake “intelligence dossier” that Saddam Hussein could activate chemical and biological weapons “within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population”. Tony Blair was lying of course. Tony Blair is a liar, a bloody liar, like you, Hakainde Hichilema. Tony Blair has great talent to play with words to hide the truth, like most British politicians.

Unlike you though, Tony Blair is a wordsmith of note. Tony Blair will go to his grave with the blood of slaughtered innocent Iraqis on his hands. Why, in all countries of Africa, can Zambia be a host to Tony Blair and his international consultancy firm, at the heart of its government? Please Mr Hakainde Hichilema, I beg you, kick Tony Blair and his cony consultancy out of Zambia! By employing him in Zambia, a country that tried to prevent Blair’s clearly illegal war against Iraq, you, Mr Hakainde Hichilema are an accomplice, post facto, to the savage and brutal murders of Iraqis by Tony Blair and his American friends. Do you not have any feelings at all, any sense of revulsion, at the more than 1 million dead Iraqis and many still suffering to this day, all caused by Tony Blair’s illegal war waged under false pretences, against Iraq? Iraq has not known peace since Tony Blair and his American accomplices invaded Iraq, on 20th March, 2003.

You have since allowed a US AFRICOM facility to be opened in Zambia, thus making Zambia under your presidency available to both US and British militaries to use as they please. Why, just why are you so cold and insensitive to the feelings of the majority of Zambians? Why do you hate us so much? What have we done to you? Could it just possibly be that you are punishing us as a country and a people for keeping you out of State House, which you have now refused to live in, for 15 hard years? You are unforgiving, are you? Judging by the way you are personally treating Edgar Chagwa Lungu, I am almost convinced you are punishing Zambia for humiliating you at the polls, consistently, until when Lungu had become so hateful that anyone who would have stood against him, alone, would have won.

Zambians suffered terribly, and some of the economic collapse, national hunger, mass unemployment, poverty and extreme inequalities are as a result of Zambia’s principled stand against the pre 1994 White Supremacist, racist and colonial-apartheid South African regime and Ian Smith’s Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Zambia stood proudly firm against both white supremacist regimes, and paid dearly, economically, socially, politically and through Zambian blood shed by the armed forces of these regimes. Today, you Hakainde Hichilema, in the Brenthurst Foundation, you employ a White South African consultancy, paid by Zambian tax payers. Do you have any conscience at all? Where is your patriotism to Zambia and fealty to our history? Why do you hate Zambians so much that you see it fit to employ an outfit most Zambians and African South Africans easily identify with White Supremacism and racism in South Africa?

You clearly have no time nor feelings, for the dire circumstances in which the majority of African South Africans find themselves, after more than 160 years of white racist colonial and capitalist domination, and more than three centuries of White land dispossessions and domination. Zambia has no shortage of educated, skilled and professional consultants from whom you could harvest capable advisors, if you wished to. Why pick on a white outfit from South Africa? You do not care for our horrible and bloody history with white South Africa, do you?

It is your attitude and feelings about the ongoing mass torture, killings, murders, and genocide committed by the Israeli Defence Forces against Palestinians in Gaza and all the occupied territories which leave me cold, scared, no: horrified, actually, when I imagine that anyone in your position with the intimate knowledge you must have about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, can choose to celebrate your relationships with the government of Israel as it carries out the genocide in Gaza, as you did when you announced your fake declaration of a national disaster, “due to the drought.”

I was filled with horror, extreme revulsion, and yes, anger, when I saw Hamas and its allied forces slaughter Israelis and others on October 7, last year. A burning anger engulfed me at the senselessness and cruel savagery bred by more than 75 years of Israeli occupation and colonialisation of Palestinian lands: Hamas and many more such organisations. I suffered with each of the families of all those killed on the 7th of October last year, and suffer to this day, with all the families of those who have died as hostages and those still alive but are hostages, possibly, still in Gaza.

And I watch every day – I do not turn my eyes away – the human horrors, carnage, savagery, killings, murders and genocide carried out by the US and British funded and armed defence force of Israel in Gaza and all the occupied Palestinian territories, and my heart bleeds for each one of the dead and suffering souls, including the young Israeli working class soldiers I know will suffer horrible traumas for their actions, for the rest of their lives. I am a trained soldier; I know the difference between genocide and modern military warfare.

Starved without shelter, water and medicines, Palestinians are caged like animals in a small strip of land at its Southern portion, they await the promised full bloody Israel Defence Forces attack, any day now. Meanwhile, everyday, they are being killed, slaughtered, murdered, and the whole world watches helplessly apart from the Houthis and Hezbollah. The US and British army stand ready, as they are already doing to the Houthis, to bomb the hell out of anyone who will come to the military rescue of the Palestinians.

More than two thirds of the more than 31,000 Palestinians butchered by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are children and women. No war in modern times has seen so many children murdered by an army, in such a short time. Many are still buried where the IDF bombs buried them; thousands more are injured as the IDF pounds them with bombs and slaughters them with bullets. No human being, sane, whatever their ethnic complexion, politics and historical background, still possessed of a minimum amount of human feelings, sympathy and empathy, can fail to suffer with all those suffering through the genocide going on in Palestine, right now.

But not you, Hakainde Hichilema, you chose to use this most darkest hour in Palestine to emphasis your good relationship with the President of Israel, who considers Palestinians animals, to announce that Israel would soon be sending water experts to Zambia. There is something common among most of your white advisors: they support and back Israel. I could go on and on, about just how “un-Zambian” you, Hakainde Hichilema, are.

For your own sake, Hakainde Hichilema, keep your bloody money to yourself, and away from Zambia!

Send comments to: banda.azwell@gmail.com