I felt so free with President
Hichilema, says Mukuni
By Edwin Mbulo in Bweengwa
I FELT so free to be in a meeting with President Hakainde Hichilema, says senior chief Mukuni.
Mukuni, of the Leya people of Kazungula, Livingstone and Zimba districts, says without a well-defined cultural and political heritage Zambia cannot not be united.
In an interview after attending the Samu Lya Moomba ceremony in Bweengwa graced by President Hichilema, several traditional leaders and members of parliament on Sunday, Mukuni said the meeting held at Choongo Secondary School was uniting.
“We held a meeting with the Head of State and he has urged the House of Chiefs to tabulate all traditional leaders’ challenges so that he can attend to them. This is what it should be not what we saw in the last regime where a few chiefs were viewed as enemies of the State,” he said. “I felt so free to be in that meeting with President Hichilema. I don’t want to describe what I would have felt like if it was that other one who ruled us before August 12.”
On cultural heritage, Mukuni said Zambia is endowed with rich stories that can help prop-up the tourism sector.
“The President has been committed to having the political heritage of this country written down correctly and this we must do. I challenge journalists to use the Head of State’s zeal to start writing a lot of feature stories on our political history, even writing books,” he said. “The generation we have don’t understand much of what happened before 1964. They don’t even know who was Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula or Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe. A nation without a well-defined heritage cannot be united or live in peace. Ethnicity or tribalism will always take root without a well-defined or written down cultural heritage or political history.”
Mukuni said politicians who talk about tribalism are not living as tribal islands.
“Look at the families of those who peddle hate speech or tribalism, ask them what tribe their wives are or who is married to their son or who has married their daughter,” said Mukuni. “I heard that one of the politicians who talked against Tonga’s is married to a Tonga woman and one has a Tonga mother. There is no family in Zambia all born and married to one tribe. No father, son, daughter, grandchildren, uncles and nieces are all married to one tribe. If there is one bring them to me and I will pay for their cost to have them entered in the Guinness Book of Records.”