By Sishuwa Sishuwa
Responding to the growing complaints of debilitating hunger from starving ordinary Zambians during his recent press conference , President Hichilema justified the hunger as an act of God, claiming that ‘hunger is Biblical’. Given that he seemed genuinely serious when saying this, Hichilema’s response suggests one of two possibilities.
The first is that Hichilema may have lost his marbles – the implication of which is the need to take mental health seriously, including when it manifests its symptoms in public leaders whom we often think are immune from such illnesses. We may be dealing with a president who needs help, not ridicule. A careful examination of some of his recent public speeches reveals a worrying series of irrational and uncoordinated statements. Even at the same presser, Hichilema accused himself of “working hard” at a time when the country is sinking with major crises. This includes crippling power outages lasting as long as 20 consecutive hours a day.
He also inflicted praise on himself for being the first president of Zambia to meet King Charles III, the British traditional leader who ascended to the throne a year after Hichilema’s election. Hichilema, who appears to consider this meeting as an achievement, is overlooking the point that if Zambia’s previous presidents did not meet Charles or his predecessor, it may be because Charles was not yet King, or that they did not suffer from elements of inferiority complex that appear to emerge from his excitement about meeting the British monarchy – an excitement that he, perhaps without much awareness, openly exhibits whenever he meets white people. The only conclusive way we can rule out the possibility that Hichilema has lost his marbles is to subject him to a psychiatric evaluation that will establish if he is mentally sound and simply remarkably out of touch.
The second possibility is that Hichilema, in claiming that hunger is Biblical, may have been trying to conceal his administration’s policy failures by formulating a false narrative on the subject – that a natural disaster has caused hunger, electricity and water shortages, not the ruling party in general and its hard-working president in particular – and using the media to induce the public to accept it. We live in a world where, increasingly, what counts most is no longer recognising the “concrete reality” but building “narratives” around the actual reality. For inept liberal leaders and their supporters, winning this war of “narratives” requires hoodwinking ordinary people by manufacturing false public consciousness around the challenges that confront them.
By claiming that hunger is Biblical and a result of supernatural forces, Hichilema is (ab)using faith to shield himself from blame and completely divert people’s attention from the concrete reality that hunger is a human-made challenge, and that its occurrence, specifically in this case, is a consequence of the persistent failure of the government to plan better, ensure food security, and provide affordable food. The obvious fact of the matter is that the present government has been hugely negligent in relation to food security. In pursuit, recklessly, of the policy of liberalisation of maize trade, the Hichilema administration sold over one million tonnes of maize and mealie meal – all from the sufficient stock that was left behind by the previous administration – to other African countries when both commodities were already out of reach for Zambia’s starving population. He has also presided over a chaotic distribution of farming inputs that has badly affected agricultural production in recent years. Hichilema knows all this and his claim that the current hunger is an act of God is a result of either wilful and unforgivable dishonesty or a futile attempt to escape responsibility for his government’s policy failures – and whichever it is, neither is acceptable since it does not resolve the hunger problem.
I must concede that the warped and depressing thinking that human challenges like hunger are acts of God or nature is not restricted to Hichilema alone; it is a belief that is prevalent among Zambians today. I do not know if it is the dominant and degraded Christian theology and practice (which is largely pacifist) or a history of personalised rule, or perhaps both, that seem to have disrupted ideas of cause and effect among many Zambians. People do not attribute outcomes to their likely causes, but often to supernatural phenomena. They do not recognise their own agency and the agency of those around them. In removing human agency from the actual causes of hunger, Hichilema is exploiting the current national psyche and character structure of the ‘typical Zambian’: unquestioning, passive, cowardly, zombie-like, easy to manipulate, naive, superstitious, and worshipful of authority. I am curious to know if Hichilema thinks that countries elsewhere in the southern Africa region that also experienced drought but remain food secure are much more in God’s favour than Zambia.
There are times when I feel that Zambia must kill God, if we are to make progress. When God dies, we will take His place – our success or failure resting squarely on our shoulders. For the reality is that as long as our lives and how they turn out remain God’s will, we abdicate responsibility for changing our plight to that God. It also means our leadership, in our minds at least, is God’s choosing. So if that God gives us a Hichilema, we cannot question His wisdom, notwithstanding Hichilema’s obvious poverty of anything remotely resembling the virtue to be associated with a benevolent deity.
Source: https://x.com/ssishuwa/status/1806326349511971094
This government is a disaster.
Imagine they are a lot worse than PF.
We need to boot them out quickly before they sell the entire country to their LGBT friends.
What a disgusting lot.
You are Dr. Sishu.. Zambia is a land of Jokers. The UPND have terribly failed, and so was PF. PF is trying to take advantage of the ignorance of many Zambians. Both have to go for good. We need freshh and new Faces. We are tired of politics of ignorance in Zambia.
Honestly speaking,I have tried to analyse and read and read again what most people in the opposition, ECL and here Sishuwa Sishuwa is contemplating, I can’t really find any neither have I seen any big problem with what President Hakainde Hichilema is doing for the nation.
Because when I look at what President Hakainde Hichilema has done and achieved within 2 years 8 months is marvelous, absolutely incredible despite the mountain problems that were created and left by PF and LUNGU.
And to see people every now and then pilling mad on him is just very unfortunate. That is when those with eyes can see the working of satan, the snake that serpent dragon called lucifer in this people. Pride in them and being pompous. In people like you Sishuwa Sishuwa Sishuwa, Mmembe, Lungu, Kalaba, Deon Tembo, Edith hangarian sausage Nawakwi and others.
Otherwise HH is a great leader not to be compared to these kolokombwes- the likes of Lungu or Sishuwa.
1. Talk of CDF (SCORE) project being implemented and coming out of it ++++
2. Skills bursaries for youths ( Score)++++
3. Employment in public service ( teachers, health workers, Zaf, ZNS, Army) ( score)+++
4. Tertiary education schools scholarship and bursaries at Public Universities ( score )
5. Rule of law Restoration ( score)+++
6. Stopping PF cadres stealing council funds in markets and bus stops ( score)+++
7. Debt management – / the restructuring of PF unsustainable overpriced debts ( score)+++
8. Upholding of Democracy in the country ( score)+++
9. Fighting very hard to Stop tribalism, regionalism by being rightfully and promoting the One Zambia One Nation (score) +++
10. Empowering citizens and promoting hard work not tentamenu and corruption (score)+++
This is just out of ten
What are you Sishuwa Sishuwa dreaming of which is not in the reality book.
Stay away! lost man
You are from the zambezi region, so you can not see any wrong. Just enjoy yourselves for now at the expense of the people that voted for him.
Why can’t people respect their leaders..
Its a shame indeed
Why can’t leaders respects their citizens?
People can only respect leaders that respect citizens.
Respect is earned.
Well written Mr. Sishuwa S. Unfortunately most Tongas have encountered have this behavior behavior Hichilema is busy portraying i.e. full of themselves, making themselves the best everywhere and in whatever they do, they think they are the most intelligent even when they are not, they think they are the best in everything even when they are not, they always want to be first in whatever they are doing even when they are not, actually naturally very competitive in their nature! Somebody should tell Hichilema that he has irritated us too much already!
One of the Ten Commandments tells us to respect our parents and we are promised to live long when we do that. We know you hate HH as an individual but in his capacity as the President, he deserves to respected. As at now, HH is our President is our president whether you like or hate him, he is our parent and it’s our duty to give him respect as God tells us to do. If we fail to respect the the parent we see, how do we respect and honor God whom we can’t see.
I don’t know which Bible you read because famine or hunger as it’s commonly know have been there since time immemorial. I want you to read the following verses so that you can see for yourself:
Genesis 12:10 And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.
Genesis 26:1 And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar.
Luke 4:25 But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land;
People like you Sishuwa should know that this world is always under God’s control God has nothing to do with good or bad policies, if he decides to withhold the rains, he can do it with or without climate change. This is what the Bible says; Leviticus 26:3 If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;
4 Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.The same words are repeated in the book of Deuteronomy: Deuteronomy 11:13 And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14: That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. 15 And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full. So has nothing to do with good or bad policies, so you should leave HH alone
Citizen formerly known as mabebha, now a director in the ministry of Education after leaving UK as a perpetual student of insults. True as they say in Psychiatry, when someone is suffering from hallucinations, paranoia, delusions or cognitive impairment ( dementia) especially frontal lobe dementia its like being in an insidious foggy. You can not know what is happening outside the insidious foggy till someone will real sense of
what is happening tells you about what is happening and how difficult for someone experiencing mental breakdown to understand because the mind is clouded and functioning in a different state.
This is self denial and it’s normal to feel like this but what is more important is to understand and accept that you need help from others.
HH needs help in terms of therapy as we do not want to lose him more than he is getting wasted . Self importance, self confidence above anyone, pathological lying, the inability to accept others as equal or important these are common characteristics of narcissist personality traits which HH exhibits Other common symptoms are hatred, fear of rejection, jealousy lack of empathy, brutality, cruelty towards those perceived as inferior or enemies. Bullying tendencies, lack introspection, happy to inflict pain either physically, emotional, psychological and use his power in an abusive way. Instills fear and anyone close him will go after them . Lacks to maintain enduring relationships. These traits are common themes of HH.
Those who suffered with him have been ditched or removed and replaced by those tribal members