DOUGLAS Syakalima says home affairs minister Stephen Kampyongo appears more intelligent than President Edgar Lungu in their reaction to last week’s killing of two people by police in Lusaka.
A day before UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema’s appearance at police headquarters in Lusaka where he was summoned last Wednesday, Kampyongo promised that UPND supporters who would escort their leader would be decisively dealt with by police.
While Hichilema was being questioned, armed police officers ran amok, teargasing and beating UPND supporters who were present.
Journalists who were covering the imitation of warfare were also smoked.
There was both live ammunition and blanks being fired by police.
Police only withdrew after they had shot dead a UPND supporter Joseph Kaunda, and State prosecutor Nsama Nsama Chipyoka – a stone’s throw away from the National Public Prosecutions (NPA) offices.
More than 20 other UPND cadres were arrested by police.
On Thursday, President Lungu, in a statement from Nyanvu resort in the Lower Luangwa valley where he was vacationing, joined other Zambians to condemn the deaths – except his statement was silent on police brutality.
The President believes somebody created a situation for mayhem and: “we end up with lives lost, at the hands of an unknown assailant or assailants.”
President Lungu’s statement goes on, blaming an abstract somebody for the deaths, but not the police.
Hichilema was being interrogated for assumed fraud and conspiracy in relation to the acquisition of a farm in Kalomo district in 2004.
In reaction to the police killing of the duo, Kampyongo, at a media briefing in Chinsali on Thursday, regretted the shooting to death of Kaunda and Nsama.
He said now was not the time for the “blame game” and promised that there would be no more bloodshed going forward.
Syakalima, Hichilema’s senior advisor and the Chirundu UPND member of parliament, weighed in on Kampyongo’s and President Lungu’s commentary on the deaths.
“Kampyongo now appears clever than the Head of State! Kampyongo said ‘we regret the killings.’ But the President hasn’t even addressed the killing in totality,” Syakalima regretted in an interview.
“He (President Lungu) is addressing something else – striving hard to find somebody to blame. That’s why we say he is not in charge, taku ncabwenye pe (he is simply clueless). At least Kampyongo is saying there should be no blame game here. But the Head of State is doing something else!”
He added that under the presidency of Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the Inspector General of Police and the Minister of Home Affairs would have instantly been fired, in case of lives being lost.
“But from wherever he (President Lungu) was, he said something that is insensible and his minister said something else,” noted Syakalima. “Can you imagine Kampyongo looking smarter than the President. Kampyongo! That guy (President Lungu) is not in charge. If they had taken heed of what I had advised, some of these things could not have even happened.”
On the day Hichilema was being questioned by police, The Mast ran a story where Syakalima advised Kanganja against putting the police on a collision path with citizens, with his militia-like warnings.
Kanganja had directed police commissioners in all the 10 provinces to be on high alert and monitor activities of UPND supporters who may have wanted to unlawfully gather as Hichilema appeared at police headquarters.
He noted that instead of encouraging police officers to harm citizens, “why not tell UPND supporters to escort their leader to police peacefully?”
“That’s how normal human beings behave! You cannot be saying ‘I have put on high alert police commissioners and whatever.’ That’s alarming the police unnecessarily and putting them on a path of collision with Zambians,” Syakalima said in last Wednesday’s story. “But if you are exposing guns too much to citizens, they will have no fear for guns. When Rhodesia was being liberated, we used to hear machine guns every day. We became immune so much that machine guns never sounded like a gun. Don’t expose civilians too much to arms. You can’t be that barbaric!”
He had also advised Kanganja to behave in a normal manner and strive to introduce community policing.
“There is what we call community policing where police officers are friends with the people. But Kanganja is making the police to be unfriendly with the people – the same people that they are supposed to protect,” said Syakalima. “Why do they want to create enmity with citizens? The police are not meant to destroy citizens but to protect them. You can’t be wielding guns anyhow in a country which claims to be following Christian values.”