Lungu, Hichilema are political twins who belong to the same social class; its time they unite!
By Azwell Banda,
As the rotten, racist, colonial, capitalist and imperialist British ruling class would say, Hakainde Hichilema and Edgar Chagwa Lungu are birds of the same feathers, they must flock together, they must unite.
HH and ECL share the same interests, personalities, characters, love for money and above all, love for dictatorial political power! They belong to the same social class: they are members of Zambia’s very tiny UNZA educated parasitic capitalist class. Both need government to grow and to sustain their wealth.
Many well-meaning and sensible Zambians have noted that Hakainde Hichilema, just under one year in office, is exhibiting all the key negative and dictatorial tendencies and practices very much associated with Edgar Chagwa Lungu when he was our president. These Zambians have not failed to notice that just like Edgar Lungu, Hakainde has moved swiftly, upon assuming the presidency of Zambia, to consolidate his political power by among other things, appointing a cabinet and advisors among whom none can tell him the truth, especially concerning how the majority of Zambians are experiencing his presidency.
As all politics of patronage, nepotism, lies, corruption and dictatorship goal, both Lungu and Hichilema have very loyal tribal, regional, professional, academic, business and very militant and violent youth support groups. Both assumed office with the ample cooperation and assistance from these groups. It has been observed that until Hakainde mastered the Zambian dark arts of political violence and entrenched them in his party, he languished in the opposition wilderness for 16 years.
Imbedded at the operational nerve centre and heart of the UPND, is William Banda, a man whose behaviour in 2012 was perfectly described by then PF chief government spokesperson and Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services Kennedy Sakeni as “cruel, barbaric and unacceptable”. Even Michael Chilufya Sata was shocked at the violent behaviour of William Banda. At the time, William Banda had brutalised a journalist. As MMD Lusaka Province chairman, soon after it became clear the PF had won elections in 2011, suspected PF thugs looted and burnt William Banda’s property at his guest house in Bauleni, Lusaka, in retaliation for their suffering at his hands. Tellingly, among some of the items found at his property were bullets. Today, William Banda continues as special advisor to HH, is employed at State House, and is UPND chair for “Special duties”.
The PF did not need a past master at political violence, its foundations are steeped in violence, as Edgar Chagwa Lungu himself so amply demonstrated by the methods he used to wrestle the leadership of the PF when Michael Sata died, and eventually became president of Zambia. Zambia watched in horror as Guy Scott and others were brutally dealt with, and eventually side-lined, in the PF, as Lungu ascended to the PF throne. Lungu’s presidency was to be a seven-year period of pure hell unleashed on Zambians by PF thugs, with the full participation of the Zambia Police. Any simple examination of the elements that came together to enable HH to win elections in August last year cannot leave out the maturity of the UPND into a full blown violent political party. Today, peace loving Zambians desirous of an end to our violent politics have observed with growing alarm at how the UPND has consistently deployed violence in all the by-elections since they formed government.
Our Catholic bishops are the latest to add their protesting voice to the rising party cadre violence, barely a year of the UPND government. In their recent statement, they say: “It is saddening to note that political cadres are slowly on the increase in market places and bus stations and have continued invading and harassing media houses and personnel. Further, they have continued to create havoc during by-elections. We demand that this trend be checked and arrested forthwith.” Political parties such as the Socialist Party (SP) have to think very hard about how they can continue to meaningfully pretend to participate in elections, if violence and its use are essential and necessary, to winning elections.
Civil society organisations observing especially the latest round of by-elections have documented the use of money to buy votes, by both the UPND and the PF. In a bizarre admission, the PF has publicly acknowledged that part of the reason they have not done well in the recent by-elections is that they campaigned without money! Both the UPND and PF buy votes. Decent Zambians suffering from the illusory hope of cleaning our elections of the influence of money have a lot of thinking and work to do: the UPND is a Siamese twin of the PF, in this regard.
An abiding memory and experience, especially as the August 2021 elections approached, were the extremely cruel and insensitive scenes of PF thugs brandishing bricks of kwachas. In a country in which the majority live lives crushed by grotesque, humiliating and painful politically induced chronic poverty, nothing can be more insensitive and insulting than to be reminded that you are poor because you are not politically connected, when those who are so connected brandish and flout their clearly ill-gotten wealth. In an ocean of poverty, if you are rich, it is wise to respect poverty by not offending the poor by flouting wealth they actually suspect you stole from them.
In an extremely revealing and equally bizarre moment, Hakainde has announced for Zambians and all the world to know that he forked out £58,000 to pay for his last born son’s Master’s degree in the UK. This is upwards of K1 million. Without any trace of irony, in the same meeting, Hakainde Hichilema said: “Education essentially is a human right. I dare say so, number one. Number two, if it is a human right and best equaliser, it is critical to any sector of the economy. Let us make it universal. Let us make it available to all our children.”
Well, HH is the President of Zambia. Let the Zambian government folk out similar amounts of money to all Zambian children for their education if HH actually understands and believes the cynical and vacuous words he uttered. Truth be told, like the PF thugs who were flouting and brandishing their ill-gotten wealth, HH cannot but find a way to boast about his wealth too! The jury, however, is still out, regarding how Mr Hakainde Hichilema amassed, and continues to amass, his wealth.
Perceptive people will have not failed to note the sharp contrast between what HH said and what Global Partnership for Education chairman Jakaya Kikwete also said at the same event. Jakaya Kikwete, former president of Tanzania, said “the world is facing an unprecedented education crisis, which is more pronounced in the developing world.” Besides unequal access to digital educational resources, the unprecedented crisis in education in the “developing world” such as Zambia is also caused by politicians like HH who grotesquely and usually criminally too, amass vast fortunes from poor countries’ natural resources through government policies and programmes that make such criminal opportunities available to a few politically and economically connected individuals. Africa is yet to find a way to effectively deal with such looters and plunderers of its people and wealth.
It is in the matter of corruption and using government to accumulate personal wealth, sustain and grow it, that the most glaring Siamese twins features of HH and ECL emerge most boldly! Because ECL was relatively quiet poor when he ventured into politics and when he became President, it is easy to fail to notice the similarities, between these political twins, in their fights for “corruption”. Only a Siamese twin of ECL would not have prioritised dealing with ECL immediately after winning elections and becoming President of Zambia. HH and the UPND have a mountain of recorded “evidence” of ECL’s “corruption” they alleged he was involved in, when they were in opposition. Now that they are in government, surely much of this evidence has been augmented by what they did not know? Why is ECL still a free man, more than a year after being evicted from State House by voters, for, among other things, his “legendary” corruption?
We have seen, instead, a ruthless and focused fight to disrupt the PF feeding schemes from government and replace them with UPND “old and new friendly forces”. Mines, construction, tourism, supply of fertilisers and seeds, medicines and other health essentials are the key battle fields in which these social and political twins are waging wars, for control. The casualties, of course, of these wars, are working class and poor Zambians, especially those in our rural areas.
It is true that unless these two, HH and ECL, class and political twins, negotiate how they will jointly loot and plunder Zambia, make peace, kiss each other and unite, they are driving Zambia towards an unavoidable civil war. Nothing stops them from making peace now, other than their sources of external funding, tribal, religious and family affiliations. Zambia does not need the current aggravations between these two class twins.
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