DR FRED M’membe is an inspiration, let’s celebrate people when they are still alive, says PF member Stephen Masumba.
And Masumba says most people regret that The Post newspaper was closed.
In an interview when he paid a courtesy call at The Mast newspaper offices in Lusaka’s Ibex Hill area yesterday, Masumba, a former Mufumbwe PF member of parliament and sports deputy minister, said his prayer was that the tabloid reaches the level at which the ‘liquidated’ Post Newspapers Limited had reached.
He said politicians needed to be told the truth, and The Mast was one platform doing such a job.
“The approach that you have taken is the right approach; that’s the approach that The Post took. The Post was that paper that was candid…people regret, even now, that it is gone, people that mean well are now regretting; we are all regretting,” Masumba said.
“When you look at comrade M’membe, what he did is that when you go astray, he will write. When people are complaining about you, he will write and if you do good things, again he wrote. I am such a person when I was incarcerated then; we had a bit of [issues] with him. There was a story that was carried and the source was the prison. They accessed that information and I remember there was contemptuous charges before the court, but he wrote his mind and even the editorial interrogated the wrongs, the good part about me and so on but the honourable thing that I did, and it’s on record, I apologised.”
Masumba said people should begin to believe in others and appreciate them when they were alive.
“All I am trying to allude to here is that the approach to the media…you must not depart from people like that (M’membe). He is a veteran journalist and we must begin to believe in such people; these are combatants. Just like me as a politician I have to have one of the political leaders that inspire me,” he said.
“Even you guys (jourmnalists) even as much as people may condemn M’membe, he is an inspiration. Let’s not begin to talk about people when they are gone, when they are dead that’s when we begin to bring pictures that in 1991 that’s how he fought the battle of this and that. That’s not the case. We must celebrate people while they are still existing. His character, that’s the character that we are looking for amongst ourselves.”
Masumba urged fellow politicians to accept the truth when it was told about them.
He said it was politically unhealthy to only listen to positive voices.
“As politicians, we need also to be told the truth. When power is getting to our head, tell us, give us warning bells that people are the ones that voted for you, so the media is the conduit for people’s voices. Tell us through these media houses; don’t be that kind of an editor who is scared. This is a media house which is very candid, because even as a politician you don’t need to be the kind that only wishes to be told one side of the story,” said Masumba.
“One needs to realise that you may be perfect but you will not be complete. So, the aspect of incompleteness is where you expect those that are candid, those that are honest with you to tell you to say bwana, going in this direction is the correct thing. I believe in media houses that can criticise you when the masses are also complaining, and The Mast newspaper has taken that centre stage. You have told us the truth; you are the representative of the people that put us into these offices and you speak the views of the people; you don’t speak your own personal views. I can assure you that The Mast newspaper is a paper that I completely believe in.”