Nalumango and Imenda could have been a breath of fresh air in the stale and schizophrenic male dominated UPND politics; sadly, they are not- Azwell Banda

Nalumango and Imenda could have been a breath of fresh air in the stale and schizophrenic male dominated UPND politics; sadly, they are not

By Azwell Banda,

Last Sunday, the UPND held a women mobilisation rally in Kabwata.

Two of the top leaders of the UPND were present at the rally: Vice President Mutale Nalumango and UPND deputy secretary general Gertrude Imenda. Here was a golden opportunity for these two powerful politicians to speak to fellow Zambian women through the UPND Kabwata women mobilisation rally. It is Zambian girls and women who are carrying the heaviest burden of our ongoing national troubles.

Zambian girls and women are the backbones of our society: our patriarchal system assigns to them the burden of taking care of human life, feeding it, cleaning it, watering it, tending to it when it is sick, getting it to school and work, and sustaining its now extremely strained nerves, as hunger, poverty, diseases and general national despondency creeps in. During funerals, it is women who are allowed to put up a public display of mourning for the dead. It is therefore not surprising that girls and women, especially from unemployed, employed and poor urban and rural sections of our population are the most active in our politics: they form the bulk of the membership of all our political parties and they are usually voters during elections.

On August the 21st 2021 our sisters, mothers, aunts and grandmothers voted overwhelmingly for Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND on the hope that the punishing high cost of living then would be reduced by a UPND government. This is what the UPND promised when they were in the opposition. Of course, Zambia’s women also hated and bore the brunt of political party cadre violence in public places including at bus stations and in markets. They voted against this violence when they ushered the UPND into government. While it is true that the levels and forms of political violence have reduced, the violence is still there especially during by-elections.

Hunger, diseases and poverty have all dramatically increased, contrary to UPND promises when they were in the opposition. As money has become very scarce, Zambian women find that they need more of it to buy smaller quantities of mealie meal, relish, sugar, cooking oil, soap, salt, candles, toilet paper and all the things needed to run a home and prevent domestic violence. It is now the burden of women to find ways to feed families in the absence of electricity, especially in the urban areas. Making sure there is charcoal and firewood in the home have become painful everyday reminders to Zambian girls and women of the deceitful UPND election promises of ending load shedding and expanding electricity coverage throughout the country, especially in our rural areas.

Zambian women and girls are back to the charcoal pressing iron, in our urban areas. A small well to do section of our girls and women did not know about this charcoal iron business until now, thanks to the punishing electricity load shedding. There is something extremely backward and primitive in reverting to the charcoal iron at a time in history when other countries are sending their rich citizens into space, as tourists. The UPND in opposition rejected climate and drought as good excuses for load shedding: Hakainde Hichilema famously used the example of Arabs whose countries do not see rains “for 10 years” and yet they have constant supply of electricity. He blamed load shedding on the incompetence and corruption of the Patriotic Front government.

Today, in government, the UPND is shrinking access to electricity by their draconian removal of subsidies from electricity and gargantuan appetite for profits through their sadistic deployment of “cost-reflective” tariffs, for electricity. We have moved from promises of cheap and accessible electricity to extremely expensive but rare electricity. Some homes in our urban areas will now never, ever, be connected to the electricity grid, as the cost of electricity installations has priced them out of the market for electricity. As the cost of electricity has dramatically increased, so have the prices of everything our girls and women need to take care of life.

It is the punishing water crisis especially in our urban areas which has best exposed the undying primitive patriarchy at the heart of our family life in Zambia. Girls and women must make sure there is water in the home, otherwise there will be n o food made. It will take quite some unlearning and hard mental work to undo the damage to sleep patterns of most girls and women and to revert to their normal biological clocks: load shedding means keeping awake at night in anticipation of electricity so that some water may be trapped and stored. And yet the girl and woman will still be expected to be at school and report for work (if employed) on time, in the morning!

Cholera is already knocking on the door. The last episode of cholera claimed more than 700 lives, mostly young lives. Threatening to be joined by monkey pox and several other diseases sweeping the globe today, it will again be Zambian girls and women who will bear a disproportionate share of the brunt of these diseases, in Zambia. All these existential crises morph into pre-existing gender and domestic violence, in Zambia. Zambian girls and women are forced to put up with the ever-present threats of violence and rape, and to suffer these atrocities on their bodies and minds, when they happen.

You cannot “mobilise” for anything, let alone in and into a political party, without first being clear about why such mobilisation must take place. “…I understand that challenges continue as life continues. I keep saying if you are a teacher like me and you are marking exams, normally there is a threshold for failing or passing. But I believe you ladies, women, the youths and the men that are here do remember your 10-point plan. Do you remember your manifesto? And when you look at the manifesto then you start ticking, that is what you should be doing. That these are the things we promised, have we gotten zero? Do we have 80 percent? I believe that today we are close to 80 percent in the three years of the promises we made to the Zambian people. As the UPND members you need to check and tick what has been achieved so far. That is how you will get the strength to go on and tell everybody that is criticising this government of what it has done,” said Mutale Nalumango at the Kabwata rally, dully reported in News Diggers.

Mutale Nalumango, if she truly believes what she said in Kabwata last Sunday, badly and urgently needs a sanity check-up. In politics, when in government, a political party can tick the dots and get 110% of their manifesto done: if the majority of the people of the country are materially and mentally worse off than they were before such a political party was elected into government, the manifesto of such a political party is not worthy the paper it is written on! What exactly was going on in the minds of the sane women at the Kabwata women mobilisation rally as Nalumango said this? These women do not live in a separate and better Zambia than all of us! Immediately after the rally, the majority of these women hopelessly crawled back into their hungry, moneyless, load shaded, waterless, and need I add, sick people infested homes. And yet Nalumango told them to mobilise women because the UPND government has already fulfilled close to 80 percent of its election promises.

Gertrude Imenda perfectly illustrated the stale, thoroughly uninspiring, schizophrenic and zombie like UPND politics which has infected these two leaders: “We are here because the issue is about mobilisation. The party needs to be mobilised but when I look [at people], I have observed something… when we were in opposition, we were beaten for wearing regalia. We wanted so very much to wear regalia but we were being stopped and beaten. If you passed by intercity in a regalia you were a dead meat. But now you are in government, the ruling party but you are shy to wear regalia. What is the problem? Because I don’t think you do not have the regalia. We were given during the campaigns, and when the President was going around when we were celebrating there was also regalia,” said Imenda, as reported in News Diggers.

Gertrude is always interesting whenever she speaks, in quite some morbid ways.

“But now you are in government, the ruling party but you are shy to wear regalia. What is the problem? Because I don’t think you do not have the regalia.” Vice President Nalumango pledged to give one bale of UPND citenge regalia to each of the five wards in the Kabwata constituency. Did these two great leaders of the UPND plan together about what to say at the rally? I do not think so. Sane UPND members, both females and males, are not proud to wear their UPND regalia in their communities: they too feel betrayed by their party, and are careful not to revive violence in our communities by insultingly thrusting the UPND into the faces of equally betrayed and angry Zambians, by arrogantly wearing UPND regalia! Only well fed Imenda and Nalumango cannot get this.

Perfectly insanely, Gertrude Imenda insisted: “But I see you are not wearing regalia. What is the problem? Let us wear the regalia. Let us be proud of the regalia. I want to salute those who are wearing the regalia. Next time when we are going to mobilise let us wear regalia because this is called visibility, let UPND be visible. When you are in the market, stores, anywhere, wear the UPND regalia. It is our symbol, and we are in power. Just wear red. Let us wear the party regalia because that is another form of mobilisation.” Jesus of Nazareth, please come down and save us from these fires of hell! “…be proud of regalia” Why, Gertrude? “It is our symbol, and we are in power.” Who is “we” who are “in power” dear Gertrude? On whose behalf must perfectly sane UPND members make UPND “visible”? It is a fact of life that the betrayed, shamed and humiliated do not make a habit of putting out in public their betrayal, humiliation and shame…

These two powerful women leaders of the UPND perfectly illustrate the disconnect and massive social distance between the ordinary members of the UPND and their impoverished and hungry base. They also mirror perfectly the sterility and schizophrenia of the politics of all the leaders of the UPND. Pity, these two women have the greatest opportunity to call out the fake politics of the men in their political party. What is holding them back?

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