WE would rather stay in the alliance with UPND if it is losing lose with dignity than change colours at given opportunity, says Josephs Akafumba.
Speaking on Spring Television’s Crossfire on Monday evening, Akafumba said his team has no common goal with Chishimba Kambwili who has decided to dine and wine with the same people he was insulting and condemning not long ago.
He said Kambwili who considered his fellow leaders as underweights declared that he would rather work with the PF but nobody sane in the NDC is ready to agree with him.
“I don’t think really there is something that we have in common now with him having gone to the very people that he was insulting, castigating and telling the Zambian people that these are the people that have brought misery and poverty and now you want us to go and wine with them…No!” Akafumba said.
He charged that from the start, Kambwili was uncomfortable to work with the UPND based on nothing but tribe.
Akafumba urged Kambwili to be sincere stating that nobody chose to be born the tribe they are for one to be judged based on their ethnic group but based on their character.
“To publicly pronounce that aba Tonga babi, these Tongas are bad people, I don’t think I would be in that camp. I don’t think it’s right to condemn people based on tribe. For Kambwili to today say Hakainde Hichilema is a very bad person, I find it extremely sad,” he said.
And Akafumba said the Congress held in Kitwe and other places around the country by Kambwili’s faction was a product of a poisoned tree.
He said whatever pronouncements that were made in Kitwe are null and void owing to the disregard of the court injunction.
“It’s illegal and inconsequential. Why am I saying this? There was an injunction against Dr Kambwili, his agents or servants but the way they read it themselves is that the injunction was only for Dr Kambwili and the rest could do whatever they wanted to do. That was not the case. After we got that injunction and duly served on them, I do recall him holding a press briefing saying this only applies to me but we let them run around and felt pity for them in the sense that they misunderstood the injunction and what followed next was that they applied for stay of proceedings pending payment of costs,” Akafumba said. “That to me didn’t work well for them because those so-called costs were not even taxed so they delayed the hearing of the injunction.”
He said the Kambwili group thought that a stay discharged the injunction but that it didn’t as it was in full force.
Akafumba recalled that later his team applied for leave to commence contempt of court proceedings against Kambwili and his agents.
He regretted that even after leave was granted Kambwili and his agents have been ill-advised stating that it is just permission and means nothing.
“You are in trouble. It does not mean nothing so what we got now is a notice of motion. I have a notice of motion and I will read to you what it says. This notice of motion says, ‘Take notice that pursuant to the leave of the honourable court of madam Justice M Mulanda given on 16th Day of April 2021, the court will be moved on the 29th Day of June 2021 at 08:30 hours or soon thereafter as counsel can be heard on the application on the applicant’s behalf for an order of committal to prison of the first, second, third and fourth respondents for reasons set out in the affidavit…’ So you to dance that is leave you are mistaken because for now you have to show cause on the 29th why you should not go to prison for having ignored an order of injunction,” Akafumba said. “If what you said is correct, why do we have this committal against you? So where they are now, they have disobeyed an order of the court and went ahead to have that congress of theirs even when there was an injunction restraining them to do so and they knew very well. They are in contempt so whatever they did in Kitwe was just a waste of time and money.”
Akafumba said his team was going to add more to the contempt list for ignoring an order of the court.
He said he has proof that the Kitwe congress was organised by Kambwili as a chief funder as opposed to his claim that he was only called to be conferred with the designation of president of NDC.