Our “First Independence” is dead. It is time to struggle for our “Second Independence”- Azwell Banda

Our “First Independence” is dead. It is time to struggle for our “Second Independence”

By Azwell Banda,

Last week on this column I wrote about the indisputable fact that Hichilema and the UPND are terrorists.

A terrorist government is a dictatorship. Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND government are dictators who are terrorising Zambians in order for them to secure and advance their personal economic interests and those of their Western masters. Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND government are puppets of the West.

It is impossible for Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND, as Western puppets, to simultaneously govern Zambia constitutionally, lawfully and democratically while serving their personal and their Western masters’ interests, in Zambia: terror and dictatorship are the means and methods by which all Western puppet governments enforce their rule. It is also this which explains the deafening silence of Western embassies in Zambia, as Hakainde and his UPND government terrorise Zambians and rule autocratically and descend into a dictatorship: Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND state terrorism and dictatorship serve the core interests of the West, in Zambia.

We have since learnt, from none other than Hakainde Hichilema himself that new draft laws have been adopted by Hichilema’s cabinet, which when passed into laws will further criminalise free speech and terrorise Hichilema and the UPND’s opposition and critics of the tribalism, hatred and naked vengeance the UPND government has thus far unleashed on Zambians. Hichilema has revealed that he spies on Zambians, on social media. He has threatened to lock up former president of Zambia, Edgar Chagwa Lungu.

As for Petauke Central member of parliament Emanuel Jay Jay Banda, allegedly abducted by Hichilema’s State House thugs and twice abducted by Hichilema’s UPND government, Hichilema has coldly, inhumanly, most uncharacteristic of a president of Zambia, actually instructed the police to arrest Jay Jay Banda for offences long deposed off, by our courts. The heart of ice displayed by this cruel and callous treatment of member of parliament Jay Jay Banda is only marched by the cold, cruel and uncaring attitude by Hichilema and his UPND government for the majority of Zambians who are suffering historic punishing load shedding, water shortages, extreme high cost of living, mass hunger and torturous poverty.

The unconstitutional, unlawful, terrorist and dictatorial conduct of government by Hakainde Hichilema is accompanied by double standards and discriminatory application even of their misrule. Before Jay Jay Banda can recover from his ordeal of being kidnapped and tortured by Hakainde’s State House thugs, and before the police can give Zambians a truthful account of what is happening to Jay Jay, the police have arrested a sick and clearly traumatised Jay Jay. This is pure UPND state terrorism. Meanwhile, alleged thief and fraudster UPND Livingstone mayor Constance Nalishebo Muleabai who is said to have criminally appropriated K180,000.00 council money for herself is free, and still working, as I pen this article.

Member of parliament Emanuel Jay Jay Banda has named the people he claims were behind his abduction and torture. These thugs at State House are free, not called by the police to be questioned, arrested and detained as all opposition members and critics of Hakainde and his UPND government are criminally treated by the police. As the police cruelly harass Jay Jay including for alleged offences long disposed of by the courts. Hichilema and his thugs at State House and the UPND government think Zambians are morons, pure cretins, and cannot understand their evil designs and cognise the extreme cruelty in their actions.

The Socialist Party is the latest victim of the unconstitutional and criminal ban Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND government have imposed on opposition rallies and all mass political activities outside by-elections. This now almost three years ban on opposition rallies is a most extreme display of contempt by Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND government for our Republican Constitution, our human and political rights, and our multiparty democratic dispensation. By this singularly unconstitutional, dictatorial and callous treatment of the opposition, Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND spit on all our collective national struggles against the one party state and its dictatorial rule.

Hichilema and the UPND insult and offend our human dignity, rights to free speech, to impart and receive ideas, to assemble, associate and share ideas and our humanity among ourselves; all of us Zambians including those in the UPND. This violation of our constitutional rights is the clearest display of the extreme contempt in which Hichilema and the UPND government hold Zambians, all Zambians, including those in the UPND strongholds. Hichilema and the UPND are thus reducing all of us Zambians to a status below animals (animals gather frequently, freely, and share their lives). One day, soon, they will have to account for their unconstitutional, criminal, terrorist, undemocratic and dictatorial actions, all of them.

It is undiluted pure terrorism from Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND government to threaten Zambia to unleash their youth thugs because politically expired Edgar Chagwa Lungu decided to start enjoying his political rights, all of them, which he is truly fully entitled to. We, Zambians, all of us, pay Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND government to protect Edgar Chagwa Lungu and all Zambians, equally, in their expressions and enjoyment of their human and all political rights.

In August 2021, Zambians did not elect and employ Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND, nor do they pay them since then, to govern Zambia unconstitutionally, criminally, undemocratically and using terror and dictatorship. Contrary to what Hichilema and his political choir think, the majority of Zambians are not unthinking and sadistic morons who would consciously elect and employ a government to terrorise them, to dictate to them, to unconstitutionally and criminally govern them. Hichilema and the UPND lied to Zambians that they would govern Zambia constitutionally, lawfully, and democratically, and advance all these legitimate forms of governing. Hakainde Hichilema’s and the UPND’s hour of reckoning is fast approaching.

I concluded my article last week by emphatically stating that the fundamental question every Zambian, including many of those innocent members of the UPND must answer is: what is to be done to free Zambia from Hakainde Hichilema and UPND terrorism and dictatorship? That is our most urgent question, in Zambia today. Sixty years of our first independence have expired. Hichilema and the UPND have exposed just how rotted and expired all our efforts at building a Zambia on the basis of our inherited colonial economy, politics, culture and society have expired. Hakainde and the UPND are exploiting, to their personal and Western puppet masters’ advantage, to the maximum, this rot and expiry of our first independence, including the now very open tribal divisions in Zambia.

We need to build a national consensus on the fact that we cannot continue doing the same things, relying on the same economic and political systems and their state institutions and society which at 60, have now cooked a national famine, disastrous load shedding, critical water shortages, mass unemployment, poverty and inequalities, and delivered a terrorist dictatorship for a president and government, to preside over this miserable state of affairs, in Zambia. This is the starting point from which all else must follow.

We can no longer deny that the rot and decay in our economy, government and politics are a perfect mirror of who we have become, as a people and country, in all our human interactions. We are a corrupt, lying, hypocritical, immoral, thieving people, and absolutely irresponsible, for our collective fate as a people, country and nation state. Not even the fake and thoroughly hypocritical veneer of the claim to be a “Christian Nation” has helped: we have instead degenerated into a heap of mass hunger and corruption, and rotten morals, as a people and country. Now we are being primed by our politicians for civil war, along regional and tribal lines.

It is that time, that moment, in the life and history of a neo-colonial people when we must recognise who we have become, a rotted and expired first independence, and courageously agree to struggle to embark on our second independence, an independence in which we, Zambians, shall be the custodians of this patch of the earth called Zambia, and wrestle ownership and control of all our natural resources and wealth and agree to use all our thoughts, imaginations, creativity, inventiveness and ability to work, to move ourselves out of the grave we have sunk into, as our first independence has expired.

Simultaneously as we gather as much knowledge as possible about our circumstances and its history, a good and great starting point is to identify, among ourselves, the individuals, and the large groups of Zambians, who, owing to their position in our Zambian society, are best placed to lead us in the struggle to win our second independence. Doing this will simultaneously help us to isolate those who are beneficiaries and defenders of our current torturous life. Everything else would then follow, logically.

Send comments to: banda.azwell@gmail.com