Release MP Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda from detention and drop the fake charges: an open letter to Hakainde Hichilema

Release MP Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda from detention and drop the fake charges: an open letter to Hakainde Hichilema

By Azwell Banda

Dear President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema,

It is my great wish that you and your entire family are well. I write to you, about Petauke Central member of parliament Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda. I believe you know him very well, far too well, as I shall make clear in this letter.

May I ask? It must be good to be President of Zambia, isn’t it, especially during these tough times when the majority of Zambians sleep hungry, are tortured by lack of electricity and critical water shortages as they struggle to find money to pay rent and buy extremely expensive food, medicines, diesel, petrol, paraffin, electricity and pay for transport, among many hardships, all which have sharply risen since you became President of Zambia? Imagine knowing all this depressing stuff but still going ahead to enjoy the luxurious privilege at the expense of these same poor Zambian tax payers, to travel all the way to Europe, to the United Kingdom actually, just to go and personally receive an honorary degree bestowed on you under clearly, very false pretences!

I wonder what was going on in your mind, as you stood there, with the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, King Charles III, in the posh palatial halls of the United Kingdom adorned also with wealth stolen from former British colonies and some of this wealth actually bought from proceeds of the abominable trade in African slaves? But then, you are a kind that finds much pleasure in White adulation and adoration, and has made it a habit to disparage us, Africans, for the many weaknesses you see in us. Do you care to know that the full cost of your trip could have paid the Zesco bills for half a year, of the average poor town in Zambia? Sorry, I forget: with the on-going severe electricity blackouts, your trip alone probably cost more than the electricity bills of all the electrified houses in Matero for a whole year and more. You are a genius, my dear President Hichilema: you have succeeded to export lies to a European university! Congratulations.

Principal and vice-chancellor Professor Richard Williams of Scottish University, Heriot Watt, waxed lyrical last Thursday, when he conferred you with an honorary Doctorate of the University. According to Professor Richard Williams your “transformative stewardship exemplifies the virtues of dedication, resilience and foresight.” This could possibly have been the only truth this professor uttered, about you: for yourself, your family, friends and your foreign business associates, it is true that your “transformative stewardship exemplifies the virtues of dedication, resilience and foresight.” For the majority of Zambians you are a pathological liar and your presidency will be forever remembered as one in which millions of Zambians suffered untold poverty, hunger and the highest ever cost of living Zambians have ever suffered!

Now, principal and vice-chancellor Professor Richard Williams leads Scottish University, Heriot Watt. The minimum I expect before anyone in his profession and holding the office he does, before he can say this, about anyone who is a current president of any country as he showers them with an unearned honorary doctorate: “His leadership in all these roles has been characterised by his creation of strategic growth initiative and robust ethical management practices. His pathway to the presidency was neither direct nor devoid of hardship. His resolve was tested through trials of imprisonment on allegations of treason and being subjected to torture,” must first check the facts for correctness and accuracy.

You know very well, my dear President, that in your whole life you have never been imprisoned, and as yet, there is no proof that you were tortured, anywhere. Invaded in your homestead, yes, roughed up by the police and prison warders, yes, but tortured, not yet proven. Imprisoned, definitely not. Detained yes, absolutely. You Sir, know these simple and basic truths very well, and yet there you were, with a wide grin on your round face, smiling proudly and taking it all in as if it was all true. You are an artistic performer Hollywood would do well to invite you too.

Obviously with great joy in his heart, principal and vice-chancellor Professor Richard Williams of Scottish University, Heriot Watt finally declared, at the ceremony: “It is now my pleasure to present to you, in the name of the university and by the authority of Senate, in recognition for services to the economic advancement of Zambia and its citizens, enabling citizens’ access to education and to the revitalisation of international trade, I will confer the honorary degree of Doctor of the University on Hakainde Hichilema, President of Zambia.”

Now, dear President Hichilema, I am very angry with this Professor Richard Williams of Scottish University (I honestly feel like insulting him, in my best Bemba), Heriot Watt: half of Zambia’s population and more is acutely hungry with 6.6 million living in near famine conditions because you, Hakainde Hichilema sold most of the maize in our strategic reserves in order to “revitalise international trade” in maize! Now drought has worsened the scarcity and ever rising prices of both maize and mealie meal. All Richard Williams needed to do before handing you that worthless piece of paper was to check Zambia’s social media pages and he would have learnt just how disastrous your presidency has turned out to be, barely three years into your only term of office.

You, my dear President, know and understand very well whose economic advancement in Zambia you have secured, and at whose great expense: the majority of the people of Zambia who for a long time to come will bear the deadly brunt of your “strategic growth initiative and robust ethical management practices”, “revitalisation of international trade” and ultimately, the “economic advancement of Zambia.” To millions of Zambians right now, struggling with hunger, poverty, electricity, water and so much more, and the ever rising high cost of living, may I politely remind you that you remain “a gift from hell”, for them.

I have digressed. And yet the matters are related. Because both speak to your character and attitude to other human beings, and the truth. What exactly has MP Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda done to you and your UPND party and government to deserve the extremely cruel treatment you are meting out to him? Please do tell me, dear President Hakainde Hichilema, what the sins and actual crimes Jay Jay Banda has committed against you, perhaps your family, and friends in the UPND, are. You have personally, publicly at a press conference, instructed the police to arrest him, charge him, and lock him up for unbailable offences knowing full well Jay Jay has fingered some of your officials at State House to be behind his abduction, torture and disappearance. Why have the policed not yet arrested these suspected criminals and thugs, at State House? Your incompetent government is quick to arrest your opposition for the flimsiest, trivial, suspected offence.

Your police have abducted Jay Jay several times. Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda has named the people behind his abduction. You, President Hichilema, have called MP Jay Jay Banda a thug, knowing very well he is an MP, sick, in your government custody, and you were going to charge him with unbailable offenses. You know very well that your actions and utterances throughout Jay Jay’s ordeal have permanently injured and damaged his chances of a fair trial, in any court, in Zambia. Tell, me, what exactly has Jay Jay done to you, your family, your UPND or any of your friends to deserve the suffering he is currently enduring at your government’s hands?

I do not know Petauke Central member of parliament (MP) Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda, nor have I ever met him, “in person”, as they say these days. What I know about him comes from media stories about him. This, too, was the extent of my knowledge of you, now President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, when I, together with others, organised international protests for your release from detention when you were illegally and quite frankly, idiotically detained by Edgar Chagwa Lungu’s Patriotic Front (PF) government in April 2017 for “treason”. You know very well, Hakainde, that you indeed foolishly and very dangerously endangered then president Edgar Chagwa Lungu’s life and others when your motorcade refused to give way to the one transporting Edgar Chagwa Lungu. But this was not “treason”, it was clearly a traffic offence!

I come from a tradition several centuries old: an injury to one human being is an injury to humanity. No human being is safe if any human being anywhere is not safe, suffering injustices such as MP Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda is going through. The sickening savage ordeal you are putting Jay Jay through comes nowhere near the treatment of the thugs in your party and government you are protecting from arrests, charges, trials and being locked away for a long time, for some of them.

I demand, by copy of this letter, as a bona fide citizen of Zambia, that you immediately release Jay Jay from detention, and let him walk free, again, as is his right. Your unconstitutional and clearly criminal persecution of MP Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda will haunt you for your entire life, and follow you to your grave. This much I can promise you; unless of course your conscience has completely deserted you.

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