Sishuwa chokes as HH raises Zambian flag High at US-Africa Summit
By David Zulu.
17th December 2022.
Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa’s headline banner, “Why Zambia’s President is adored abroad but a disappointment at home”, gave him away. It was peevish, ill-disposed, contrasting and if not incompatible with his polymathic titles that he penned off his article with; Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa at the University of Cape Town and a Lecturer in Morden History at the University of Zambia’
The article unsurprisingly coincided with President Hichilema’s successful participation in the US-Africa Summit in Washington and it was clear Sishuwa was attempting to obliterate and disengage the HH’s domestic achievements, from being associated with his huge foreign successes.
Sishuwa agonisingly acknowledged the Zambian President’s positive image abroad “despite lack of significant domestic achievements” amidst what he claimed was a discontented population at home.
Sishuwa accused President Hichilema of broken promises and resuming a “crippling six hour daily daily power cut” (load shedding has not resumed yet), and adding a staggering $2 billion external debt in just a year. This claim was immediately rubbished by Zambia’s prolific economic expert Alexander Nkosi:
“Dr. Sishuwa Sishuwa has shared an article indicating that the New Dawn Government has added at least USD2 billion to Zambia’s external debt in just a year.
Zambia’s official external debt is presented below:
The stock of public external debt amounted to USD14.87 billion as at end-June 2022. Of this amount, Central Government external debt
was USD13.25 billion while guaranteed and non-guaranteed external debt for State Owned Enterprises was USD1.50 billion and USD113.69 million”.
If there was anyone who exposed Sishuwa’s ill conceived agenda of lies and distortions and sent him reeling to the canvas in the first round, it was Alexander Nkosi. Numbers don’t lie.
Sishuwa’s claims of lack of ‘significant’ domestic achievements unusually blacked out the 30,000 and 11,000 newly recruited teachers and health professionals respectively, the enhanced CDF, free education from primary to secondary school for Zambian children, the single digit inflation and the Kwacha’s prolific performance. Most of all, Dr Sishuwa forgot the most important achievement; elimination of political violence that has come as a result of President’s Hichilema’s passion in the promotion of the rule of law.
President Hakainde Hichilema’s iconoclastic character will continue attracting vicious attacks from individuals like Dr Sishuwa and his contemporary Fred Mmembe. An iconoclast is a bold thinker who does not prioritise what tradition calls for, and always look for ways to change it for the better. They see options other people can’t see or won’t see, they break old paradigms and create new ones.
How else would President Hakainde Hichilema create 41,000 jobs in the education and health sectors and increase the Constituency Development Fund to levels never seen anywhere in Africa. How would he provide for free education from primary to secondary in under one year? Other than that he is an iconclast, an explorer and an economic revolutionary.
Sishuwa and his peers’ attempts to allege that HH’s monumental achievements in one year are insignificant and inconsequential are quite a stretch.