TEN YEARS SINCE SIX JOURNALISTS WERE FIRED
By Kennedy Limwanya, Journalist and Media Consultant.
Patriotic Front (PF) politician Emmanuel Mwamba has responded to my newspaper write-up which was, later, used as a script for a documentary that was aired on Prime Television and Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation TV1.
I’m grateful to the two media houses.
It is not the first time Emmanuel is responding to me through Facebook.
For those who may not have read my article or watched the documentary, it was simply marking five years since the PF, under which administration Emmanuel served for 10 years, arrested United Party for National Development president Hakainde Hichilema for a trumped-up treason charge.
In Emmanuel’s wisdom, the Zambian people do not deserve to be reminded about where they are coming from.
He says the documentary makes “unfounded allegations against the Patriotic Front Government and President Edgar Lungu . . .”
Really?
Emmanuel adds that “The documentary also abuses the images of the late President Rupiah Banda, cataloguing how he was allegedly extensively mistreated by the Patriotic Front government . . .”
Was Mr Banda not mistreated until he helped Mr Lungu win the 2015 presidential election?
I was a witness to all the mistreatment and humiliation he underwent both at home and abroad and this is a part of what I have been documenting for posterity.
There should be no need for pretence if we are to heal our country from the atrocities of the past.
According to Emmanuel’s thinking, telling history as it happened amounts to sowing “Seeds of Discord, Seeds of Genocide.”
So, should the Zambian people pretend that at no point did anyone get gassed?
Should we pretend that Nsama Nsama and Joseph Kaunda were not shot dead on the day UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema was appearing for questioning at Zambia Police Headquarters?
Should we pretend that a University of Zambia female student never suffocated to death because of a tear gas canister thrown into her room?
Should we pretend that six young Times of Zambia journalists were not dismissed in 2012 for merely being perceived to be Movement for Multiparty Democracy sympathisers, a few months after the PF assumed power in September 2011?
A detailed response to Emmanuel’s Facebook post will come in due course.
In the meantime, today, 13 April, 2022, marks exactly 10 years since six journalists were unceremoniously hounded out of the Times of Zambia at gun point.
These were Bob Sianjalika, Patson Phiri, Abel Mboozi, Obert Simwanza, Richard Mulonga and Whytney Mulobela.
Don’t the Zambian people deserve to be told the truth about the past?