News Diggers
The pain of being ruled by a president you treated like trash
THERE are people in this country who hate President Hakainde Hichilema so much that if they had a way, they would leave Zambia so that they are not part of the population under his rule. They never imagined that a day would come in their lives and Hakainde Hichilema’s portrait would be on the wall of every government institution. This nightmare is making them curse every Zambian who voted for change of government. These people don’t hate President Hichilema for the kind of leader that he is, it’s rather personal. They treated this man like trash and now they are having to live with the pain of surviving under his rule. This group of people is in a hurry to demonise the President out of spite.
Whenever President Hichilema speaks, these haters look out for words which they can use to influence public hatred towards him. They don’t even pay attention to the policy pronouncements that he makes. This is exactly what happened last week. President Hichilema’s critics have gone in overdrive condemning him over remarks he made at the Airport which they describe as an attack on former republican presidents. Some are calling him a “disrespectful tribalist” and demanding that he must apologise instead of attempting to justify his words. But what did he say?
A journalist asked the President to comment on accusations from his critics who allege that reinstatements of civil servants was being done along tribal lines. The first thing that the President said was to caution the journalist to be careful when dealing with issues of ethnicity and hegemony.
President HICHILEMA: “You have to be careful when you ask questions of ethnicity. First you must start from the premise that all Zambians are entitled to jobs, and we must not make an issue because that is a human right. You are entitled to be a journalist and you cannot be a tribalist just because you work for Diamond TV. That’s mischief by the tribalists who did not want this country to be run by anyone else other than a clique of thieves like them. I call them a clique of thieves because they have been feeding off public resources from independence. They don’t think that someone else, other people, can run a country in a better way to redistribute jobs and resources.”
We cannot understand how a right thinking member of society can interpret the above statement as an attack on former presidents. The journalist asked the President to respond to accusations made by “some opposition leaders”. Therefore, whatever the President said was directed at those opposition leaders. There is no former president who is an opposition leader. In fact, of all the six former presidents, only two are alive today. Therefore it is not possible that the President was talking about Dr Kenneth Kaunda, Frederick Chiluba, Levy Mwanawasa, Micheal Sata or any of the two surviving ex-leaders. But those people who hate President Hichilema naturally, found an opportunity to influence the public to think that way.
We all saw and heard that the President was responding to concerns around the criteria used to reinstate civil servants. We don’t think there is any former president who is complaining of being sidelined in the reinstatement process. This has nothing to do with former presidents, but those who had captured the civil service and feeding off public resources. This is the reason why the President emphasises that every Zambian is entitled to a job. Those who recall how some civil servants were illegally fired under PF because they hail from Southern and Western Province will remember that President Hichilema made a promise to reverse this. During his campaign, he publicly mentioned on several occasions that all innocent victims of the PF brutal regime would get back their jobs.
Those who are complaining that the reinstatements of civil servants is being done on tribal lines are failing to think. If those who were being illegally retired in public interest were mostly from the West and South, for example, how do you expect the list of reinstatements to be populated more by Easterners? It’s a clear lack of reasoning which can be confirmed by their claim that the President was attacking his predecessors.
President Hichilema is trying to fix a problem that the PF created, starting from the structure of Cabinet, all the way to the low ranking civil servants. We consider it President Hichilema’s duty to see to it that Zambians who felt like endangered species because they belonged to a particular tribe, are liberated. It is his duty to make Westerners and Southerners feel liberated. Our brothers and sisters from those previously marginalised regions must know that they are entitled to occupy government positions which were always occupied by other regions. Our brothers and sisters from those regions must enjoy the freedom to report for work freely and to speak their mother tongue without fear of getting fired.
We have always said that tribalism in Zambia only exists among politicians, it’s a tool for denting each other’s image. You can travel every square mile and inch of this country and you will never find a place where a Zambian will detest you for the mere fact that you are of a different tribe. But haters continue to use tribe to attack the integrity of their political rivals. It’s such a shame! For many years, they have been singing the same tribal song against Hakainde Hichilema. During elections they used a tribal tag to deny him votes, but the people of Zambia refused to buy it. We don’t understand why some people can hold this much hate for one person for this long.
President Hichilema is not perfect, he will make mistakes as he has already done in several occasions. When he makes a bad decision for us as citizens of this country, we must criticise him, and it’s a okay to call him a bad leader. But we must not let those who hate him for personal reasons influence public outrage over a crime that he has not committed.
This is time for Hakainde Hichilema to rule Zambia and we must let him rule according to his measure. The beauty of democracy is that it gives you the liberty to elect bad leaders and the freedom to vote them out and the end of their tenure in office. It is the people of Zambia from all corners of this country who gave Mr Hichilema the mandate to rule. If they think he is favouring one tribe over another, they know what to do in August 2026. For now the clique of thieves must sit down and watch!