By MacPherson Mutale
“During the campaigns leading upto the August 12, 2021 elections, the United Party for National Development (UPND), made so many promises to their members.
The members have not forgotten those promises while some of the now ministers and other presidential appointees have already forgotten.
Many UPND members paid a huge price for simply identifying themselves with the party. Some lost their lives and yet many more became maimed in the process.
There is still over a 100 youths in Zambian prisons who were arrested for simply being UPND. The sad reality is that, 5 months after the UPND won the elections, most of these youths are still languishing in jail.
Many people lost their jobs, their careers, their businesses and some had to abandon their families to go and hide from the torment of the PF thug cadres.
Belonging to UPND made anyone seem and feel like a third class citizen. Wearing a UPND attire was booking a date with death. Being UPND was a risk and one that was punishable by grievous consequences.
The kind of terror that hit our country was so massive that the whole country went into silence save for the UPND youths who stood tall and met this barbaric regime head on.
Those who were sympathetic to the UPND were threatened and stalked and their phones tapped.
I recall an encounter with one of the presidential aids who summoned me to see him because I had called them a mafia.
When I go to the meeting place, he had a pistol on the table while he questioned me why I had called them a mafia. I was not moved and I told him that it was acts like that which made me call them mafia.
Long story short, I was told in no uncertain terms that I would never enter a government office, get a government job or any government contract.
True to his word, a little consultancy contract I had with one of the agencies that was working with Ministry of finance was put on ice despite having a contract fully signed even by the office of the Attorney General.
When president HH and his team were campaigning, they made a great deal of promises to not just liberate Zambia but to also provide a level playing field for all Zambians to succeed.
It is those promises that the youths are asking for. They want to be part of the national cake. They have been at the peripheral of the food chain for two decades.
When president HH and his team were campaigning, they respectfully called those young people as freedom fighters and youths. Today because president HH and his team are in government, they should not turn around and call these youths as cadres.
They are the same youths who sacrificed their comfort to see this country get a better leadership.
Not all those who stood with UPND were graduates. Most are just young people without any post high school qualifications. What they want are opportunities and a chance at life.
Not all of them will find jobs and not all of them can create opportunities for themselves. They need to be empowered and they need to be constantly engaged.
Today we have heard from some of President HH’s team calling these youths as cadres who want to destroy the party.
They have become detestable and the leaders want to keep them at arm’s length. Some of the ministers don’t want to identify with these young people anymore.
When the president and his now ministers were campaigning and urging these youths to campaign, they told them they will be empowered and they will enjoy a better Zambia.
It is that promise that these youths are demanding for. Yes it is too early but we need to see signs that the needs of the youths will be taken care off.
Out if the current cabinet, how many youths below 35 are there? Show me just two. From the current crop of DCs, show me how many are youths.
From the appointments to the so many portfolios, commissions, boards, diplomatic jobs, how many youths can you show us?
What is going to define the success of the UPND is not the cosmetic economic turnaround at the very top, rather it’s the economic empowerment of the youths of this country.
I said it way before the elections that the biggest challenge the UPND will face after winning elections is managing expectations.
When the UPND came into office, they found a system that was build around the PF as a party. Most senior government officials and administrators are those who were appointed on the basis of their political correctness.
These are the same people who are 5 months after the change of the party are still controlling the system. What the PF created was literally a mafia system and if the president think he can cleanse this system using the rule of law, he has to scratch his head everyday.
Some of the people who continue to hold senior government jobs are PF cadres. They may try to pretend that they are civil servants and they will align themselves with the government of the day, but, that will be HH,s undoing.
The new Ministers and Permanent Secretaries are already getting compromised. These are people who have been in opposition for over 20 years and some of them are hungry.
They will learn from those crooks how to siphon and chop government resources. This is a cancer that needed amputation and not drugs to relieve the pain as the president is doing.
This cancer will eat the UPND from inside out. These people are selfish and self serving. They want everything to themselves. Anything that the president and his team will do to upset the existing status quo will be fought aggressively.
The PF people are the same who want the oil deals, the mining deals, the supply deals and contracting jobs. Yes they have the capacity because they stole so much money.
The contractor who billed us $1.2 billion dollars to do the Lusaka- Ndola Dual Carriage today has come back that they can do the same project with same specifications at half the price. That should tell you how deep rooted the corruption was.
When the UPND youths demand for certain incentives, they are not being entitled as other people want it to seem. They want to be equalized. They want to also begin to benefit from this project called Zambia.
It should not be just the UPND youths making these demands, but every Zambian youth. The youths of this country have been marginalized for way too long.
The UPND Secretariate should stop behaving like an extension of cabinet office. Their job is to fend for the needs of the UPND youth. President HH and his ministers and other appointed leaders can fight for the needs of the rest of us.
This is what politics is all about everywhere. The party in power enjoys certain privileges. They are given priority in certain things. This is the truth not even the UPND leadership and the youth leadership are not brave enough to speak out.
President HH,s promises were fiesta and foremost to his own youth and later to the rest of Zambia. He better not forget that. There is a stack reminder of that in Malawi.
Youths are not tired to demand for what they want. It does not matter how long you have been in office, you have to demonstrate willingness to address youth matters.
Let me remind the UPND as a party that, your youths are looking to you to provide opportunities for them. You have removed them from markets and bus stations.
You call those who want to do mining as illegal miners, you protect the foreigners who are mining without licenses and yet you are so aggressive against your own young people.
Do you know that most of the so called foreign investors in the lower Zambezi have actually been mining precious stones?
The Kabwata by- election was a protest from your members just in case you did not know. It had to take the president and the Veep to camp in Kabwata to salvage this election.
The earlier you wake up the better. Some of us will tell you the truth as it is on the ground. If you buy it, that is fine, if you don’t, it’s your loss. We advised your predecessors in similar fashion and they thought we needed jobs.
No, we want the best for our country. When HH succeeds, Zambia success and we all win. In our own small way, we stuck out our necks for his election, not because needed anything in return, but to get back our country from the hijackers.
You have been in office for this long and you still don’t seem to know how to use the mandate give to you by Zambians.
The PF are still ruling and you are busy negotiating to get the authority Zambians already gave you.
The president should be brave and fire all those sleeping ministers. Let him stop babysitting adults. He is micro managing most of them. They will tire him and make him unpopular.
There is no lack of human resource in this country. We want to see a Breethe Zambia and we voted Bally for that.
Wake up UPND and stop eating yourselves from inside out. You have no competition, you are you own competitors and your own enemies.”