The war among praise singers- Azwell Banda

The war among praise singers



By Azwell Banda,



Every political system and regime has their own philosophers, ideologists, propagandists, charlatans, professional politicians, parasites and the like.

The job of these fellows, among other things, is to secure consent for their political system or regime, no matter how oppressive and exploitative such political systems or regimes may be. Taken together, these are the true “praise singers” of any regime: they philosophise, rationalise, defend, advance, and by hook or crook use their twisted brains to manufacture justifications for the evil excesses of their political idols and economic masters. In return, some are handsomely rewarded with government jobs and government business.

Some among these praise singers actually do believe in what they say; they are real and honest admirers of the political system and regime they support. Some, however, are fake praise singers who are hell bent on securing and advancing their own personal interests from the political system, regime and its leaders. Both types however, are a grave danger to the human search for truth, to science, to morality, and therefore to human progress and development. The worst type of both kinds of praise singers are those who are pathologically loyal to individuals in their favoured political system or regime. It is among this crop of pathologically loyal praise singers that political assassins are nurtured and manufactured.

Long in the making, but fully matured after our August the 12th 2021 elections, the tribal, ethnic, and regional divisions in Zambia best expressed in the ruthless and vicious competition for political power between the two largest parliamentary parties in Zambia today, the United Party for National Development (UPND) and the Patriotic Front (PF), have also become the frontlines of the war among our praise singers of all shades and types, of both the UPND and the PF.

Among other things, the PF praise singers are single-mindedly focused on generating a national political consciousness of acceptance that the UPND are pathological liars, political armatures, incompetent, also thoroughly corrupt and responsible for the mass hunger, unemployment, poverty and grotesque economic, social, cultural and political inequalities in Zambia since they formed government. To achieve their aims, PF praise singers grasp and exploit any real and imagined fault, failure, mistake and alleged crime of the UPND government. Objectively, and scientifically, it is true that the UPND, and Hakainde Hichilema in particular, are pathological liars; social media is full of video clips those angry with the UPND and Hichilema, including PF praise singers, have dug up to illustrate just how pathetic liars the UPND and Hichilema are.

What makes such exposures extremely hypocritical, thoroughly malicious and evilly deceptive from the PF praise singers of the pathologies of lying, stealing, corruption, incompetence and similar evils of the UPND and Hakainde is that such exposures are exploited as political weapons in the war for political power by the PF; they do not spring from a sincere desire to rid Zambia of such evils. The UPND and Hakainde in government have just proved how rotten, liars, thieves, corrupt and incompetent all our current political parties and their leaders actually are, when given the mandate to govern Zambia! It has become such that the PF today, once more in opposition, can even boast that their worst is not even the best of the UPND in government! This is actually how rotten barely three years in government the UPND and Hakainde Hichilema have turned out to be. And yet the PF does not tell us how they will avoid turning out worse than the UPND, in government. The PF have instead arrogantly stuck to the idea that we, the majority of Zambians, were better off under their dictatorship.

Three years in government and the UPND have absolutely nothing to show for why the majority of Zambians voted for them: reduction in the then already too high cost of living and cost of doing business, and our loss of our human, political and democratic rights. Every UPND minister is a muppet genius and has their own personal explanation and defence for the dramatic disaster the UPND have turned out to be, in government. In general, however, the UPND and its very militant praise singing choir cannot free themselves from flogging the PF as the source of all their failings, in government. It is clear they will forever be failing to undo the failings, weaknesses, evil and dictatorship of the PF until they, the UPND, are somehow removed from government.

The UPND and Hichilema have conveniently made the PF their excuse for all their painful and disastrous management of the state, our economy and our society, as if they were elected into government to remind us how bad the PF were. When in opposition, Hakainde and his friends in the UPND clearly promised Zambians that they would competently, efficiently and humanely “fix” Zambia, instead of the permanent boring song they now all sing every time Zambians and especially PF praise singers remind them of the many promises they made Zambians, about “fixing” Zambia’s problems.

It is clear the UPND praise singers can now only frighten Zambians with the possibility of the “evil PF” returning back into government, as the only real reason why Zambians must continue to support the UPND and Hichilema. Of course, they are “spicing” this argument with their wrong-headed, arrogant idea that “there is no credible opposition” to the UPND and Hichilema. This is pathetic, and very laughable: if Chiluba, Rupiah, Lungu and Hichilema can be presidents of Zambia, Zambia has millions of such low lifers, liars and corrupt individuals to choose from, in order to replace Hakainde and his band of very corrupt incompetents and liars. Zambia has some of the lowest standards and qualifications for being a governing party, and a president of Zambia. It is very cheap and extremely insulting to millions of Zambians to assume that Zambia has a shortage of the calibre of corrupt, incompetent liars like boring Hichilema and his friends in the UPND.

Sure, that the UPND and Hichilema have become political villains and extremely unpopular barely three years into their only term of office because of the mass hunger and extreme poverty they have unleashed upon Zambia, it must be expected that the UPND praise singers will soon go into over drive to smooth over the UPND unconstitutional manoeuvres to amend the Zambian Constitution to guarantee that Hichilema is not humiliated, and loses his and the money of his supporters, by being booted out of office after just one miserable term. The recent scary warnings and mouthing of UPND national youth chairperson Gilbert Liswaniso must be understood in this light: the UPND will break any law, tinker with the Constitution, and bastardise the executive, parliament, the judiciary and the Electoral Commission to guarantee Hakainde and the UPND a second term, and more.

All praise singers are basically the same: they all provide ideological cover for capitalist exploitation of the majority of Zambians, imperialist domination of Zambia, and the evil excesses of their political parties and their leaders. By framing the capitalist system as beneficial for progressive, all praise singers obscure the realities of economic inequality and class struggles in Zambia, and the tribal, ethnic and regional power bases of their political parties. This is true for all praise singers, including those in the Socialist Party.

It is above all the intellectually and academically advantaged praise singers of all political parties who are the most dangerous: using their public status as prominent figures, public intellectuals, well known academics and so on, they unintentionally or intentionally reinforce our primitive neo-colonial structures and the material and cultural historic poverty they have thrust upon us. All of them advocate for reforms within the existing neo-colonial and capitalist framework rather than challenging the system itself; thus, they perpetuate our dependency on imperialism and underdevelopment.

Tow egregious evils all our praise singers perpetuate: by lining up behind ethnically, tribally, and regionally organised political parties, they divide and drive Zambia towards civil war along tribal and regional lines. As they elevate ethnicities, tribes and regions, they simultaneously conceal and underplay the importance of class struggles in neo-colonial capitalist Zambia. All our praise singers hypocritically focus on issues like “democracy” and “human rights and freedoms” while downplaying and ignoring the central role of class conflict in societal change, in all capitalist states including Zambia.

By elevating their political party leaders to little gods, all praise singers substitute individual loyalty and fanatical political party support for serious political thought and analysis of such important very current subjects as slavery, colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, nationalism, class, gender, decolonisation, socialism and communism and so on. Instead, rather than view our Zambian state and society using such prisms, our praise singers would rather we discuss “love and hate” for political leaders and comparisons of the political behaviours of equally evil, thoroughly incompetent and criminal politicians. Praise singers do not know and understand the full details of how their leaders and political parties resource their political activities. This way, all praise singers actually may act in ways that facilitate imperialist agendas for Zambia, especially by supporting policies and institutions that serve the interests of powerful capitalist nations or corporations, such as the US and its western allies and their International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB). This way too, praise singers also facilitate corruption and the concertation of power in one individual, in their political parties.

We see therefore that all praise singers, in truth, are enemies of the broad masses of Zambia of all tribes, ethnicities and from all regions as the praise singers actually promote, advance and defend divisions of Zambians along tribe, ethnic and regional lines. Praise singers poison the intellectual environment in Zambia by their bullying tactics, cantankerous support and blind loyalty for their political leaders and political parties.

All praise singers, like all zombies, actually undermine science by dismissing scientific socialism as the only scientifically proven antidote to capitalism. Even when they pay lip service to socialist ideas, by advocating for capitalist or mixed economy reforms instead of scientific socialism, they attack and weaken the potential for genuine, structural and systemic change, and class liberation, the only solutions to all our problems. The verbal war among praise singers is a reflection of how morally rotten and intellectually bankrupt much of our professional, intellectual and academic communities have become!



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