UPND AN ACCIDENT…that’s why World Bank, IMF haveabandoned this country – Nawakwi

UPND AN ACCIDENT…that’s why World Bank, IMF haveabandoned this country – Nawakwi

By Fanny Kalonda(The Mast)

THIS country under Hakainde Hichilema is going no where, says FDD leader Edith Nawakwi.
She says the UPND is a transitory government adding that “they were just an accident, it just happened on us.”

“We have reached a dead end. We have reached a point of no return,” she says. “That is why the World Bank and the IMF have literally abandoned this country because they know there is no leadership to invest in. We have a failed leadership.”

Nawakwi alleged that the UPND are the most corrupt regime, not just in Zambia but on the continent because they give each other contracts.

“Zambians wake up, this man did not come to fix it. He came to fix you. Look at the price of mealie meal. Look at the fuel prices. Look at the kwacha, look at the mess in classrooms. Look at the squalor, the dirt on the street. What do you stand for what, you stand for this country or yourself? Hakainde has no following with the Zambian people. So he thinks his only way to perpetuate his rule is to completely annihilate anything called opposition. That’s all there’s, no other reason. There is not only corruption, there is stinking corruption. I have said that by the time he leaves office he will be recorded as a most corrupted leader of this republic. One, he never declared his assets. We see him herding cattle and he’s supposed to have maybe 90,000 herds. The pictures that you members of the press see, do they give you an impression that someone has a herd of 90,000? He has almost 60 farms but is following someone with a chicken run. And he’s amassing more and more. How can one Zambian have so much property which he can’t explain? Where they got it from, they were born in the late 1950s or 60s that’s when they were born. Where did they amass the wealth? It is not generational wealth. It’s wealth created in Zambia. Over what? What are the activities that have created this ostensibly huge wealth?” she asked. “If you are found with some old wrecked car, they say no you got this car in 1990 you must have stolen. For them, you look at them, just go to State House compound. They come just recently walking, some in patapatas, now everybody is driving big cars, big houses. Where are they getting the money, we are in the same economy that is stressed? If [former foreign affairs minister Stanley] Kakubo is collecting 200,000 from two
different people, the President says ‘well done you did a good job, that’s private business’. So for me to have $5,000 in my handbag is not private business. It’s only private business when it’s Kakubo and they call each other saying no, this is transparency! He was just caught with pants down and they’re more of that because look at this point in time just observe the ministers, they were as thin as you and I, now my friend, watch them. When they are walking, they can’t even turn their necks. They have taken so much starch in their bodies which is not even healthy. There is too much, there is too much money showing in their necks. So that’s not corruption. That’s not corruption but should you be found with a with a duck that’s corruption.”

Addressing the country on national matters, Nawakwi wondered where ministers were getting money to take their families on holiday to Dubai.

“But for them, they are upgrading their homes. They’re buying big cars. They’re going for holidays abroad. That’s not corruption! I mean with this economy, these rates, with the salaries that we pay our MPs and ministers, are you telling me you can take five children to Dubai if you are not corrupt, how? And the corruption is evident because when you go, you find that the former lawyer for the President is the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions, Gilbert Phiri). So they have positioned themselves in such a way that they can protect each other,” she said. “I don’t know who advises my friend because he should have been advised to just let sleeping dogs lie. But you even go to wake up a sleeping cat to revive these stories… Because I had always said you people, you in UPND, stop this story. It’s too embarrassing to your boss. You can’t shut me up. My father is still alive, he is almost reaching 100, my friend. So he taught me to stand up for myself and I will.”

Nawakwi said UPND is a transitory government and Zambians should prove to them that they were an accident.

“The most important thing is that we must preserve this republic and show UPND that they were just an accident, it just happened on us. The International Monetary Fund, their actions of not supporting this country is because they have realised that the President has no plan. It is simply meant to create a crisis so that this country is in a crisis mode. And when the country is in a crisis mode, that’s when the international looters arrive to loot your resources. So however angry you are, however much the price of mealie meal is, however deprived you are in hospitals and schools, please know that UPND is a transitory government. Kwasala chabe two years, bazachoka (it’s only two years remaining, they are getting out of government). Hold yourselves, keeping this country safe – is the only place we have on earth,” she said. “Zambia is an oasis of peace. Unfortunately, we have a leader who has no eyes. He doesn’t understand the international plunder of African resources. He’s an accomplice to the plunder of our resources because if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t give Vedanta the mine (KCM)…We cried for a Saul, we got one but this one is worse than a combination of Saul and Herod. This one is both a herod and a saul. So the only thing we can do is keep the peace, work hard.”

Nawakwi said the World Bank and IMF have abandoned the country because they know that there is no leadership to invest in.

“If at this point in time you should actually be talking about new by-elections in Muchinga and other places, then really you have no direction. There is absolutely no way. That is why the World Bank and the IMF have literally abandoned this country because they know there is no leadership to invest in. We have a failed leadership. We have a leadership vacuum. Hakainde Hichilema has both his feet in the Patriotic Front. He can’t even organise his party. We had our children dying on the Copperbelt there and instead of being around to commensurate with the families, he heads off to Dubai. He comes back, instead of looking at what is happening with cholera, he is herding cattle on his farm. It is as though he came to govern only to be doing his personal business. And when he is not doing his personal business, he looking for which particular citizen to prosecute. I find it most unfortunate, especially that these are young people on the continent. You would ideally have thought that he should spend his time thinking about how we are going to get out of this economic malaise and lack of direction. Look at the kwacha, at K26 to a dollar. He said that by midday when he is sworn in the kwacha will be K5 and he said that he was going to fix it. Zambians didn’t hear him properly, he was actually saying Zambians I am going to fix you. He came to fix us as citizens,” she said. “I think that it is very very important to understand that this gentleman is not here to save this country from poverty. He’s here for himself and his friends. And he has collected around himself a group of friends that are simply doing what he wants to do. Whether they are bidding for him, whether it’s at mines. Whether it’s at DPP and as such he’s sent a lot of people into confusion because if I have to spend the whole morning just to wait for mention and there are 50 of us who have been charged with defective and really unfounded felonies, how about those people who are in custody who have been incarcerate for years? They have not been brought before the justices, that should be the concern of a head of state. That right now there are women and men in remand who have to be brought before the courts of law…”

Nawakwi insisted that President Hichilema has both his feet in the PF confusion.

“He can’t even organise his party. All he’s thinking about is how he’s going to annihilate all of us. If you are not in court, then he has to scheme something. He says as we saw him say at his press conference, ‘no they stole Canisius Banda’ so basically he is saying I’m doing to them what they did to me. That’s what he’s saying and a leader like that for me is extremely dangerous,” she said. “Hakainde is a danger to the democracy of this country. Whatever is happening in Patriotic Front, smells not only of UPND, smells directly of Hakainde Hichilema. He is in it because if he wasn’t in it and someone else was doing it he should be able to stand up and say stop that rot, I don’t like it. But he relishes it. Even goes on air, you members of our fourth estate give him the immeasurable time of four hours, for him to literally rant about how what he is doing to us as the members of the opposition was done to him. The people of Zambia said no to what PF was doing to UPND or any other political party, never did the people of Zambia expect that they will have another leader who is as vengeful. Who is so insecure. Who is angry as Hakainde Hichilema.”

Nawakwi said the international community should stop sleeping “because they are responsible for installing Hakainde Hichilema”.

“They should understand that the crisis that Hakainde Hichilema is fanning in this country is detrimental to the future of the continent first and foremost and secondary to the future of Zambia because one, we are stagnant. We are not developing economically, politically and socially and you you cannot have a country which is this stagnant,” said Nawakwi. “It is as though the President is the one who is the Minister of Finance and I laugh honestly, some of us who have done these jobs we laugh [that] the Minister of Finance is defacto. The boss for the director of the International Monetary Fund I cannot have my President telling the whole world that ‘no me am on phone with the World Bank and IMF’. He’s on phone with his juniors and is relishing that! I want to hear [Dr Situmbeko]

Musokotwane saying this afternoon I had an interaction with the director of the World Bank or the IMF director or the President or something. I also want to hear that the President has been talking on the phone with Joe Biden and [Xi] Jinping. Those are his colleagues, not these junior officials of the Word Bank. But obviously I forgive Hakainde Hichilema. From Grant Thornton to State House,
then from the ranch to State House. He has no public office experience and in his nature he doesn’t listen to advice because we have seasoned civil servants. I’m sure Dr Musokotwane could sit him down and say Mr President, we don’t do that. Look at us as Zambians. God has been kind, some rains are here but there is complete mess in the field.

There is no fertiliser because they have been giving each other contracts. They are the most corrupt regime, not just in Zambia but on the continent.”