By Chambwa Moonga
UPND elections committee chairman Gary Nkombo has ‘averted’ some Tonga chiefs’ impending plot to vilify the opposition party and its leader Hakainde Hichilema.
This afternoon, some senior UPND officials held an urgent meeting at Hichilema’s residence in New Kasama area in Lusaka.
Present in the meeting were Mutale Nalumango, Levy Ngoma, Jack Mwiimbu, Bernard Mpundu, Hichilema, Douglas Syakalima, Obvious Mwaliteta and William Banda.
Others were Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane, Namakau Kabwiku and Ambrose Lufuma.
Once the meeting was over, Nalumango and Nkombo addressed journalists.
Nkombo, who is Mazabuka Central member of parliament, said it was no longer a secret that the Zambia Police, under the inspectorate of Kakoma Kanganja and a few senior police officers, were allowing those in the PF: “to hibernate under their (police) noses, while committing atrocities.”
“The plan that the PF have, associated with the President’s visit, we would like to address the police to ensure that they exclude themselves from PF intentions because the truth has no disguise,” Nkombo said.
President Edgar Lungu is likely to be in Monze and Maala area in Namwala district, this week.
“In the style of demagogue operations, the nation would hear statements, most likely from the host chiefs – Chona, Ufwenuka, Hamaundu and maybe chief Mwanza – remarks that appear to be disparaging the UPND and its leader,” Nkombo noted.
“We would like to pre-empt those statements by stating that it is very clear what the chiefs I have mentioned stand for. We’ll not shy away from talking with them and also about them.”
He told the aforementioned chiefs that there was decency in leading people.
“People that are led must be respected. A chief is only a chief on two accounts only; because they administer land and they administer people,” Nkombo said.
“Any chief worth his or her salt must, at all times, try to be very close to these two [responsibilities because] there will be no chief without people. There will be no chief without land.”
He added that even before those chiefs read their anti-Hichilema scripts, “coined by PF’s Bizwell Mutale and his group, we would like them to do some introspection.”
“They must not put themselves in a mortgage cage, because the visit of the President is only going to last for that one day. After that they will continue to commingle and associate with the people who they lead,” Nkombo advised.
“It is our wish that our chiefs remain with the respect, decorum that comes along with that responsibility. We’ve been down this road before where chiefs have been asked to make statements that they don’t even believe in themselves. Money is liquid, it’s fluid, if you haven’t (suffered for it) for it, especially. It disappears like vapour.”
He told UPND supporters countrywide that when they hear statements coming from those chiefs, “who may be operating from people’s pockets, just take them on face value.”
“[But] continue respecting them as chiefs, because it’s their inherent inheritance – we cannot go in that domain. But chiefs are chiefs because of people and land and any wise chief will side with the greater will of the people,” noted Nkombo.