Who Killed President Chiluba? Saviour Chishimba gives Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba 24 hours to apologise…

EMMANUEL MWAMBA: ATTACK MY POLITICS, NOT MY JEWISH IDENTITY

I have seen Emmanuel Mwamba’s attack on my defence of President Hakainde Hichilema, which he dismisses as “laughable”. Political criticism does not trouble me. I have lived in politics long enough to know that if you enter the public arena, your arguments, decisions and record will be challenged. What I take the strongest possible exception to is Emmanuel Mwamba dragging my Jewish identity and Jewish name into what should have remained a political disagreement. Let me therefore begin there.

I am a Jew. I am proud to be Jewish. My Jewish name is Yehudah Ben David. If Emmanuel Mwamba disagrees with Saviour Chishimba the politician, let him confront my arguments. Let him challenge my defence of President Hakainde Hichilema. Let him challenge my record. Let him produce facts. Do not reach for Yehudah Ben David the Jew because you disagree with Saviour Chishimba the politician. My jewishness is not an insult. My Hebrew name is not an object of ridicule. My Jewish identity is not ammunition for political combat.

There is something particularly disturbing about this because Zambia has travelled this road of identity politics before. We have seen attempts by the PF and their new splinter formations to reduce political disagreement to tribe, region and ancestry. I recognise that mentality immediately when one’s identity is similarly introduced into political disagreement. It is wrong when directed against a Jew. It is wrong when directed against a Christian. It is wrong when directed against a Muslim. It is wrong when directed against a Bemba, Tonga, Lozi, Ngoni, Lunda, Luvale, Kaonde, Bisa or any other community. A political argument must be answered with a political argument.

EMMANUEL MWAMBA KNOWS PART OF MY POLITICAL HISTORY

There is another reason Emmanuel Mwamba’s pontification about my political position is extraordinary. He knows me. Our political paths did not cross yesterday. He knows that my concerns about the political culture surrounding the Patriotic Front began long before PF formed Government and long before Hakainde Hichilema became President.

I entered PF believing that its message was genuinely about ordinary people. Before entering frontline politics, my professional work involved strategic planning, development programming, project development and resource mobilisation, including work involving Catholic dioceses and international development agencies. That was the intellectual orientation I brought into politics.

When President Michael Sata invited me to contribute ideas towards strengthening the PF programme, I did so seriously. I contributed to the intellectual work around the PF manifesto, including the lower tax philosophy that I have continued advocating throughout my public life. I worked closely with serious technocrats, including the late Dr Chileshe Mulenga. We were not playing politics. We believed we were developing a programme capable of improving people’s lives.

Then came the campaign. That was when I began encountering another side of PF. I began hearing political messages that could change depending upon the audience and geographical location. In Lusaka, for example, I heard President Sata argue that the Task Force on Corruption should be abolished because Zambia already had law enforcement institutions that could be strengthened rather than maintaining another expensive structure. Elsewhere, I encountered a different political message concerning the same institution.

That troubled me profoundly. I believe in structure. I believe in order. I believe in consistency. I  believe that when you make a commitment to the people, you must possess the discipline and integrity to stand by it. What you say in Lusaka must remain true in Luapula. What you say in Kasama must remain true in Livingstone. Integrity cannot have a provincial accent.

During the 2006 campaign I increasingly realised that I might have entered the wrong political environment. My concerns became so profound that approximately three weeks before Parliament opened, I prepared to walk away before even beginning my parliamentary career. I had prepared a resignation. Then President Frederick Jacob Titus Chiluba heard about it.

THE DAY PRESIDENT CHILUBA CALLED ME

At that time, President Chiluba and I were not close. I knew him, naturally, as a former President of Zambia. I did not have the personal relationship with him that subsequently developed. Unknown to me, however, President Chiluba had been following my political activities. I later learnt, including through the late former Northern Province Minister Daniel Bwalya Kapapa, that President Chiluba had taken an interest in the emergence of a young political leader from Kasama.

When he learnt that I intended to walk away, President Chiluba called me to his residence on Serval Road in Kabulonga. That was the first occasion on which I sat privately, face to face, with President Frederick Chiluba. He spoke to me at length. He explained things about Michael Sata, PF and the political environment I had entered. He told me not to feel isolated by what I was discovering. Most importantly, he persuaded me not to surrender my parliamentary mandate before I had even begun serving the people who had elected me. I listened. I did not submit that resignation.

In the years that followed, President Chiluba and I became extremely close. Emmanuel Mwamba knows this. He knows because he was there too. He encountered me around President Chiluba repeatedly. He knows that when I speak about those years, I am not reconstructing history from newspaper cuttings. I was there.

I SAW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN POWER DISAPPEARS FROM A PRESIDENT

Those years taught me lessons about politics that I will carry in my entire life. I saw what happens when political power disappears from a President. I saw people who had once surrounded a President disappear. I saw the difference between people who love an office and people who remain loyal to a human being after the office has gone. President Chiluba went through an extraordinarily difficult period.

His legal battles were public. The restrictions surrounding his finances were public. His health problems were public. His political isolation was visible. There were things President Chiluba told me privately about that period which I will never publish. Some are deep secrets on the very soul of Zambia. There were also things I personally did to make his life more comfortable. I will never enumerate them. I did not do them so that one day I could advertise them on Facebook. They were acts performed for another human being during a difficult period of his life. Those matters remain between me, President Chiluba wherever he rests, and Heaven. May his memory be for a blessing.

THE MWIINGA FAMILY AND THE MEANING OF LOYALTY

There is one story President Chiluba personally told me that has never left me. He spoke about the extraordinary loyalty shown to him by the family of the late Benny Mwiinga. During a period when many people who had enjoyed the privileges of his presidency were no longer around him, the Mwiinga family maintained their relationship with him.

President Chiluba told me about the family periodically travelling from Southern Province and bringing an entire slaughtered animal for his household. Remember that Benny Mwiinga was already dead during this period, but his family remained loyal to President Chiluba.

Somebody may look at that and see only a cow. President Chiluba saw something much greater. He saw loyalty. A man who had once commanded the machinery of the Republic was discovering the difference between the friendships of power and the friendships of life. That lesson has remained with me.

NOW LET US TALK ABOUT EMMANUEL MWAMBA AND LOYALTY

Emmanuel Mwamba should therefore be extremely careful when he climbs onto a political pulpit to lecture other people about loyalty, betrayal and integrity. He knows his own history. During President Chiluba’s final years, Emmanuel Mwamba was not a distant political commentator. He was there.

He worked in President Chiluba’s office as an administrative assistant and spokesman. He communicated President Chiluba’s positions. He defended him publicly. He spoke on his behalf. Most importantly, Emmanuel Mwamba knows exactly how profound the political differences between President Frederick Chiluba and Michael Sata became.

President Chiluba had supported Michael Sata in 2006. Later, that relationship collapsed politically. President Chiluba openly shifted his support to President Rupiah Bwezani Banda. This was not whispered in somebody’s bedroom. It was public. It was emphatic. It was communicated to the Zambian people and who was communicating many of those positions? Emmanuel Mwamba.

In February 2010, it was Emmanuel Mwamba who publicly explained that President Chiluba had moved away from Sata and was supporting President Rupiah Banda because Chiluba considered Sata inconsistent. When President Chiluba subsequently described Michael Sata as an opportunist and declared that his support for President Rupiah Banda was irrevocable, those statements were communicated through Emmanuel Mwamba.

When Michael Sata threatened political and legal action against President Chiluba, Emmanuel Mwamba publicly defended Chiluba and warned that such action would backfire. When the political acrimony between Chiluba and Sata intensified, Emmanuel Mwamba stood before the country as the voice of President Chiluba’s office. These things happened. They are recorded. Zambia remembers.

Then President Frederick Chiluba died on 18 June 2011. A few months later, Zambia went to the polls. President Rupiah Banda, whom President Chiluba had openly supported, lost the presidency. Michael Sata won. Then came one of those extraordinary turns in Zambian political history. The same Michael Sata whose political attacks Emmanuel Mwamba had spent the preceding period answering on behalf of President Chiluba was now President of the Republic.

Within weeks of President Sata assuming office, Emmanuel Mwamba was sworn in as Permanent Secretary for Northern Province under the Michael Sata administration, through what State House described at the time as a redeployment within the civil service. These are not allegations. This is history. This is public record. Zambia remembers. Heaven remembers. I will leave that chronology exactly where it stands. I do not need to decorate it. I do not need to tell Zambians what conclusion to draw from it. History has its own voice.

Those of us who were actually there remember considerably more than we sometimes choose to say publicly. I know what I personally witnessed. I know conversations in which I personally participated. I now who was around President Chiluba. I know who stood where when circumstances were difficult and Emmanuel Mwamba knows that I was there.

There are chapters concerning the final years of President Frederick Chiluba which Zambia has never properly documented. One day, perhaps, our country should undertake a serious historical accounting of that period.  There may be legitimate questions surrounding the final period of President Chiluba’s life deserving examination through proper institutions and evidence. For now, I will say only this, “Zambia remembers. Those who were there remember and Heaven remembers. History has a very long memory.”

MY OWN BREAK WITH PF COST ME SOMETHING

My own eventual political break with PF is equally part of the public record. I did not wait for PF to form Government. I did not wait for PF to lose power. I did not wait until another President could offer me political comfort. In 2009, I resigned from PF and relinquished my Kasama Central parliamentary seat. I surrendered elected office.

There are politicians who discover principles after losing appointments. There are politicians who discover dictatorship after being removed from office. There are politicians who discover corruption after falling out with the people they once defended. My disagreements with the political culture I had encountered in PF preceded PF entering Government. When I could no longer reconcile my principles with the direction of the political system around me, I walked away from a parliamentary seat entrusted to me by the people of Kasama Central. That decision had a cost. Principle that costs nothing is very easy.

SO LET US TALK ABOUT PRESIDENT HAKAINDE HICHILEMA

Emmanuel Mwamba says my defence of President Hakainde Hichilema is laughable. Fine. Then answer it. Bring the facts. When I defend President Hichilema, I make arguments. I speak about policies. I speak about decisions. I speak about the condition in which Zambia found itself and the direction in which I believe the country should move. Nobody is compelled to agree with me. Emmanuel Mwamba is entitled to publish an article tomorrow morning challenging every sentence I have written in defence of President Hichilema. What he is not entitled to do without challenge is substitute my Jewish identity for an answer to my political argument.

There is also a wider sickness here that Zambia must confront.

WE HAVE SEEN THIS POLITICS OF IDENTITY BEFORE

President Frederick Chiluba was criticised relentlessly. Nobody needed to indict an entire Ushi ethnic community in order to criticise Chiluba. President Levy Mwanawasa was subjected to ferocious political criticism. His Lenje/Lamba tribe was not the argument. President Rupiah Banda was called all manner of names and challenged relentlessly. Being Ngoni was not an offence. President Michael Sata was one of the most controversial political figures Zambia has produced. His Bisa ethnic origins were not a legitimate substitute for criticism of his politics.

President Edgar Lungu was criticised by many of us. We challenged his Government. We challenged decisions made under his presidency. His ethnicity was not the legitimate indictment.

Then comes Hakainde Hichilema. Suddenly, political disagreement too often acquires an ethnic vocabulary. Suddenly, Tonga speaking people can find themselves collectively dragged into arguments about one politician. That is dangerous.

Hakainde Hichilema is President of Zambia. Criticise him as President. Challenge his Government. Challenge his economic policies. Challenge his appointments. Challenge his record. Challenge his political decisions, but being Tonga must never become the charge sheet. The Tonga speaking citizen in Monze who has never met Hakainde Hichilema is no more responsible for every decision made at State House than a Bisa speaking citizen was responsible for every decision Michael Sata made.

This Republic belongs equally to all of us. That is why I immediately recognise the ugliness of identity politics when Emmanuel Mwamba brings my Jewish identity into an argument about President Hichilema. The mentality is familiar. When you cannot defeat the argument, identify the person by tribe, religion, ancestry or origin and make the identity itself part of the attack. That is poisonous politics. Zambia cannot become great by dividing its citizens into tribes and religions and then deciding whose patriotism is legitimate.

I AM GIVING EMMANUEL MWAMBA 24 HOURS

I therefore call upon Emmanuel Mwamba to withdraw the reference to my Jewish identity and apologise for introducing my Jewish heritage into a political disagreement. I give him 24 hours. There is not part of the world that I cannot reach on a click of a button.

I am not demanding a cessation of criticism against me. Let him criticise me. Let him attack my defence of President Hichilema. Let him publish ten pages against me. Let him challenge everything I have ever written politically. I will answer him, but he must answer my politics with politics and my facts with facts.

There is a boundary responsible political leaders must defend even when disagreement becomes fierce. My Judaism is not an insult. My Hebrew name is not an object of ridicule. My identity is not available for political weaponisation.

Jews understand the consequences of allowing religious hostility to begin as casual political rhetoric and then pretending it is harmless. We therefore take antisemitism seriously. Very seriously and we fight it TOGETHER wherever it occurs. No one is beyond reach for justice. Emmanuel Mwamba should take notice. I am Yehudah Ben David (Saviour Chishimba). I am Jewish. I am Zambian. I am proud of both.

I will defend my President when I believe he deserves defending. I will defend my country when I believe it deserves defending. I will defend my arguments when they are challenged, and I will defend my identity when somebody attempts to turn it into a political weapon.

We inherited one Republic. Our responsibility is to leave behind one Republic. One Zambia. One Nation.

Zambia Forward, TOGETHER in UNITY 🇿🇲

Saviour Chishimba (Yehudah Ben David)
President
United Progressive People (UPP)
UPND Alliance Partner