Zambians are tired of this saint attitude of the UPND leaders!

THE MAST COMMENT FOR SUNDAY DECEMBER 1, 2024

Zambians are tired of this saint attitude of the UPND leaders!



Way before being elected into office, the UPND leadership mocked and belittled the PF.

They accused the PF leadership of lacking vision and being looters. Now in government, the new dawn leadership has continued with this narrative and blaming their own failures on the PF.

But Shiwang’andu PF member of parliament Stephen Kampyongo has reminded the UPND that political players are the same. And it is true that the UPND’s Cabinet has retained fossils who served in MMD and PF regimes, yet they are busy pouring scorn on the Patriotic Front! How possible, is this normal – logical?

“Mr [Second deputy] Speaker [Moses Moyo],

democracy that we’re talking about, I think we as players in the democratic space must also start questioning ourselves because we may change, we are talking about landscapes. We have had UNIP, MMD, Patriotic Front and now UPND, but if you look critically, you will find that the players are more or less the same – let’s say 60 per cent,” Kampyongo said. “If I look across there, I see distinguished members of parliament who were part of the executive of the Movement for Multiparty

Democracy. They are in this executive today.

There are some people who were also members of the executive under the Patriotic Front who are in this current executive serving. So, these are factors that we should start interrogating. Why then should there be so much animosity even [in] continuity of programmes of government because we are the same players, let’s face it? We are the same players. So even when we condemn each other, we must speak to our minds and say what is it that I’m condemning. Even the legacies that we are passing to each other we must be speaking to that context that ‘yes I was part of the Movement for Multiparty

Democracy, there are things that were done very well and things that couldn’t have been done well. Yes, I was part of the Patriotic Font, so much achievements and there could have been some shortcomings’. How then do we start bridging the gap because it won’t end here. Like I’m saying members who were part of the MMD are still there in the front bench [and] some members of the Patriotic Front.”

It’s good that Kampyongo has come to this realisation. It is very important for our democracy because Kampyongo, when he was home affairs minister, came out as an emotional if not irrational man serving in a highly sensitive ministry. He was a very abrasive man to those he considered political foes and otherwise. In most instances he would even use the police to fight his personal battles. But today, maybe with hindsight, he comes out sober-minded and mature, both in his debates on the floor of the House and indeed media interviews. It had to take the PF’s loss of political power for him to sober up.

But his counsel to the UPND Cabinet Ministers must be taken with candour because his observations are nothing but the unvarnished truth. The UPND front bench in the House consists of some people who served in the MMD, first among them Vice-President Mutale Nalumango, Felix Mutati, and Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane. Mutati was minister under Levy Mwanawasa.

He was also minister of finance under Edgar Lungu’s PF administration. Dr Musokotwane is in his second stint in the Ministry of Finance and National Planning. He was first there under Rupiah Banda. He was also secretary to the treasury and served as president Mwanawasa’s economic advisor.

Surely, can these people stand on an anthill with a straight face and wholly condemn the PF over debt accumulation, other governance issues, and mishandling the mining sector? Wasn’t it Dr Musokotwane under Banda’s administration that reversed the progressive mining tax regime that president Mwanawasa and his finance minister Ng’andu Magande had enacted? With impunity, Dr Musokotwane and his bedfellows removed the windfall tax on the mines. Wasn’t it that same time that Zambia’s foreign debt started to soar? Yes, the PF under presidents Michael Sata and Lungu borrowed. They invested in visible infrastructure and indeed there’s also recklessness that led to looting of resources. For instance, what happened to money pumped into Zambia Railways? But the UPND today are also borrowing. Where are they investing that money? Is it in infrastructure investment or consumption? Time will tell.

All in all, we are tired of this saint attitude of the UPND leaders. Who doesn’t know that even the current UPND leader was involved in the privatisation of the mines in the 1990s? Has Zambia’s mining sector improved since that episode? Certainly not. Instead, that privatisation was the genesis of mass poverty in the country, specially on the mines. While all those who participated in privatising our mines made money out of it, they handed over our mineral resources into foreign hands and left us with nothing. And today they are singing the loudest for the same people they sold our mines to. So what morality do they have to turnaround today and always blame and mock PF for their failures? The best our leaders can do is let their work speak for them and NOT this stretched mockery, finger-pointing. PF had their bite at the governance of this country. Citizens grabbed that mantle and gave the unambiguous mandate to UPND and its leader Hakainde Hichilema.

It is expected that they lower their temperament and penchant for self-praise, replace it with humility and hard work. Just deliver without pomp!