Nevers summoned after outburst

MMD president Nevers Mumba has been summoned to Police Headquarters or any nearby police station for questioning following his outburst on Joy FM last week.
And chief government spokesperson Mwansa Kapeya has described Dr Mumba’s remarks on President Sata as derogatory and demeaning.
Acting Police spokesperson Rae Hamoonga said yesterday that Dr Mumba has been asked to avail himself between 10:00 hours and 12:00 hours tomorrow.
“We initially summoned Dr Mumba on Friday but his lawyers did not avail him for reasons best known to himself but they have promised to avail him on Monday,” Mr Hamoonga said.
And in a statement yesterday, Mr Kapeya said Government is determined to engage in healthy and constructive discourse that would help bring solutions to the challenges the country is facing.
“Government has a strong and clear economic programme that focuses on alleviating poverty, developing rural areas, promoting agriculture and diversify from copper as the mainstay of our economy to other productive sectors as outlined in the revised Sixth National Development Plan,” he said.
Mr Kapeya, who is also Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services, said Government has also heightened its focus and support to the agriculture sector with defined attention not only to crops but livestock, fish farming and sustainable Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP).
He said responding to the broad insults that Dr Mumba has uttered would be giving credence to the baseless allegations and malicious insinuations.
Mr Kapeya said Government is determined to engage in meaningful fruitful debate whose outcome should promote national development, peace and national unity.
He also advised NAREP President, Elias Chipimo to take time and learn politics.
Mr Kapeya said for the first time since the early 1970s, Government has embarked on massive construction and rehabilitation of infrastructure such as roads, bridges, schools, health facilities and other vital social and economic amenities countrywide.
He appealed to opposition leaders to practise politics that helps build and develop the country.
Mr Kapeya said: “Our colleagues from the opposition are bent on engaging in disruptive and negative politics that take away the strides that the people of Zambia are making in coming together to focus on the development of the country and to ensure that we maintain our peace and unity.”
And the Open Society Foundation has implored Dr Mumba to apologise to President Sata and learn to respect the Presidency as an institution.
Executive director Sunday Chanda said Dr Mumba and other opposition leaders should know that there is no value addition in vilifying the Head of State.
“Opposition political parties must not set the bar so low and resort to peddling careless and dangerous talk about distortions, ethnicity, tribalism and even warning of civil war.
“Dr Mumba intentionally chose a cheaper but dangerous route of viewing everything about President Sata through the myopic and narrow prism of lies, ethnic and tribal hegemony rather than national and patriotic duty and considerations which have guaranteed the unity of Zambia,” Mr Chanda said.
He said it is also a notorious fact that Mr Sata was popularly elected by majority of Zambians based on their conviction that he was the best person to govern Zambia.