HICHILEMA SHOULD APOLOGISE TO ZAMBIANS – KENNEDY KAMBA

HICHILEMA SHOULD APOLOGISE TO ZAMBIANS FOR THE VIOLENCE IF HIS CALL FOR PEACE IS TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY

It is shear mockery of the Zambian people by UPND leader. Hakainde Hichilema, who has suddenly chosen to speak peace when it is a well-known fact that this is the same man who has been a merchant of violence from the time he started campaigning for the August 11 Presidency, which he lost to President Edgar Lungu. Hichilema is not the right person to call for peace particularly that he has failed to accept responsibility for the deaths, injuries, damage to property and displacement of families that he has caused through his supporters in Southern, Western and North-Western Provinces. Zambians are intelligent enough to know that Hichilema is hoodwinking them and that his sudden change of mind is not genuine but only resulting from the pressure that he has received from his handlers after his scheme to make the country ungovernable through civil disobedience back fired.

The people he owes money and his supporters have been pressuring Hichilema on seeing that apart from losing the election, his reputation and public perception has continued to fall far behind that of President Lungu because of the tactics the opposition party was employing to ensure that they gained power.

The nation and indeed the world is not surprised that the country has experienced the levels of violence in the pre and post-election periods as Hichilema himself is on record declaring, on numerous occasions, that he would not accept defeat to President Lungu and that if this was to ever happen, “there would be Armageddon in the country.” There is no doubt that violence being perpetrated against PF sympathisers in the three provinces which are Hichilema’s strongholds, is indeed part of the Armageddon the UPND leader warned us of. The violence has even started spreading to parts of Lusaka where markets and public trading places perceived to be for PF supporters have been set ablaze.

We are not bringing up all this against Hichilema without any basis. The man is on record calling for the beating up of PF sympathisers when he addressed a rally in Choma on 24th July. This was on the day that the nation had gathered in prayer to ask God to bless the country with continued peace and stability.

At the same rally Hichilema vowed that ‘he was on the verge of winning an election and that he would do that at all cost, including picking the victory from some body part of a buffalo.’

A gruesome video of a young lady who was said to have been identified as Pamela Chanda of Sinazongwe in the Southern Province being brutally assaulted by UPND members after discovering that she was a PF sympathiser was circulated through social media. To date, we have not heard the UPND leader condemn that incident. It is clear that the process of cleansing UPND’s strongholds of all those who did not support the party started a long time ago. No wonder these regions were able to record those astronomical figures purportedly of people who had voted for Hichilema in the August 11 election.

It is disheartening that the UPND leadership is leading us onto this path of violence which we have never known as a nation. From the events that Hichilema and other UPND leaders have publicly proclaimed in the past, it is clear that this party was ready to assume office on the back of anything including shedding of blood of innocent citizens dying and maimed in violence which the UPND would have instigated.

At the time Hichilema was on his crusade of cementing violence, His Excellency Mr. Edgar Chagwa Lungu was on his own crusade during which he repeatedly called for peace throughout his campaign trail. President Lungu is even on record as having said that he was not worth shedding blood for just for him to retain power.

As a word of advice, if Hichilema’s call for peace was to be given a second thought, the man should have first swallowed his pride and then faced the Zambians and apologised for the destruction to property and suffering his supporters have caused on innocent women and children. Otherwise it is just another political gimmick from Zambia’s record-holder, five-time losing presidential candidate.

KENNEDY KAMBA
PF YOUTH PROVINCIAL CHAIRMAN
LUSAKA