Socialist Party 2021 Presidential Candidate Fred M’membe has charged that the liquidation of Konkola Copper Mines will create further problems for the mining giant.
Dr M’membe whose company, the Post Newspapers Ltd was placed under liquidation by the PF Government said the route taken to liquidate KCM will give a chance to what he called a clueless clique to loot the mine assets.
In a statement, Dr M’membe charged that liquidating KCM will just compound the problems, especially for the workers.
Below is the full statement
KCM Liquidation a scheme by a clueless clique in the leadership of this country to loot the mines assets – Dr Fred M’membe
How will the placement of Konkola Copper Mines under provisional liquidation help to solve the problems of this troubled mining corporation?
This is nothing but a scheme by a clueless clique in the leadership of this country to loot the assets of Konkola Copper Mines which will leave the workers of this company with nothing and in destitution.
This is the easiest thing to do and it doesn’t require much thought or reasoning. But this is not a solution to the problems facing Konkola Copper Mines. If anything, it will just compound the problems, especially for the workers.
It requires a little intelligence – if a little is all one has – to realise that placing Konkola Copper Mines under provisional liquidation will lead to series of problems, including new ones.
We have seen before how this regime and its agents uses provisional liquidation to loot. A more rational and honest approach could have been taken to address the problems of Konkola Copper Mines.
And moreover, most of the assets of Konkola Copper Mines are leased and owners will soon come forward to claim them!
Issued by Fred M’membe on behalf of the Politburo of the Socialist Party
May 21, 2019
Garden Compound, Lusaka
He is talking from experience. The PF government has not explained how this process will solve the problems except saying other investors are waiting. So let’s watch & see how this will be handled.
And in Zambia from Chiluba, Mwanawasa, Banda & Sata, we have all witnessed how “privatization” is done. It’s given to close associates.
Fred Mmembe are you NOT the Master of Looting the Nation. Please remind us again.
Why did you lose The Post?
Give us a break. You are so irrelevant. Your political career has failed to kick start.
Man keep quiet. Or pick another subject where you can score points. Not this one.
Fwendela uko Freddie! What did you do to the post a few years ago? What ECL did to the Post, he will do it to KCM within the confines of the law.
they have no agenda, its just as good as saying blind man leading a blind man
Well said @ a independent observer.. Well said.
I totally agree with what M’membe is saying.
It takes a lot to change the mindset of some citizens.
What is funny is that most of those supporting this move are among the poorest, least educated.
And yet, they refuse to listen to reason from those who are highly educated, highly experienced.
This is the reason some people will always be poor. They think they know it all.
They think the PF will share the looted assets with them. Wake up.
Pathetic.
Look at M’membe again!!! Wants to side with his fellow crooks. M’membe’s Post is synonymous with tax evasion. KCM is synonymous with tax evasion.
M’membe’s Post is synonymous with floating labors laws of the land. KCM is synonymous with the same. The list is endless and M’membe should be the last one to cast aspersions on a GRZ trying to correct wrongs here.
Please sit down, relax and enjoy the flight as we redeem ourselves from your misguided privatization woes championed by M’membe’s Post that left us destitutes in our own land.
Epo mpelele,
BRM
PF and Lungu promised the Kitwe people that they will reopen MulungushI textile in exchange for votes. Kabwe people voted and where is Mulungush textile? Sold to a crook for asset stripping purposes and that was it.
Based on this evidence the same is bound to happen to KCM. All assets will be striped in the name debt consolidation and the proceeds shared amongst the Lungu ‘s thugs.
CB people are in for shock for giving PF massive votes.
LUNGU MUST GO NOW.
I meant to say Kabwe and not Kitwe.
@Mumba, but walufyanya boyi, Fred is very much right.
Look who is talking….a man whose businesses defrauded the national treasury of taxes and failed to remit NAPSA contributions. Mr Mmembe would you please shut up instead of supporting rogue investors.
Mmembe.. politics is a tough game right.!!
For years you sat down as an armchair critic writing editorials pretending to know all things and shooting down anyone you hated.
Now you cannot afford people following you, or signing up to your political party.
You are nowhere close to the threshold on the political front.
Look who is talking, Post had issues and it became purely political so it was in order to take that route. As for KCM, they are just like you, the have failed to run the mines and Zambians plus environment are been destroyed…..
so sit down iwe mature
This Country is rotten starting with the ruling party to the opposition. Fred Mmembe, HH etc are not credible people to comments on KCM. HH is a privatization thief and Mmembe is a Tax fraudster. Who is going to help Zambians now?
Me
Vedanta acquired the mines for a song and made colossal profits out of it. Crooks and thieves who look very intelligent are the ones who sold the mines and pocketed the money in their offshore accounts. The who process of privatization was fraught with crookedness. The problem that was there was that we had a president who was very myopic with a short brain to know what was going on in the process of privatization. Even now,we have crooks who have gathered both in opposition and ruling party respectively to strip the nation of its resources. These crooks are not there to serve the nation, they are there to milk the little that is left in a dying cow. Never should Zambians trust politicians. They are all liars cut from the same cloth of deception.They are crooks who should not be trusted.
Iwe Mmembe we know that you own the MAST so better keep quite or else you may lose the MAST as well like the POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s why we are moving in circles. Mmembe looted the previously vibrant Zambian Airways. Anyway it’s normal for thieves to think everyone is a crook.
Fred Mmembe, I have socialist leanings but your comment defending thieves in the name of vedanta shows that you are indeed a thief who refused to pay tax hoping government would fall and you with your comrades would pretend to be the saviours.
The police have been ordered to prevent exactly what you claim is the aim.
He has not defended vendata
No one is defending Vedanta.
Fred is just saying you need to be clever to handle situations such as this one.
You simply do not go grabbing assets.
Zambians are so blind and gullible.
Indeed, Fred Meembe is an experienced Tax fraudster and leading member of the notorious CARTEL (Meembe, Nchito, Chona, HH, Mahtani etc) that engineered State Capture of Mwanawasa’s and Sata’s Presidency. The infamous Cartel looted Government, Banks finances , manufacturing industries and Mining resources to prop up their personal businesses. This Cartel operated in similar manner as the Guptas who captured President Zuma Govt in South Africa. Meembe, who is pretending to be a socialist, is actually a capitalist merely creating a smoke screen to hide their mischievous plunder of Zambia.
Mmembe says,
“… moreover most of the assets of Konkola Copper Mines are leased and owners will soon come forward to claim them”. RABBLE ROUSER!
IF ASSETS BELONG TO LEASORS, IF THEY HAVE OWNERS, WHAT IS THERE TO LOOT?
@LuapulaPremier, listen man Meembe is simply passing a prudent valid economic suggestion to the PF government to be more cautious with the process of liquidation because if not handled carefully, liquidation has but serious ramifications.
“Amano mambulwa”, the Bemba saying goes. Meaning you can get educated by anybody regardless of who they are in society as long as it makes sense. Some of you slamming Meembe here with insults, are no better than him in fact given a chance to govern, you will be the first ones to loot. I don’t support Meembe and his political ambitions, that’s his choice, but I very much support his contribution here on LT. Meembe has a valid point. Tuleba positive sometimes fwebena Zambia.
I have no sympathy for Anil Agarwal becuse the man is a snake, the thing is what the PF government will do is highly questionable and the sad thing is to see the workers celebrating what lungu said, they will all be out if work and PF will the mine to thier friends to loot it
We don’t need opposition politics in Zambia. instead of encouraging the Government, these useless opposion leaders are just busy castigating the Government over baseless conceptions. They are so used to stealing that they think any move taken by Government is tantamount to stealing. No sane politician can go against the Copperbelt unless they really want out.
I had similar views but after watching agarwals clip I think he deserves what
Has happened. Don’t even talk to him he
Has made his money .Time to pack and
Go.
For as long as Zambian continue being ruled by scam of the world like Mwanakatwe and Lungu whose purporse in life only seems to be getting tanked on piss and engaging in dangerous promiscuous se.xual activities, the downhill progression will only accelerate further. Lungu is this time without doubt playing with fire, if they loot KCM and it callapses with 17,000 people thrown into the cold, ndipo azachiona chinalesa galu kusavala kabudula. Lungu uswana sina mutu ya tukufalezwi ku kopanya nja fa simelelo sa muhata wayona, konji a iswale fa munungu!
These are words from a Tax evader. I have not seen a socialist who steals from the people.
About KCM – Think Mukula!
Mukula wood, which Zambia begun to exploit in the last few years, has great returns, with China having a voracious appetite for the hardwood.
The problem we sit with is that the Zambian public knows next to nothing about how much Mukula we have sold to China, what we have earned and especially how that money has been used. It is an industry approximating mafia secrecy.
The last we heard was Minister of Lands, Jean Kapata, telling Parliament that proceeds from Mukula sales had not been deposited in the Consolidated (Control 99) Account as the law demands. Minister Kapata bizarrely stated that the resources had instead been directed to the revamp of Kawambwa Tea Plantation without being banked. The Minister, with straight face, reported that government had…
The Minister, with straight face, reported that government had illegally spent export revenue without it ever being registered as having come in. The claimed expenditure on Kwambwa Tea was beyond random. might as well have said the Mukula money was spent on feeding the animals that roam State House grounds.
Then there was the other story. In 2016, the Zambian government declared that the country had exported Mukula worth just under 1 million dollars, to China. China itself (wait for it) reported that it had, in the same period, imported Mukula worth just under 90 million dollars from Zambia. Like so much in this country, that discrepancy has never been explained and Zambians have not asked. Simply, where did the tens of millions of dollars go?
We all know about the PF cadres who spent months in cells because they aggressively protested Mukula exploits, saying a few individuals were enriching themselves from a national resource. For the first time ever, the nation watched as PF cadres were punished for taking the law in their own hands. The message was sent – stay away from this one!
Now let us get back to KCM.
Think of this – Mukula is ours. It sits there like God placed it, waiting to be harvested and taken out of the country in truckloads. There is not a single foreign hand involved in deciding how we manage Mukula. Guess what, government is managing the precious hardwood criminally unaccountably.
That same government is now trying to convince Zambians that, while it is true that they cannot manage a resource for which they are completely responsible in such a way as to translate the billions of dollars earned to the public good, they are however motivated by that public good in the rushed liquidation of KCM.
My response to that is, yes, the owners of KCM did not care about Zambia. Vendata almost certainly stole billions from us. BUT the fact remains that the liquidation of the mining company is very unlikely being done for the good of the ordinary Zambian. This liquidation has all the markings of the ingrained self-interest leaders in this government have routinely shown when governing the country. In other words, after Vendata has all but brought KCM to its knees, it is now the…
it is now the turn of the people we elected into government to feed on the carcass that remains.
My argument is simply that the KCM liquidation is being implemented by a chronically corrupt, self- interested government that has driven a healthy economy it inherited into the ground via reckless debt contraction which funded projects with criminally inflated prices. The liquidation is hurried and being overseen by a highly inexperienced but politically connected lawyer.
The government however insists that we must believe them when they say that somehow KCM will be different from the usual self-enrichment projects that leave ordinary citizens poorer. They ask that we force our minds to ignore all evidence to the contrary.
Well I suggest to Zambians that they should only believe this new heart story if Mama Godfridah Sumalili, she who oversees the national morals, tells the nation about the Road to Damascus encounter that the President and his Cabinet experienced just before deciding to liquidate KCM.
Oh by the way, there is also the toll-gate money!
(Laura Miti)
So PF cadres in their continuous journey to show their critical lack of thinking are failing to understand that everyone is happy Vendata is being gotten rid of but the problem is with the Liquidation option. Can any PF supporter here tell me what company has arisen mightier from the ashes after liquidation and how many employees still had jobs?? Why is the PF avoiding having experts and technocrats on this liquidation team opting for !diots like Kaizer Zulu, that Lungu liquidator chap no one has ever heard of and the dullest mines minister this side of the equator? Surely even the tiny grey matter you PF chaps have cannot question this??
GOOD TO SEE SO MANY PRIVATIZATION EXPERTS ON THIS FORUM. SOME WERE BORN AFTER THE SALE OF ZCCM AND PURCHASE OF KCM BY THE INDIAN. WHO IS BETTER PLACED TO COMMENT; THE ONES WHO WERE THERE OR THE ONES BORN AFTER? MOST PEOPLE WHO ARE INSULTING HH OVER THE SALE OF THE MINES WERE NOT EVEN ON THIS EARTH WHEN THIS WAS HAPPENING. WRITE-UPS ARE THERE WHICH SHOW THE ROLE HH, CHIPIMO JR AND OTHERS PLAYED IN THE SALE. GO AND READ. WHAT U WILL READ IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. YOU CALL PEOPLE THIEVES FOR AS LONG AS YOU WANT BUT AS LONG AS YOU CANNOT TAKE THEM TO COURT AND CONVICT THEM, IT REMAINS PETTY JEALOUS. BY THE WAY, ANY CITIZEN IS FREE TO START LEGAL PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE PERCEIVED THIEVES AS LONG AS HE/SHE IS READY TO STAND THE HEAT OF THE COURTS. STOP BEING PETTY.
Elyo lwanya nomba. Ba Mmembe balishiba looting only if it is coming from somewhere else. But when he was looting Tax payers money it wasn’t looting.