The news emanating from South Africa around the issue of former president, Edgar Lungu makes sad reading. For instance, the South African government has confirmed that the Lungu family had permanent resident status of that country. Where’s the sense of patriotism here? How can a President maintain unbreakable ties with another country to the extent of even acquiring identify documents, let alone massively investing in that country? Isn’t that worst betrayal of one’s country?

From the time ba Lungu found himself a tenant in State House, his nationality has been a matter of intense debate, and as controversial as it could get! There are conflicting accounts of where he was born – Kitwe’s Chimwemwe township and Ndola ‘Central’ Hospital in 1956…..How can a human being be born in two different places?

What is now known as Ndola Central Hospital was called Ndola Hospital and it was a whites only facility prior to Independence! How is it possible then that ba Lungu was born in Ndola Hospital?

Was ba Lungu really one of us……or even a patriotic citizen?

Let’s us put this in a proper perspective: Our first President, Kenneth Kaunda traced his roots back to Chinsali in the present day Muchinga province; Frederick Chiluba always reminded us of having his umbilical cord buried kwa Musangu, Luapula province while it is common knowledge Levy Mwanawasa hailed from kwi Lamba, Ndola rural.

Although he is said to have spent part of his youthful days in Zimbabwe, there’s no doubt about it, Rupiah Banda’s parents came from Chipata, Eastern province where he briefly settled after saying ‘adios’ to politics. And everyone of us knows Micheal Sata was from Chitulika village in Mpika, Northern province where his father happened to be a village headman before he had enough of making tea for the muzungus.

Incumbent President, Hakainde Hichilema is from Bweengwa, Southern province. All of us have been privy to this have even before he set foot into the colonial mansion at Plot 1 Independence Avenue!

The 1 billion Kwacha question is, who knows about ba Lungu’s village? What about his Chief or village headman? How come his blood relatives – brothers, sisters, uncles and aunties are still missing in action when one Makebi Zulu, his lawyer, has stolen the show? During his presidency for instance, did we ever see anyone from his village claiming to be his relative? Where has that so-called sister of his come from at this late hour?

What is the genuine identify of ba Lungu, imwe mwe bantu?

Mike Mulongoti and his colleague, Fresher Siwale tried to put matters to rest when they came up with earth shattering claims ba Lungu was masquerading under stolen identity….his real name was Jonathan Mutaware of Malawian or Mozambican extraction whose parents came to Northern Rhodesia to work in the mines on the Copperbelt in the early 50s.

Of course, this matter came up in court in 2018. But lo and behold, Mulongoti passed on mysteriously before the nation could get to know the truth while Siwale is battling illness somewhere in Lusaka after being brutally tortured while in prison.

What about Social media reports are getting he was in possession of a Zimbabwean passport, two different diplomatic passports from two other countries and two green passports at the time of admission to hospital?

Ba News Diggers naimwe, you aren’t reputed for investigative journalism for nothing. Can’t you smell anything fishy here? Please assign someone with a good nose for news to sniff around this issue.

Prince Bill M Kaping’a
Political/Social Analyst

By Chimwemwe Mwanza

Yindaba ushaya inyoka ifile kudala? Loosely translated, this powerful Zulu idiom questioning one’s wisdom in beating a dead snake best describes President Hakainde Hichilema’s (HH) predicament. The President is in a pickle – a mild verdict in retrospect but one that aptly captures the lay of his political fortunes. Had he heed this warning; he probably wouldn’t be facing this conundrum.

Government’s spirited attempts to repatriate Edgar Lungu’s mortal remains to Zambia is an embarrassing fiasco. At play is the political implications of burying Zambia’s sixth Republican President in a foreign land. Whichever way one looks at this, the Lungu family’s decision to inter his remains in South Africa is a political masterstroke. On the flipside, is this how low we have stooped as a country that bickering over a corpse now almost seems to be an obsession or preoccupation of a sitting government?

Put more succinctly, this debacle is an indictment on HH’s political legacy. More worrying perhaps for the incumbent is that Zambia goes to the Presidential polls in a year’s time and the likelihood of Lungu’s ghost looming over HH’s quest for a second term is haunting the UPND. Curiously, how Lungu has suddenly become a political martyr baffles the mind. How we got here is perhaps a more appropriate question?

Lungu’s tainted legacy

Truth be told, Lungu was by no means a serpent, but neither was he a saint. Humiliated at the polls in 2021, he was left for dead. Politically, he was interred at Heroes stadium when thousands of Zambians jeered him out of the stadium shortly after handing power to his successor. To be precise, he had no snowball chance in hell to mount a political comeback. So, what has stirred this nostalgia and outpouring grief that a leader who was resoundingly defeated at the polls is now being immortalised? Off course, death has a way of cleansing the departed.

To his credit, he presided over the country’s biggest infrastructure development programmes – albeit using borrowed monies. Under his reign, schools, hospitals and tarred road networks, mushroomed across the country. Yet it was under his reign that Zambia became the first country in the world to default on its debt servicing obligations during the Covid era – a factor that effectively consigned the country’s economy to junk status.

In contrast to this public persona, his opponents held a different view. Lungu, they argue was ruthless. His humble façade masked a vindictive veneer that was intolerant to criticism. Under his watch, Zambia became a cadre state. That the late President had authoritarian leanings is evident in the fact that he on more than a dozen occasions deposited then opposition leader HH into the gallows on trumped up charges – the gravest of which saw HH spend more than 100 days in solitary confinement in a local prison.

How HH’s failures resurrected Lungu

Just like the late Lungu, President Hichilema is autocratic but not totalitarian, which isn’t just a difference of degree. He is affable and able to articulate himself in public. In addition to his charm, HH has an ingrained affinity for making aurally pleasing political statements – which is how he became a darling of the media. But try as he might to spin the metrics, the economic hardships facing Zambians are palpable. The cost of living has skyrocketed under his watch. Households are taking strain from irrational power supply.

Liquidity is in short supply and small businesses are choking to inflation. The local bond market – which is a key determinant to measuring a country’s investment credibility is in a state of flux. These factors have effectively conspired against the hopes of a weary electorate that bet their fortunes on his Presidency. For much of his four-year reign, this government has seemed in denial about the economic hardships facing Zambians.

In addition, the UPND’s fixation on retribution against the PF leadership including Lungu as opposed to addressing the hardships facing the general populace largely contributed to the former President’s political resurrection. And with Lungu’s ill-treatment at the hands of the UPND government, hopes of HH breaking the country’s vindictive cycle of political retribution dissipated with speed. Don’t forget, memories of former President Frederick Chiluba harassing Dr Kenneth Kaunda – Zambia’s founding President, and Levy Mwanawasa haranguing his political benefactor Chiluba or Micheal Sata’s PF, ill-treating Rupiah Banda are firmly etched in our collective psyche.

Just why such vindictiveness and blatant abuse of power seems to gratify incumbents is hard to fathom. In the absence of reason, one might well speculate that this show of brutality is all about a naked flexing of political immaturity. Whatever the reason, the difficulty is that this vicious cycle continues to erode the very democratic tenets and political maturity that Zambia is renowned for in the rest of Africa and the world over.

Those in the know will agree that Lungu’s flailing health is well documented which is why it would be unfair to completely apportion Lungu’s death on the HH led government. Yet we can still argue and rightly so that the incumbent government ought to have treated the former head of state better. That said, there was no need to keep beating a politically dead man, you should have let him be. May your soul rest in peace, son of the soil.

Mwanza is keen reader of philosophy.

By Simon Kabanda

Government has condemned the strike by teachers, saying it “is detrimental to the development of the country”.
I find this condemnation hypocritical and insincere. While it is true that when teachers do not teach the country suffers, it should also be appreciated that paying teachers slave wages is detrimental to their personal development, and ultimately to the nation’s development.

How does government expect teachers to perform and yield the nation’s desired results when they are not motivated? How do you expect teachers to perform wonders when their services are not appreciated? How do you expect them to work efficiently when they live in deplorable conditions?

I wish to invite the honourable Minister of Education Douglas Syakalima to pay a visit to some houses where teachers stay.
Since he is too busy with ministerial duties to go to rural areas, I am inviting him to drive only a few kilometres from his office and visit the houses outside Munali Secondary School and Tunduya Basic School, where some of the teachers live.
These are small structures that were built in the early 1950s for African workers (not teachers but general workers) at Munali School.

They are nothing to talk about as decent shelter. They have no windowpanes, termites help themselves to the doors, and there are no toilets, no sanitation, no water, and no electricity.

One wonders how the teachers manage to do their lesson plans in the dark since their slave wages cannot allow them to buy candles. And when they go on strike demanding for housing allowance so that they live decently, Government is quick to condemn them. Is this being serious?

Let us ponder over the situation of a teacher in Luwingu, in Chief Chungu’s area, which is more than 60 kilometres from the boma. S/he is the only teacher at a school, which runs from Grades 1 to 7. S/he plays the role of head, deputy head, senior teacher, class teacher, all in one.

S/he gets the salary every month in Kasama because there is no bank in Luwingu. To travel from kwa Chungu to Luwingu, s/he walks for two days because there is no public transport.

Alternatively, s/he borrows a bicycle from a pensioner, and at a fee. In Luwingu, s/he borrows some transport money. S/he spends a night in Luwingu before an open van takes them to Kasama in the morning.
The van arrives in Kasama after 14.30 hours when the banks are closed. If the van is fast enough to arrive before the closure of the bank, the teacher does not go immediately into the bank because s/he has to remove the dust s/he gathered on the road.
S/he needs a bath, and therefore time to go to the bank is lost. Two to three days are already lost before one gets one’s salary.

On the fourth day, the teacher gets the so-called salary (slave wages), and goes to do a bit of shopping. S/he buys one tablet of Lifebuoy to use by the family for the whole month, one packet of sugar for the whole month, one bottle of cooking oil, one bottle of Vaseline, one small packet of Kawambwa tea, one loaf of bread for the whole month.
S/he spends another night in Kasama. Before getting back to Luwingu s/he settles her/his debts at the market where s/he was eating nshima and spending the nights.
What has remained from her/his slave wages is going to pay for her transport back to Luwingu. Arriving in Luwingu s/he repays the money s/he had borrowed for transport to Kasama. Then s/he pays the one who looked after the borrowed bicycle in Luwingu.
S/he cycles back kwa Chungu on the sixth day, arriving home with only one small carrier bag of essential commodities for the family.

The only money that has remained from the slave wages is meant to pay for the borrowed bicycle, according to the number of days that the bicycle was away.
The teacher is more demoralised than when s/he went to get her slave wages. Meanwhile, for the whole week pupils did not learn anything.

As far as government is concerned, this situation, which occurs every month, is not detrimental to the development of the country, except when teachers go on strike. This is some kind of a joke isn’t it? I think this country is being run jokingly. Is this how we ought to be governed?

Teaching is a noble profession, and yet teachers are among the most abused, most exploited and most uncared for by government. Apart from slave wages, the environment and conditions in which they live and work are deplorable.
When I was growing up, teachers were role models, and many of us looked forward to becoming teachers when we grew up.
But now there is no inspiration to draw from them. It is not something of their own making, but they have been reduced to how they are because of the lack of concern by government.

In the olden days teachers were very presentable, but today they cannot afford to buy decent clothing due to slave wages.
Teachers are not only supposed to teach Mathematics and Science and English etc.

They are supposed to inform their pupils on the current affairs. But how can they when they cannot in the first place afford to inform themselves? They cannot afford to buy the daily newspapers, let alone magazines such as New African, Focus on Africa, Newsweek, etc.

And then you condemn them for going on strike! Let us be serious, please! All what the teachers are fighting for is a restoration of their dignity!

Let me address you, comrade teachers. You are not alone in this fight for the restoration of your dignity. Stick to your resolve, whether they brand you this or that. You are very important to this nation.

I am able to write now because you taught me how. It must be very disappointing to you that after all your efforts to educate us, we forget about you when we become politicians. Shame on us!

As I am addressing you, I feel frustrated because very few of you are able to buy a copy of this newspaper. For those of you who have managed to read this, take the message to your comrade teachers.
In your fight for the restoration of your dignity, it is better that you direct your energies on addressing the root causes of the problems.

Your situation today has everything to do with lack of proper policies by government. And one way by which to compel government to take care of you is by ensuring that your plight is taken care of by the highest law of the land, the constitution.

Today you are getting slave wages because your human right to decent wages has not been enshrined in the constitution.
You are living in deplorable conditions because your human right to shelter is not protected by the constitution.

Going to State House to bargain for your wages will not improve your situation. Let us bargain together by ensuring that these issues are enshrined in the Republican Constitution.

Dear Family of 6th Republican President of Zambia, the Lungu family.

On this blessed Sunday afternoon, the people of Zambia from all walks of life are still pleading with you, in God’s name, not to proceed with your earlier decision to bury 6th Republican President Mr Edgar Chagwa Lungu outside the country of his ancestors, Zambia.

As a people, we have always resolved our national conflicts through dialogue as a Christian Nation and it is still not too late for this issue to he resolved around the table.

Please bring back the mortal remains of the president back to the land of his birth. The land that gave him the privileged honor of being President. The Land that he died fighting for.

There is no justification whatsoever for going ahead to commit this permanent breach against his legacy, that of the Lungu family and that of Zambia as well. This will amount to betrayal of his legacy no doubt.

Let us use this window to invoke God’s grace to reason together as a people. Let us not “waste” this loss by demonizing it. But let us use it to unite us and bring full reconciliation in the nation. Let us not miss this opportunity for the healing of our land.

Zambia stands ready with bated breath to see the Lungu family head back home with the remains of our President.
He was free born. Loved by many Zambians and should not be buried as a refugee on foreign soil. There is no hostility against his return but only love and high expectation.

I beg of you. We beg of you.
Pastor Nevers Sekwila Mumba