By Dr. Joze Manda

Less than two years before the next general elections, the Zambian political climate is so thick with tension, controversy upon controversy has piled up and things have been made worse by agents that want regime change in Zambia. The stakes are now very high, for others it is do or die, while for others its powers at any cost.

It is now clear that a dangerous and systematic scheme for 2020 leading into 2021 has been put in motion by HH and his international funders as their last straw at usurping political power. “Power by any means possible” is the new ideology that has currently been put in motion and will be executed relentlessly to the last day of the elections* and citizens must brace themselves for more unpredictable conspiracies from HH and imperialist sponsors.

Violence will be used to trigger fear, economic sabotage will be used to make the life of citizens miserable, corruption propaganda will be scaled up to tint the PF government, torture, assassinations and murder will eventually become common grounds.

Copperbelt being an important province for one to win an election in Zambia, *HH and his sponsors have started from there in creating fear and uncertainty in the lives of our citizens.* In less than two weeks, HH and his sponsors have capitalized on a few unfortunate incidences and blown them out of proposition to gain political mileage at the expense of the peaceful lives of our citizens.

UPND has gone further as to create videos depicting chemicals having been put around house doors and windows to scare our citizens even more, but when tasted, the white powder was found to be simple lime, what a shame.* What kind of a leader would want to instil fear in the same community you want votes from?

We know their tactic here is to cause lots of fear, that would mean increasing discontent in government, and then offer alternative leadership and we are aware that by human nature a few of our people will fall for it.

PF must use whatever resource they have at their disposal to fish out these lunatics who want to make our country ungovernable.*

This barbaric behavior is tantamount to treason and if anything the PF government must consider establishing a fast truck court for political violence and treasonable cases.

PF must realize that, UPND has scaled up their actions and entering in overdrive, from social media propaganda, they have now entered the violence stage. They have now engaged in unorthodox ways of looking for votes by painting the country they want to govern black. The social media propaganda that the opposition UPND party has wedged is misleading the electorates and is now bordering on issues of national security. It is time our security agencies woke up and smelt the coffee and dealt with this issue aggressively once and for all.

UPND is now spending thousands of kwachas promoting countrywide propaganda and is trying to control the political discourse in Zambia, including the undermining of democratic governance; to also help manipulate public opinion; and attempt to win the hearts and minds of the people to serve their grand strategy of ascending to power using whatever means and at whatever cost.* This will escalate ten fold as we get closer to 2021, the Chingola predicament is just a preamble.

It should not take a rocket scientist to now realize that UPND has crossed the line and we need to do anything possible in our power as a country to bring them to book.*

They are a blood-thirsty Organisation that will send this country down the path of hell we will not recover from. Lungu and and his government must stop being cowards and stand up tough and deal with this demon once and for all to save our country.

Dr. Joze Manda is Political Analyst based in Lusaka.

On 31st December, China informed WHO of an outbreak of a novel Respiratory virus affecting hundreds of people in Wuhan province. By 24th January 2020, 830 cases had been recorded with close to 20 deaths.

What do we know about this virus?

It belongs to a group of viruses called Coronavirus [Corona meaning crownlike appearance]. These are well known zoonotic virus (occurring in animals). The group was discovered to have caused the first human infection in 1965 but only a few cases were recorded. It is responsible for about 15-20% of common colds. The largest outbreak from this type of virus was in 2002 in Guangdong Province, China. This infection caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome [SARS] which was named SARS-Coronavirus [SARS-CoV]. At the end of the pandemic, there were 8096 people infected from 29 countries and about 774 deaths globally. The second outbreak started Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2012 by the Middle East Respiratory virus [MERS], a type of Coronavirus. Fewer people were affected but had a higher mortality than SARS. The Wuhan out break named 2019-nCoV is the third outbreak from corona viruses in two decades.

What are the symptoms?

The Wuhan virus has similar symptoms to SARS and MERS. Common symptomatology is malaise (generalised weakness), headache, chills, fever, runny nose, sore throat and a cough. Symptoms can be mild to severe requiring hospitalization and death. Diarrhoea and kidney failure occurs in some people.

How is it spread?

All Coronaviruses are respiratory viruses meaning they are transmitted airborne. Most transmission occurs in hospitals, hotels, markets and airplanes. In most cases, the disease is mild but can be severe causing deaths in over 50% of the elderly, people with low immunity and hospitalised patients. Healthcare workers are at increased risk of contracting the infection. Recently, an elderly doctor treating patients with the virus died from the same disease.

Should we be worried?

YES! The increased trade between china and Zambia since the first outbreak of SARS puts us at risk. The fact that transmission can occur from infected people without symptoms, means someone can easily travel and spread the disease especially through air travel. The move by Chinese authorities to lock down Wuhan is the right move based on lessons learnt from the SARS which resulted in over 8000 people infected.

What should Zambia do to avoid possible outbreak?

The first thing is to increased alertness and screening for fever at all entry points especially airports. This is being done I believe so, due to the Ebola outbreak in the neighbouring DRC..

However, I propose a step further that Zambia National Airports (ZNAC) and Zambia National Public Institute (ZNPHI) introduces a screening questionnaire to include questions on air travel, contact with people from China mainland or transit in the past 2 to 3 weeks. Symptoms like weakness, headache and sore throat should also be screened for in the questionnaire. Screening for fever alone will miss close to half of possible cases.

Secondly, Government should identify a quarantine facility as soon as possible for a possible epidemic preparedness. A toll free line should be set up for people experiencing symptoms to call. Admitting or screening possible cases from already existing facilities like UTH would be a disaster as thousands of people would be infected within a few days. Health facilities should procure and store N95 masks and health workers at entry points should always use N95 masks whenever they are assessing a possible case, or anyone suspected to have the infection.

The country should have enough face masks ready for distribution to the public should we get even a single case.

The Call!

1. Avoid high-risk places like hospitals  see below

Lets restrict number of visitors at UTH -ZMA

2. If you recently traveled to China or came into contact with a person who recently traveled to China and has any symptoms, please call for help via the toll-free lines!

HEALTH WORKERS SHOULD EVALUATE POSSIBLE CASES EITHER FROM THEIR HOMES OR A QUARANTINE FACILITY IDENTIFIED.

2. Lastly, WHO should declare the Wuhan epidemic a Public Health Emergency of International concern as there is a record of cases outside China!
Together, we can beat the threat of new and emerging infectious disease.

Dr Francis Mupeta
Infectious Disease Specialist

Investments Holdings Plc (ZCCM-IH) should quickly establish how much oil is present in Gwembe so that the country can start benefiting from the discovery, Green Party president Peter Sinkamba has said.

Mr. Sinkamba said the country was anxious about the discovery and now that it has been proved that indeed Gwembe was sitting on a crude oil belt, the Government should empower ZCCM-IH to establish the sustainability of the discovery.

“Now that the Daily Nation has done its part by carrying out an investigation that established that there is presence of oil, the ball is now in the hands of Government to find out if the oil quantities underground were enough to be extracted for the benefit of the country,” Mr. Sinkamba said.

He said there was the need for the country to take advantage of the discovery of crude oil at Jongola river and Simwami mountains in Gwembe as it was the only solution to dealing with the current high price of fuel in Zambia.

Mr. Sinkamba noted that now that it has been confirmed that there is crude oil in the country, there was a likelihood that a lot of foreign oil speculators were going to besiege the country with the aim of carrying out explorations.

“Already what is happening in this country is that a lot of land has been taken by foreign speculators who are carrying out exploration in many parts of the country and so with the discovery of oil in Gwembe, the country is likely to witness a high number of foreign firms coming to do exploration,” he said.

He said oil by nature was problematic and therefore it was important for the government to handle the issue with utmost care to avoid unnecessary problems as waa the case in most countries, where are oil deposits, sit like the Middleeast.

Mr. Sinkamba said his party was hopeful that with the discovery of oil in Southern province, the country was going to be able to reduce the cost of importing oil from the Middleeast which would result in the reduction of fuel price.