By Rev Dr Nevers Mumba, 

No one knew who I was. I was a 21-year-old boy in 1981 studying to become an Artisan in our National Mining Company in Kitwe. Then Reinhard Bonnke came to Zambia.

Thirty-six years later I have served as Leader of Victory Ministries International and as the first member of the Clergy to serve as Republican Vice President of Zambia.

Thirty-six years later, Zambia has become the first and only nation in Africa to be declared a Christian Nation.

In early 1981, it was noised that a German Evangelist by the name of Reinhard Bonnke would Visit Zambia and was going to have a series of meetings in all the major cities of Zambia. He would start in my city, Kitwe. Within weeks, a ten thousand seater tent was erected and stood out as a new phenomenon in our city. At the time, I served as youth leader at the Maranatha Assembly of God Church under a Canadian Missionary Gary Skinner. For some reason, Pastor Skinner asked me to interpret for Pastor Bonnke in his first sermon at Church before the crusade opened later that evening.

I met Reinhard for the first time in my life in 1981 in the pulpit. He started to preach what I considered a basic message of salvation. In the middle of his preaching, he stopped and looked at me and made the following statement, “Eh, you are made out of the same stuff that I am made out of.” This singular statement changed my life forever. He asked me to continue to interpret for him the whole two weeks of the crusade. My heart was bonded to him and his message changed both my life and my city forever.

Never in the history of my nation had we ever seen an evangelist of such passion and anointing. He ignited a wave of revival which has never stopped to date. At his coming in 1981, it was said that Christianity constituted 45% of the population. Today, Christianity stands at 96% of the population and Zambia has become the only country on the continent to be constitutionally declared a Christian nation.

Reinhard Bonnke started this movement. He is a household name in Zambia. He focused his faith on Zambia for several years. CFAN sowed a human seed into the soil of Zambia when one of Pastor Bonnke’s closest crusade organizers was killed in Chililabombwe in an accident which burnt down a CFAN truck. Reinhard himself flew back to Zambia and retrieved the body. He called this loss, a seed sown in Zambia which would germinate and grow into full salvation of the nation. Reinhard wept.

As a Nation, we have a redemptive history with Reinhard and CFAN. Zambia is a Christian nation because of his investment of faith.

He took me up as his own son. He believed in me before I even knew myself. He sent me to Bible college at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas Texas and paid for it. Upon graduation, he mentored me and purchased the equipment I needed to launch an evangelistic ministry in my nation. While he carried the banner of Africa shall be Saved, I have carried the banner of Zambia shall be Saved to date. He was present in my life until he returned to the one who called him to Africa in the early hours of December 7th 2019.

In 1995 after he was guest at our Victory International conference in Lusaka, he said to me, Nevers, I am not coming back to Zambia after this. I asked him why, and he said because you are here and able to handle it. “You don’t need me” he said. He however mentored me from afar. He supported me both in prayer and finance for 36 years. In 1997, I was faced with a huge decision concerning joining the political process. I had two authorities to contact, one was Mrs Gordon Lindsay, President of Christ for the Nations in Dallas, Texas and Reinhard Bonnke, President of Christ for All Nations in Frankfurt, Germany. I asked for their counsel concerning my desire to join politics. It took Reinhard three months to answer but when he did, he was very clear that he had heard from the Lord for me to take my faith into the political process like Joseph of the Bible. He gave me his blessing to go into politics. Mrs Lindsay’s letter came much latter with the same response. Soon after that, I became Vice President of Zambia and now President of the former ruling Party, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, preparing to run for President in 2021.

If Reinhard had not come to Zambia, maybe there would have been no Christian nation. If he had not come, there would have not been a Nevers Mumba who became the first Evangelist to become Vice President. Because he came, Zambia is, and I am.

Pastor Bonnke invited me to what he considered life changing events. He invited me to the 2000 Millenium Crusade in Lagos where he addressed his largest single crowd of 1.6 million people. I shed tears of joy at the sight of such a harvest of souls. He invited me to Orlando Florida to celebrate his fifty years of ministry in Africa and asked me to speak at the event when Pat Robertson could not travel for health reasons. He invited me for his last african crusade in 2017 in Nigeria but I could not travel in the last minute for political reasons. This was his way of mentoring me to the end.

My last emotional interaction with Reinhard was last year in April (2018) after he heard that I had been thrown in jail for political reasons. After my release he sent me a note not to give up. He also sent what has now become the last financial gift to “help” me after my jail experience. What touched me is that the gift came from his personal account. What type of love is this? God gave me the best mentor and the best spiritual father. He loved and cared till the end. I later found out that when he sent me his last gift, his health had started to fail him.

I am sure my story can be told by many Africans across this continent who have been impacted by this “African Apostle.”

79 million souls later, he now rests in the arms of the one who commissioned him to Africa. This legacy is unparalleled.

Just like Jesus stood up for Stephen when he showed up in heaven, I believe the Lord Jesus and the heavenly host have given a standing ovation as Reinhard makes his grand entry into heaven. Until we meet again. So long.

Africa Shall NEVER forget.

By: Anthony Bwalya – UPND Member

Since the year 2014, Zambia has lost an estimated $500 million in Mukula revenue as a result of illegal underdeclaration of exports by the Zambian side.

Over the same period, another estimated $38 million has been paid and received in bribes by top government officials in this country, with new information now placing the presidency, a member of the first family, top government Ministers and a member of the traditional leadership now implicated.

And the primary reason the Patriotic Front (PF) political establishment, through it’s Media Director Sunday Chanda and and it’s defacto Spokesperson Emmanuel Mwamba, vehemently defended the Mukula Cartel is simply that the party is a beneficiary.

We have always spoken on the record, and repeatedly raised the alarm to the effect that Zambia is now firmly under the spell of political state capture. The political party Zambians elected into office serve and protect their interests, as well as acting for and on their behalf in the best national interest, has finally gone rogue. The Patriotic Front (PF) political establishment has facilitated the hostile and criminal takeover of government and all of its key institutions to ensure that economic gains are disproportionately, illegally and illegally diverted away from citizens and into the pockets of the presidency, top PF government officials, the party and their profit seeking private associates.

From the patterns of grand corruption thus far investigated and published, we now know that corruption under the PF administration is not perpetrated by individuals but rather sponsored by the party and the state. This is why it is and has been difficult for the PF establishment and government to act decisively against the corruption activities involving top party and government officials, as well as the party itself.

In February 2017, armed with information that there were several thousands of cubic meters of Mukula bound for export but lay in the hands of private permit holders, greed got the better of the PF administration. They panicked and put an illegal blockade on all Mukula exports. According to correspondence we have looked at by the Zambia Association of Timber and Forestry Based Industries, the 2017 ban, just like the 2012 ban, was instituted illegally, against the prescriptions of Article 64 of the Forestry Act No. 4 of 2015. The ban was never supported by a statutory instrument. They seized this timber and proceeded to illegally selling it to willing buyers, using ZAFFICO as a conduit. Only now are we learning of the gross underdeclaration and misrepresentation of revenues which arose from this illegal seizure and selling of the private property of Zambian companies, with a greater proportion of the arising revenue going into the pockets of individuals and never onto the books of ZAFFICO.

I personally know Two (2) legitimate local timber processing companies that collapsed, losing several thousands of US dollars in investment capital, inventory, idle machinery, incomes, livelihoods, lost jobs; thanks to this illegal, savage and heavy-handed wielding of power by corrupt PF operatives. In the end, it was corrupt government politicians who ended up dubiously benefitting from the efforts and private investments of hardworking Zambians. The value of the seized consignment alone exceeded $20 million and yet this was just a drop in the ocean.

Realizing how much money there was to be made, the PF government used Jean Kapata to cause ZAFFICO to be selectively issuing “special permits” to top government officials ONLY for the illegal harvest and export of Mukula trees. But even when the purported ban was in place, these corrupt government sponsored operatives were cutting down and exporting Mukula under the guise that the trees originated from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of course, this was all a facade.

But the plunder of Mukula trees at the hands of PF operatives and government officials is just one area where the country is being raped and deprived of the much needed revenue to invest into our various social and economic sectors.

And it is no surprise that the party has come to the aid of it’s thieving proxies in government. The PF itself is on the record and has been cited for receiving tens of millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for the award of public contracts. This is in the Financial Intelligence Center report for the period ended 2018.

The PF also unequivocally and shamelessly defended the fraudsters in $42 million the Fire Tender scam, just as they defended the $35 million Maizegate scammers. The PF also came to the defense of those at the heart of the £3.5 million social cash transfer scandal, defended the criminals who spent up to $11 million on ambulances that never arrived, the thieves that stole $400,000 worth of test kits at MoH, as well as those who procured $4 million of expired drugs – again at MoH.

It is also the PF who have systematically shielded public sector payroll fraudsters who have racked in close to $800 million since 2012 in ghost worker salary payments.

We also know, that the 20% local contracts allocation is a scheme to divert public resources to the PF political party establishment as these contracts are issued to companies owners by Ministers and other party operatives, despite their repeated and shambolic record of never delivering on public works.

This is the legacy of the PF – a legacy of theft and plunder.

No single individual within the PF can fix this rot. The rot sits at the heart of the party and one certain way of averting the impending catastrophe connected to this filth is to vote the PF out of power.