PF Deputy Secretary General Mumbi Phiri has clarified that she did not refer to Tonga speaking people as Ba Kachema during a radio interview last week.
Speaking on ZNBC TV Sunday Interview, Mrs Phiri said her statement has been misconstrued by some sections of the media.
She said the statement about Ba Kachema was used in reference to her Son who wanted to abandon his vision of becoming a Pilot to becoming a cattle handler.
‘I was on Joy FM during a radio programme when i was asked about my family because some people think I was not married. I have been married 25 years and I shared a story about some differences I had with my husband about the career choice of my fifth born son who initially wanted to be a Pilot but suddenly changed when we travelled to his father’s village in Petauke where he saw a lot of cattle and he wanted to drop his passion for becoming a Pilot to cattle handling and I was against it,’ she explained.
She added, ‘So during the programme I said I don’t want my son to be a Kachema but a pilot and some Journalist especially from the Post, picked what they wanted to pick and made it Headline news which is unfortunate.’
‘It was again unfortunate that during the same radio programme when I was asked about the voter registration, I appealed to all PF members to go out en masse and register as voters. So I said tukaye ichitinta ng’ombe (we should go like a herd of cattle) but again this was misconstrued to mean that I was demeaning the Tongas,’ she said.
Mrs Phiri said she will bring the recording of the programme she had on Joy FM to ZNBC so that it could be re-run on ZNBC radio in order to prove to the rest of the nation that I never insulted the Tongas.
‘I will also take the same CD to the Post Newspaper because I don’t understand why the Post should be fabricating things I never said. You know Fred (Fred Mmembe is my brother), we might have our own misunderstanding but that should not allow his Journalists to be maligning me,’ she charged.
Mrs Phiri continued, ‘You know, I come from Muchinga and we are sometimes referred to by our ancestral things such as Aba kwa Lenshina (The Lenshina people) but that does not mean that I drink urine.’