
Patriotic Front (PF) leader Michael Sata has been exposed as being part of a committee of cabinet ministers that recommended that the demand for the Barotseland Agreement of 1964 was stale and no longer legal.
According to PF former Secretary General Edward Mumbi, the expose’ indicates that Mr. Sata is one of the eight cabinet ministers that were not agreeable to the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement.
Mr. Mumbi said in 1992, former President Dr Frederick Chiluba appointed a committee of eight cabinet Ministers including Mr Sata to discuss the Barotseland Agreement in 1992 who brought a report disfavouring the Barotse Agreement.
Mr. Mumbi, however, said the committee to which Mr. Sata was a part of misdirected Dr. Chiluba by recommending that the Agreement has been overtaken by events and needed no attention.
The former PF Secretary General produced two letters to Journalists in Lusaka yesterday as proof that contain the committee’s position, stating grounds why government could not negotiate the Agreement.
Mr. Mumbi noted that Mr. Sata is therefore not the right person to talk about the Agreement because the PF leader was part and parcel of the committee that killed the Agreement.
He said the PF leader should instead apologize to the Litunga and the people of Western Province in general for misleading Dr. Chiluba over the document.
And Mr. Mumbi has challenged Mr. Sata not to hoodwink the people of Western Province because he threatened to de-recognize the Litunga when he was Health Minister in 1996.
Mr. Mumbi told Journalists at a media briefing in Lusaka yesterday that Mr. Sata wrote a letter to then President Frederick Chiluba to have the Litunga’s Chieftainship recognition dropped.
Mr. Sata could not immediately be reached for comment as his mobile phone was off by press time.
But PF Spokesperson Given Lubinda told ZNBC that he could only comment on matters that have occurred after the birth of the party and not before.
[ ZNBC ]