By Pemba Moyo

It will not be any surprising if President Rupiah Banda is re-elected into office next year with a fresh five-year mandate added to his CV, and there are more than enough reasons why that would not be a miracle.

Challenging a ruling party is one thing, and the opposition in Zambia manages to do that so well, but ousting the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) from office needs nothing short of the 1991 revolution that sent UNIP packing, which unfortunately is not within sight.

As we count down to the 2011 general elections, it might be interesting to look at just how the ruling party packages it’s campaign messages and also where the opposition gets it wrong.

Donations

Debating whether it is wrong or right for the President, Vice President, First Lady and ministers to make donations either to organisations or individuals citizens especially during campaign periods should be left to people who interpret the law better, but let’s look at the effects it bears.

Not so may headlines ago, First Lady Thandiwe Banda was in the news facing criticism and condemnation for donating money and other materials to some unknown women’s organisation in Mpulungu, Northern Zambia.

That was shortly after Mpulungu area member of parliament, the late Lameck Chibombamilimo was put to rest. Those with unfailing memories will recall that Thandiwe’s almsgiving was a replica of Vice-President George Kunda’s charity to a bunch of dancers during the campaigns for the Chitambo by-elections 2009. Pictures of his ‘brown envelop exercise’ are almost collecting dust now, but the results from both occasions are needless to mention.

There are so many other ways in which the ruling party, enjoying tightly massaged publicity from four well funded media institutions – including ZANIS, manages to gather momentum into the now all familiar ‘Operation: Rural vote’.
Just last week, President Banda made headlines with his K5million (about US$1,000) donation to a needy Kabompo couple that was seeking help to raise new born triplets.

“President Banda was sympathetic with the couple after reading about their plight in the press, read a statement signed by State House special assistant for press and public relations Dickson Jere.

And well, the Kabompo triplets surely had their Santa Clause wish granted, but how many triplets born in Zambia have had the luck of capturing the Head of State’s attention?

Of course the first family is blessed with twins Temwani and Dunia and probably understands better the challenges of multiple birth. But haven’t Siemens Siamese  twins been born in this country and some died for lack of foreign specialist treatment? If the problem facing Emelda Chikamba of Chikamba Village in Kabompo is so touching, can’t there be a constitutional provision taking care of such natural situations?

Bumper harvest

Hats off to the Zambian farmers for producing about 2.8 million metric tonnes of Maize in the “Bumper Harvest” of last season. It is still very difficult however, to fully credit President Banda for the massive yield, unless the ministry of Agriculture supplied unprecedented farming inputs in 2008.

But a good rainy season met with standard agriculture policy can produce enough maize, some of which soaked by the way, to earn the ruling party positive governance points.

Mining

Almost every day, chiefs in Zambia have been praising President Banda for scoring positive economic strides and calling for his re-election next year, citing the single digit inflation among other economic indicators as his achievements MMD through President Banda claims that its administration has seen a record high foreign direct investment in the mines, not to mention job creations in the booming sector.

About two years ago, Zambia’s Copper was selling for less than US$3,000 per tonne, a situation that saw mining companies folding up and leaving. Today Copper has shot a record high price of over US$8,000 per tonne, would there be any connection between honourable Commerce minister Felix Mutati’s speeches to the investors and the London metal exchange rates?
But again, for a country like Zambia whose major export is copper, the rising global metal prices has a lot to write home about for a party in power.

Infrastructure

The people of Mongu are surely happy and deservingly so, for the Mongu – Kalabo road that has been a mock to their livelihoods for more than 10 years. Thanks to President Banda, K1.2 trillion has been earmarked to finally put a full stop to the old Western Province story.

The sad news is that a very tiny fraction of that amount is coming from Finance minister Situmbeko Musokotwane’s 2010 budget, the rest of it is coming from Exim Bank of China.

Due to demands of increased power supply to drive the growing economy, Energy minister Kenneth Konga last year signed a US$1.5billion agreement with the China-Africa Development Fund to construct a 700 megawatts Kafue gorge lower hydro power station. Over 2,000 jobs will be created.

Again the only problem is that government through ZESCO and the constructor Synohydro is expected to source only a third of the total budget while the US$1 billion remains a loan from China.

What may not be foreseen for these and numerous other projects at this stage is that President Banda may not be there when these loans will require servicing.

But systematically President Banda and his ministers are packaging their ‘progressive’ campaign messages in a way that suits the ears that have no preview to behind the scene realities.

TV advertising

To blind it all, President Banda has intensified his TV adverts on the national broadcaster ZNBC, which he uses to amplify his party’s manifesto and government achievement.

Even though these prime time adverts, which the opposition have not really questioned to expectation, have continued to run, it remains a mystery who is sponsoring them.

The packaging may suggest that ZNBC does not cash-in anything from the ruling party, and much as that may only be left to speculation, MMD is enjoying the fruits.

Yes President Banda has done exceptionally well, for a man who was hopped back into active politics from his productive farm ascending to the highest office. But to say that he is Zambia’s guardian angel may well be an overstatement.

The Pact

When all this is happening, you would expect the opposition joining hands to form a united front to bring about the much talked about change, but the reverse is the situation.

Firstly, No one really knows whether or not the Pact between the Patriotic Front (PF) and United Party for National Development (UPND) is still existent and from the look of things, it would seem that even members of either parties don’t know the answer.

From Fighting over the Pact presidency to constituency seats and finally giving each other cold shoulders, PF and UPND, the unbreakable Pact is without doubt staggering.

Even though UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema is consistently assuring Zambians that the Pact, which was born out of their demands, is still going strong, it would not be surprising if we learnt later that Mr. Hichilema was in fact singing lullabies to himself.

What happened to joint campaign rallies, what went wrong with joint press briefings and a joint manifesto for the Pact?
Let’s suppose Mr. Hichilema and his PF counterpart Michael Sata went flat out campaigning in Western, North Western, Eastern and Central Provinces, giving the same donations that the ruling party is giving and uprooting the resistance in the rural areas, where would it leave MMD?

This is not likely to happen, not soon. Instead Mr. Sata has gone his own route and so has Mr. Hichilema. It is simply to the MMD’s advantage that the two leaders are failing to realize that they would not win an election in their individual capacities.

Opposing the opposition

As though that were not enough, the other smaller opposition political parties have charged up against the bigger opposition parties, putting holes in their challenges to the ruling party.

Some are eager to nail the Pact completely out of existence while others like Humphrey Siulapwa’s New Generation Party have literary lost their vision, courting 74-year old President Banda as there 2011 hero.

FDD’s Edith Nawakwi Nawakwi is seemingly comfortable watching the political scenario from a respective distance, buoyant with her booming agriculture activities. You can only guess if she is confident of becoming Zambia’s first female president in 2011.

With due respect to a law abiding citizen, Brigadier General Godfrey Miyanda, his passion for leadership and relentless efforts to change mother Zambia is yielding too little.

New comers like Elias Chipimo’s National Restoration Party (NAREP) must have tested the waters by now and seen just how deep it runs. Challenges have not spared them as seen by their occasionally broken silence and change of party convention dates.

But even that has not stopped parties you would want to refer to as jokers like the Africa’s Democratic and Economic Development Organization -Zambia Must Change Now (ADEDO – ZAMUCANO) from coming on board.

With the reduced presidential election nomination fees, more parties are expected to mushroom between now and next year, adding to the pressure facing the countrie’s opposition.

Under such circumstances, it would be more of a miracle if President Banda lost the 2011 elections than if he won it.

Defence Minister Kalombo Mwansa has dismissed media reports that tribalism and violence has rocked the ruling Movement for Multi Party Democracy (MMD) party ahead of its Eastern Province conference slated for next January.

Dr. Mwansa said what was obtaining on the ground was stiff competition among the people wishing to contest positions in the party in Eastern Province.

Responding to questions from Journalists in Lusaka today, Dr. Mwansa said the MMD was resolving the process of candidacy.
He cited positions of Chairman and Vice Chairman as those being looked at.

“There is no tribalism in MMD in Eastern Province. There is only stiff competition for persons vying for party position at provincial levels,” he said.

The Minister said the MMD was very strong in the East and no amount of violence would disrupt it from holding free and fair elections in that province.

The Eastern Province conference is expected to be opened by President Rupiah Banda next year. The Provincial conferences were deferred to next year to allow party members celebrate the Christmas and New Year festivals.

And  Defence Minister Kalombo Mwansa has disclosed that Government intends to construct 9,000 housing units for defence forces in the country to mitigate the critical shortage of accommodation faced by militarypersonnel.

Dr. Mwansa said the project was due to start in various cantonments across the country.

He said Government was concerned about the welfare of men and women in uniform hence it was in a hurry to improve their conditions of service.

The Minister said this last night in Lusaka when he officiated at the Zambia Air Force (ZAF) annual ball held at ZAF Chamba Valley

He further said Government was committed to ensuring that Defence Forces were adequately prepared to meet the country’s challenges.

He reminded the defence personnel that peace and stability the nation had continued to enjoy could not be taken for granted but should be guarded jealously.

He commended ZAF for being supportive to Government when called upon to do a service in national interest adding that Government shall continue making concerted effort towards equipping the defence force to enable them perform their duties efficiently.

Dr. Mwansa also commended efforts made by Air Power Ladies Club to spearhead the construction of hospitals and nursery schools in ZAF bases among them Eugenia, Kabwe and Samora Machel respectively.

He further warned the members of the defence and security services to avoid engaging themselves in partisan politics as the country drew closer to the tripartite elections next year.

He urged them to be disciplined and exhibit high moral behaviour .

And speaking earlier, ZAF Commandant Andrew Sakala commended Government for the modernisation programme which had enabled the Force enhance its delivery service to the people.

Lieutenant-General Sakala said ZAF would continue to carry out its mandate and meet its obligations with professionalism and dedication.

He told the Minister that the personnel would remain loyal to the Government.

Annual balls accords officers and their families a chance to interact with their civilian counterparts.

This year’s Annual Ball was celebrated under the theme, “Achieving Efficiency through concerted Efforts”.

ZANIS

Former Finance and National Planning Minister Ng’andu Magande has charged that the 6 percent annual economic growth is not strong enough.

Mr. Magande said to Qfm in an interview that government should have been seeking a stronger growth of 10 percent in order to accommodate Zambians.

The former minister has expressed sadness at the manner in which young people in the country are filling up the streets because of lack of employment despite attaining some level of education.

He has charged that the economy is not for an individual person and that there is need for government to identify categories of individuals that need development and intervention methods needed to put in place.

Mr. Magande says as the country’s economy grows, it must trickle down to the poor Zambians.

QFM

This is to inform you that the site migration was not successful and the process had to be aborted because the amount of time allotted was typically insufficient to complete the task. We hope to make another attempt at the process at 18:00 hrs ZMT. During that period that site would be offline. We hope to complete the migration by Sunday morning.

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Merry Christmas

LT Team

As announced in our last update, the site will be offline tonight from 22:00 hrs ZMT (GMT +2) to facilitate migration of the site to a scalable platform that would allow us to introduce more services without knocking the site out.

Internet traffic has been on the increase , resulting in poor performance of the site to the point that we had to shut down some services, like popular posts, to just keep the site afloat. We expect this traffic trend to continue its strong upward trajectory going forward because of the presence of more bigger players (Phone Companies especially ) in the ISP space in Zambia. It is just wise that we anticipate this growth in traffic. Broadband access in Zambia is slowly but surely beginning to tick up.

Currently, LT has outgrown the current platform and it high time we did the migration.While hoping to complete the migration by afternoon 12:00hrs ZMT we have instructed the technical team to work flat out and shoot for 06:00hrs ZMT in the morning to minimise the inconvenience this migration will cause to our esteemed online visitors.

Thanks for your understanding and support to Lusakatimes.com. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2011.

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By Martin Mwango
Zambian anthropology defines marriage as a union between a man and woman. Marriage is the first gift that God gave to human beings, the creator blessed it and gave us the power to be pro creators on earth. Hence, Marriage has accompanied the human story from the very Genesis. Each culture defines marriage life differently.

In the Zambian culture we have some marriage values that we cannot do without. There are values and beliefs that have been there for generations and these are rituals that prepare one for a good and long lasting marriage. Here are some of the traditions of our lovely Zambian culture, though I’m not here to discuss them more profoundly but just to give a brief hint of them. The process that leads to marriage consists of the following steps

1) Insalamu when two young people fall in love, the man takes the first step and takes the Insalamu (token) which shows the commitment he has towards a woman he intends to marry. The two families then accept and acknowledge the intention of their children.
2)Nkobekela is the period that goes from the time that the insalamu is accepted by the woman’s side up to marriage or wedding day. During this time the two partners get to know each other and their families better.
3) Amatebeto The woman’s family responds to the man’s side with amatebeto. It’s a ritual practice for social and union between the two families.The womans family prepares a feast for the mans family.

Before the wedding day, the elders organizes themselves to teach both the man and a woman traditional values on how to abide in their new marriage life.

In Zambia today we are slowly losing these traditions and in the end we shall forfeit our identity just because of the so called world globalization. Our marriages should not be influenced by any other cultures.Besides Westerners have their own way of interpreting marriage life.

Nowadays, there are lot of divorces in Zambia which was something very rare many years ago. Are we easily disregarding the traditional values we are taught in exchange for the frivolous western values. Do our women deserve divorce? Perhaps its the women who nowadays want to wear the pants in the home.When we stand up for gender and change of some cultural practices we have to be careful.For example, when people stood up in Zambia to fight for liberty of dressing, what has come out of this liberty? We have lost our dressing code and our identity. Zambian men and women, we need to go back to our roots and pick up our identity and have respect in our marriages.

Let’s not just rush to make a change without putting into consideration the effects it will give us tomorrow.

Touch not marriage, otherwise our families will soon become like that of westerners where marriage has become like a contract. God created man and a woman and he consecrated them for marriage life and our culture as taught us how to interpret marriage life.