ZAMBIA: 2021 elections, a mental check-up

By: Ollus Ndomu

With five days before Zambians cast the ballot to elect the country’s next president, lawmakers and other office bearers, the ruling Patriotic Front -PF- has continued to flex its fast maturing dictatorial muscle.

The party that won power in 2011 on claims of being pro-poor has become corrupt, a scandalous get-together of crooks, tribalists and false christians. Six years after the demise of the party’s founder who is also Zambia’s 5th President, Micheal Sata, PF members have become filthy rich but without any businesses to substantiate their wealth.

Based on the last two subsequent reports of the country’s Financial Intelligence Centre -FIC-, the overflowing wealth among PF politicians is an accumulation of corruption, tenderpreneurship and plunder of taxpayers money through a cosmetic robust infrastructure development agenda.

The country has borrowed heavily in the name of infrastructure development but most of the monies have ended up in the pockets of crooks including the now powerful than state police party cadres.

Under the Edgar Lungu managed Zambia, ruling party cadres have more influence and access to money than teachers, nurses, doctors and lawyers. Graduates that have spent many years studying are nobodies compared to PF cadres. Zambia is a new banana state where an estimation of 2 out of every 8 police officers are cadres belonging to the ruling party.

With a skyrocketing cost of living and increasing graduate unemployment, it is most fashionable to be identified as a cadre than any other profession there is in Zambia.

As if it is not enough, the PF is making underhand advances to retain power in the August 12 polls, which have 16 presidential candidates, unprecedented in the country’s political history. With Hakainde Hichilema of the opposition United Party for National Development -UPND-, enjoying significant popularity in Zambia’s swing regions, the Copperbelt and Lusaka provinces, PF mobile loud speakers including Chishimba Kambwili, Bowman Lusambo and Tutwa Ngulube, have gone out preaching tribalism against the Tonga speaking people, to which Hichilema belongs.

Chishimba Kambwili, a forgery convict but illegally freed to champion tribalism in a bid to have majority Bemba speaking people reject the opposition, is on record of having said, “If Hichilema wins, I will relocate to the UK. I can’t be ruled by a Tonga man.”

According to the PF politicians, Tonga speaking are not fit to qualify for public office, worse off, the presidency. Speaking to AfricaWorld Reports, a civil servant working at the Finance Ministry’s headquarters in the capital Lusaka, said under anonymity conditions that, “It’s extremely difficulty to work here when you’re Tonga like me. You see, I’m always ashamed of even picking up a phone call and speak to my people at the village who know no other language but Tonga.”

Zambia has 73 ethnic groups which lived in co-existence and peace until the PF decided to attempt manipulating this year’s election outcome by engineering tribal voting. This follows a successful manipulation of a voter’s register which more voters from Bemba speaking regions.

The 19-man million southern African country is on crossroads ahead of Thursday polls, but like a University of Zambia lecturer charged late last year, the outcome of these elections will determine the total number of mental patients. A normal Zambian will choose to end the anti-Tonga campaign, corruption, youth unemployment, thuggery and name calling politics.

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