Maravi

UNIP's intra-party violence

UNIP's intra-party violence
By Editor
Tuesday August 12, 2008 [04:00]

The violence that UNIP cadres continue to unleash against each other is sad and embarrassing. For the last fifteen years or so, UNIP cadres have spent more of their time fighting among themselves than trying to promote their party to the electorate. We hope UNIP cadres will reach a stage when they realise that the use of violence against each other to settle political scores is something that puts them next to animals.

Criminal acts can in no way be justified as a way of doing politics. Violence is an attack on life. We must stress that when a political party appeals to violence, it thereby admits its own weakness and inadequacy. To guarantee unity in UNIP, all are called to maturity, tolerance and responsibility.

What is happening in UNIP is sad and embarrassing, but inevitable. As we have stated before, this is what happens in a political party when it its identity is lost. This is what happens to a political party when its values are lost. This is what happens to a political party when its reason to exist ceases.

In saying this, we are not in any way asking UNIP not to change, to remain static. They have the right to change because parties that do not change die. And UNIP should be a living movement and not an historical monument. If UNIP doesn’t change, then it will be of no use to the country because Zambia has changed a lot over the last sixteen years or so.

If UNIP doesn’t change, its principles will cease to be principles and will just ossify into a dogma. We are also not saying UNIP should change to forget its principles. UNIP shouldn’t change to forget its principles. It should instead change to fulfil those principles. It should change not to lose its identity but to keep its relevance.

We say this because change is an important part of gaining the nation’s trust. It should change to reach out and touch the people, to show them that politics is not a dirty game where cadres fight each other every day but a real, noble and meaningful part of their life.

It should show them that it wants to build a peaceful, dignified and respectful nation with pride in itself; a thriving community, reaching economic prosperity, secure in social justice, confident in the future; a land in which their children can bring up their own children with a future to look forward to.

UNIP should show that this is its hope, not just to promise change – but to achieve it. The way they relate to each other in their party, their daily deeds as a party must produce an actual Zambian reality that will reinforce our people’s belief in justice, strengthen their confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all their hopes for a glorious life for all our people.

How can one explain what is going on in UNIP today – the infighting, the violence and the apparent loss of direction, ethics and integrity?

We wonder how the UNIP leadership hopes to win the next elections with such a divided, violent and disorganised party. And with such divisions and chaos in the party, how do they hope to unite Zambia and organise the nation for the even greater and more complex challenges it faces?

Which sensible person can today render his or her support and vote for UNIP given the party’s current disorientation? It is no wonder UNIP has been doing very badly in elections.

And UNIP will only start winning elections if it succeeds in implanting hope in the breasts of the millions of our people and take away their despair.

If UNIP does not take measures to resolve its internal problems, it will never win any election and may soon go into total oblivion.

We know very well that leading UNIP is not an easy undertaking, but those who offer themselves or accept this duty should try to live up to the expectations.

Sometimes one wonders if UNIP can really be saved from its impending extinction. There are times when no effort can save something whose time to die has come. Probably this is UNIP’s time to die.

It is very difficult to believe things can turn out this way for UNIP. Sometimes one would like to believe it is a question of it getting dark but the morning will come.

But again, as we have advised the leadership of UNIP before, experience has repeatedly shown that a party divided into hostile groups loses its militancy. Protracted intra-party strife inevitably results in party leaders and cadres’ concentration on discords. The party becomes distracted from political struggle and day-to-day work among the masses and loses its influence.

UNIP leaders and cadres must be extremely careful and vigilant not to allow their differences on various issues concerning the running of their party to become factionally divisive within the party.

And the members should be allowed to actively advance perspectives of the kind of leadership collective that they believe is required to take UNIP forward. There is no need for violence. Those with superior, fair and just ideas have no reason to resort to violence in their defence or advancement.

It is said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Who can be attracted to join UNIP with all this violence going on within the party? Why should someone risk his or her life to join violent UNIP?

This is an incredible case of self-destruction. What the MMD of Chiluba failed to achieve over ten years – the total annihilation of UNIP - the leaders and cadres of UNIP are accomplishing in no time and with much ease. Why?

What are they fighting for when theirs was supposed to be a struggle for service and not for survival? Is it the little money that comes from UNIP’s properties and other investments?

Labels: CADRES, UNIP, UNIP NATIONAL REVIVAL FORUM

posted by MrK @ 4:56 AM