Maravi

Levy, rest in peace

Levy, rest in peace
By Editor
Thursday September 04, 2008 [04:00]

We gathered yesterday to mourn, bury and bid farewell to President Levy Mwanawasa and give thanks for his great life. We give thanks for the quality of his character. Levy possessed a wondrous mixture of contradictory traits – he was an intelligent and disciplined lawyer; a politician who always put the needs of the people first; a man who faced the turbulence of volatile times with gentleness; a president who with every fibre of his being worked to improve the lot of his fellow citizens, especially the poor.

We give thanks for his humanity. There are two major motivations towards working to improve the lives of fellow human beings. One is religious. The Fatherhood of Almighty God betokens the brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind. We are all God’s children, responsible for the well-being of everyone on earth, commanded to reach out the hand of help to the other.

Social justice and benevolent action are as old as the Bible. The Prophet Amos, for example, stoutly defended the oppressed, thundered with indignation against the idle rich for their ill-treatment of the poor: “let justice well up as the waters, and righteousness as a mighty strip” (Amos 5:24).

The second motivation is humanitarian - it springs from a deep sense of identification with the oppressed, the ability to hear their cry, and acute awareness of the realities of poverty, a personal anguish at the suffering of fellow human beings.
For Levy, it appears to have been a combination of these two major motivations – religious and humanitarian. His humanity was boundless and inspirational; he became the true champion of the poor.

As a lawyer and politician, Levy was determined that no one should be singled out for unfair treatment for no proper reason. It was not enough to avoid harming others – positive and purposely one had to strive to ameliorate widespread poverty and hardship, to build a society based on harmony and equality, in which every single individual would be respected. This was the driving force of his life’s work: the betterment of the living conditions and life of the entire population.

Reverend Martin Luther King, once said, “we are all inextricably bound together in a single garment of destiny.” Levy worked towards the fulfilment of that dream, that we are all part of one big caring human family, so much closer.

We should appreciate that it is not genius, nor glory, nor even love, which truly reflect the human soul – it is kindness. Countless millions of people, touched by the humanity and kindness of Levy, will forever cherish him in their hearts.

We give thanks to his frankness, to his honesty, to his incorruptibility and bravery. Unflinching throughout his legal and political careers, he never gave up his principles, his integrity, his honesty in the darkest hours but soldiered on to tackle seemingly insurmountable difficulties. The fight against corruption is one such issue. This has not been an easy fight. His opponents had both the money and political muscle. But he took them on. Thank goodness he witnessed in great joy the deserved success of some of his efforts – the convictions, seizures of stolen public assets as a result of the London High Court judgment, the reversal of fortunes on the economic front - with all the promise it carries for our future.

And Levy was so brave in his illness. It is not a secret to the nation that their President hadn’t been well for sometime since that accident in the mid 1990s; that prostate cancer treatment; that first stroke. Not for a moment did he give up his arduous tasks as President of the Republic; he summoned reserves of energy when he had no strength left. He showed all the triumph of human spirit over sickness, fatigue and adversity.

As we have recited before in this same column, there is an old Rabbinic teaching, a beautiful one, that just before a person dies, an angel comes to him from Heaven and asks the vital question: “Tell me, is the world a better place because of your life which is about to end? Is the world a better place because of the efforts you exerted? Is the world a better place because you were around?”

For Levy, everyone who spoke at the funeral yesterday – from Thabo Mbeki, Jakaye Kikwete to our local pastors – gave him the answer Yes, a resounding Yes. Zambia is a better place, thanks to you, Levy, and your remarkable life.
It is said that life is a terminal illness, we will all go. What more could one person expect out of one life?

Many times in history, progressive processes have been preceded by adverse episodes! And we should brace ourselves for a possible reversal as a result of Levy’s death. The signs are not good. The vultures, hyenas and jackals have already started threatening Levy’s legacy. If these clearly dishonest people who have congregated around Rupiah Banda triumph in Friday’s MMD’s nominations for a presidential candidate, then we should expect a serious threat to all the things Levy stood for. It would be naïve and self-deception for anyone to think that these men and women can continue to run the affairs of this country on the lines of Levy’s integrity, honesty and incorruptibility.

These are clearly dishonest vultures with no interest of the nation at heart at all. All that is propelling them is vanity, greed, selfishness, ambition and personal aggrandisement.
We are not opposing these characters for any personal reason or out of hatred. Actually, letting them do what they want would make our lives much easier, at least for now. But there will be serious consequences for every citizen of this country in the days to come. Of course, in all ages and under our circumstances there will always exist abundant reasons not to fight for just, fair, right, honest causes. But this will be the only way for our country not to make progress.

And in taking the stand we have taken on these issues, we are not in any way motivated by anything that is personal, nor are we being narrow-minded or hateful of any individual. But, as always, and as we did in our opposition to Frederick Chiluba, who is today facing corruption charges in our courts of law, we are ready to fecundate our ideas with personal sacrifices, with all the risks that go with it. We know already that Rupiah and those who surround him are already threatening to fix our business activities after he wins the November presidential by-election. This is nothing to us. It doesn’t scare us in any way. There are people that have sold themselves out, that have hired themselves out, that have surrendered themselves to wrong things, to wrongdoers, but we serve notice to Rupiah and his sponsors – and they should know that, after seventeen years of continuous struggle for survival, that we mean what we say – that we are not for hire. We have principles, we have ideas to use in the service of our country. Even our contribution to the founding of the MMD is far much greater than that of Rupiah and some of his sponsors, with exception of Vernon Mwaanga, Mbita Chitala, among a few others.

And our record of selfless public service is far much better than theirs combined. Yes, with state machinery at their disposal to abuse, they can annihilate us and our activities physically but they will never succeed to wipe out the ideas, the principles we have tried to advance and defend in our country over the last seventeen years.

For us, fighting for integrity, for honesty, for incorruptibility in public life and to ensure that only those committed to these ideals find themselves in government will be our contribution to Levy’s legacy. And moreover, no one in this country can talk about Levy’s legacy in an honest way without acknowledging our contributions to it. And probably this is why we take the best of his legacy as our own to advance and defend. And on this score we are never scared of setbacks. After all our entire history has been one of enduring setbacks, overcoming them and advancing. This is the way we will honour Levy’s legacy, which everyone, including those opposed to it, are today sloganeering about.

Standing up for what is right, just, fair, honest and humane is not always a popular thing, an easy undertaking. But popularity, easy life is not our concern. We are more concerned with preserving and advancing principles, ideas of justice and fairness. We are more concerned with creation of a more humane society, a nation overflowing with solidarity. If it wasn’t for these, we would have been supporters of Chiluba because despite his criminal behaviour, dishonesty, deceit, lies, corruption and abuse of office ,he still possesed the winning card in elections, he was still popular. We opposed Chiluba’s criminality, corruption, dishonesty, lies and deceit at the height of his popularity. And time has proved us right in all what we said about Chiluba. We will not support an individual, a group, simply because they can win. We will always identify ourselves with principles, with honesty and integrity, even if it is unpopular to do so.

To behave otherwise is to be opportunistic; it is to refuse to struggle for a better society and it is synonymous with hoping for a better society without being willing to struggle for it. While evil springs up on its own like weeds, virtue has to be nurtured. If tomorrow we are to wake up and find that evil men and women have manipulated everything and won elections, we will not join them. We will instead fight them because evil has to be fought, bad things have to be struggled against.

And we lift up our hearts and say farewell to Levy. We will always remember him with pride and affection. Shalom, dear brother, Shalom. Rest in eternal peace.

Labels: MWANAWASA

posted by MrK @ 5:37 PM