We are waiting!

We are waiting!
Written by Editor

There is nothing to investigate about us stealing US $30 million through Zambian Airways from state institutions. And those investigating us know that there is nothing truthful in this claim. US $30 million is a lot of money and it cannot take that long to discover how it was stolen. And this is much more so because Rupiah Banda did not put it as an allegation against us. He categorically stated that we had pocketed US $30 million from state institutions and he was going to make sure that this money is recovered from us and returned to government.

Rupiah spoke as a man who had all the evidence required to come to that conclusion. There is no one who listened to him that day who could have imagined that Rupiah was making all those charges without any piece of evidence in his pocket. But the truth is Rupiah had and has no evidence in his pocket of us stealing any money from anyone. All he had was a pocketful of rumours, concoctions and fabrications by those looking for jobs from him against us. And no one else has any evidence of us stealing any money because it’s not there, we have not stolen anything for there to be evidence of theft against us. Nobody in this world will ever be able to come up with any evidence of us having stolen any money because it’s not there. It would only be there if we had stolen.
But this raises serious questions about Rupiah’s integrity and the way he is running his government. He confidently told the Zambian people we had pocketed US $30 million. Where did he get that information from? What was the source of this information? Who told him that we had stolen US $30 million? The man was even obsessed with the type of houses we live in, the cars we drive, claiming we had bought them with the US $30 million we had stolen. It wouldn’t have taken him more than five minutes to find out how the houses we live in were acquired or built and where the money came from. It would have equally taken him less than a minute to find out when the so-called strange cars we drive were bought. The houses and the cars that are chocking him with envy were bought long before we invested a ngwee or a cent in Zambian Airways. This being the case, how would they have been bought with money stolen from state institutions through this airline?

It is not honourable for a head of state to make such serious pronouncements, such accusations or charges against ordinary citizens without evidence. What he is doing now, the investigations that he has commissioned should have been carried out before making such accusations or charges. What Rupiah raised against us were not allegations of theft but a matter of fact about theft. Where did he get his facts? If he had his facts at that time, why is he wasting taxpayers’ money on these futile investigations?

The problem with Rupiah and his friends is that they hate us so much that any rumour from any idiot about us is easily swallowed by them as a matter of fact. They don’t take time to digest any claim or allegation against us to find out whether it is true or not. What happened to Rupiah is sad. This old man swallowed all the lies and propaganda Dickson Jere was publishing about Zambian Airways and The Post in his Executive Issues as truth. But if he asked Jere today to provide any evidence of theft in Zambian Airways, the young man would not be able to show him anything. Probably, Rupiah should ask Jere to join the investigations team and show them where our theft lies. It’s frightening to live in a country where the President can be cheated and totally misled by an empty head like Jere. The boy simply wanted a job from Rupiah and the only way to get it was to show excessive viciousness and rare in-depth knowledge of his opponents, of those who criticised him. But what did Jere in truth know about Zambian Airways and The Post? The boy has gone around claiming he once worked for The Post. Jere has never been an employee of The Post. He was simply on attachment as a student from Evelyn Hone College. And when he sought a job with The Post, he was not offered one. And from that time, the boy has been bitter with us. How can Jere today claim to know more about The Post and totally mislead Rupiah? Jere knows nothing about The Post and he knows nothing about Zambian Airways apart from the innocent documents about the innocent endeavours the airline was pursuing which were leaked to him by some stupid people in our country’s banking system. This is the type of people Rupiah relies on for advice, for guidance. What sound advice can Jere give Rupiah? Let’s see what he will do about this mess they have put Rupiah in. Let’s see what evidence Jere and his friends will give Rupiah against us concerning the affairs of Zambian Airways. They promised Rupiah that they had all the dirt on us. Let them bring it out. All they can do now is publish anonymous circulars against us because they know there is no truth in them, they will not be able to defend anything in them.

Rupiah would have been better served if his Vice-President George Kunda behaved in a better way, in a more sensible and mature manner than Jere was behaving. As a lawyer, George should have proceeded in a more cautious way. But because of his hatred and the pettiness towards us, George stopped thinking. In his eagerness to throw dirt at us, he even created offences that don’t exist in the laws of this country. We were accused by George of racketeering. George knew that there was no basis for such attacks and yet he went ahead to make these statements. And in the process, he is about to embarrass Rupiah in the same way that he humiliated Levy Mwanawasa over Kashiwa Bulaya. George has chosen to act recklessly because of his hatred. These are the advisors that Rupiah has. Instead of surrounding himself with people who are able to think objectively and sensibly about issues, Rupiah’s closest advisors seem to be people whose mouths are drooling with malice. It is difficult to see anybody in Rupiah’s inner circle today who is level-headed, sobre-minded. All that we see is empty and pompous characters trying to throw their dead weight around.

But this is not to say Rupiah is an innocent victim of George or Jere’s capriciousness. He has not behaved any differently himself, he has equally been reckless.

It is clear that Rupiah has not cared to understand the recent history of our politics. Bullies have not done very well in our politics. Our people have learnt to stand up when it matters most. The people speaking on this issue today against him are not mercenaries hired by us, or anyone else for that matter; they are not those mercenaries they hire to denounce us, to call us all sorts of names. The people defending us are individuals who have been moved by their own sense of justice and humanity. While Rupiah and his friends are advancing their criminal campaign against us, we are being defended by decent human beings moved by nothing other than kindness, love for truth and justice. While they are hiring discredited elements to do their dirty work, we are being defended by dignified human beings. This only goes to show where they stand on the moral scale. It is said that you can judge a man’s character by those who defend him, by those who speak for him.

It is clear that their game over this matter is over. They can try to delay things but it won’t be long before the whole truth comes out – and that is, their investigators have found nothing. Well, it is a well-paying undertaking for those involved in it, there are allowances to be earned. And as long as this continues to be the case, the investigations will go on because those involved in them have nothing to lose but everything to gain from a financial point of view. However, everything has got a limit. One day, they will have to stop and disclose their findings. The Inspector General of Police stated clearly that the investigations were meant to clear the air. We hope that he keeps his promise and tell the nation how much we stole so that the air can be cleared as he had promised.

If we thought this investigation was professional and legitimate, we would whole-heartedly support it. But we all know that this was a ploy to malign us, smear us with filth and silence us. This is why we continue to say please arrest us so that we face our accusers in a court of law. Rupiah and his friends will not be the first to drag us to a court of law for doing nothing wrong. Their friend Frederick Chiluba did so many times. And just in case somebody has forgotten, Chiluba is in the position he is today because he dragged us to court for calling him something that he was: a thief.