Maravi

A few facts for Rupiah

A few facts for Rupiah
By Editor
Thu 12 Nov. 2009, 04:01 CAT

It is good that Rupiah Banda recognised that the criticism that we carry out against him and his government did not start and will not end with him and his government. We have subjected every government that has been there since the launch of our newspaper in 1991 to criticism. And we have allowed the Zambian people to question what was being done in their name.

But as usual, Rupiah will never stop telling lies about us. We never called Dr Kenneth Kaunda Fonko fonko. It is the politicians themselves who called each other names. The only name that came from The Post about Dr Kaunda was that of Super Ken which was coined by our cartoonist late Trevor Ford, popularly known as Yuss. Our criticism of Dr Kaunda and his government was not personal or petty in any way and that’s why today he is a personal friend of ours. There was an issue where we differed. Dr Kaunda and his followers like Rupiah at that time defended the one party state and were convinced that multiparty would be a return to Stone Age politics.

And we were convinced that the single party state, except at rare moments in history, was a recipe for tyranny. We had learnt from the soviet experience and from the African experience that the concept of the party as a vanguard which has the right to rule by virtue of calling itself something and which is entrenched in the constitution as a permanent godfather of this society, was a disaster.

Dr Kaunda and UNIP had rejected a return to multiparty politics even within their own intra-party discourse. The return to multiparty politics was something that was forced on them and they accepted it because public opinion had shifted against them. This was possible because for all his weaknesses, Dr Kaunda has always respected the will of the people. So the criticism that we levelled against Dr Kaunda and his government was justified and that is why we are able to sit today with him without any remorse on our part.

As for Levy Mwanawasa, again Rupiah is not telling the truth. It’s not us who nicknamed him Cabbage. That name came from the politicians themselves. We were merely messengers. We did not start to praise Levy in his death. We acknowledged common goals and differences with him during his lifetime. We called him a comrade in the fight against corruption during his lifetime. We exposed and denounced him when he departed from these values that made us comrades in the first place.

And one such issue was the nolle prosequi that he, George Kunda and Chalwe Mchenga had connived to grant their friend Kashiwa Bulaya. This was not a hidden difference. It was an open confrontation whose ending we all know. We criticised Levy when criticism was valid. Even in his death, we have never shied away from acknowledging the differences we had with him. Of course, we have not also shied away from acknowledging the good things on which we took a common stand and exalted this. It’s not that we are praising Levy in his death, no. We are simply stating things the way they stand or the way they stood.

With Frederick Chiluba, it was not difficult for any honest person to see that the man was running a dishonest and corrupt regime. And for us, corruption has to be fought and there are no two ways about it. We believe that virtue must be nourished but vice springs up spontaneously like weeds and grows by itself. We must bear that in mind. If we do otherwise, while nourishing virtue we are simultaneously paving way for vice. That’s a reality we must not lose sight of.

We had every opportunity to be very close to those in power. But unlike some people in this country, we have never been torn between the pursuit of the truth and the desire of being in good terms with the powerful. We have never been tortured by the many guises of social climbing on the pyramids of power.

This is why we have been able to keep a distance and remain objective of every regime that has governed our country since 1991. We have never been discomforted by straying too far off the government reservation. We have never been discomforted by the slightest evidence that those in power don’t like us. We have never been too close to any government or politician to fail to call a lie, a lie. We have never failed to keep a distance from the pyramids of power, remembering that no politician is eternal. They will come and go.

And above all, our work has never been guided by ill will or malice. We have always sought the truth and apologised for inaccuracies in our stories or comments. This is out of the belief that there are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest way upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or businessman, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. And we hail every man who with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.

The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does not good, but very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed.

Of course, in saying all this, we are not in any way making a plea for immunity too but for the most unsparing exposure of the politician who betrays his trust, of the big businessman who conducts business through corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced. Crime should be exposed, and criminals should be hunted down; but remembering that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself. It is because we feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil that we believe this war should be conducted with sanity as well as with resolution.

Painting a clean man black does not benefit our cause in any way. It instead damages it because such painting finally induces a kind of moral colour-blindness; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but they are all gray. In other words, they neither believe in the truth of the attack, nor in the honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as suspicious of the accusations as of the offence; it becomes well-nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath against wrongdoing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental attitude in the public gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of honest men.

Therefore, our criticism of Rupiah cannot be said to be unfair or unjustified. Let’s look back at Rupiah’s own conduct. Rupiah has advocated tribal and regional politics. We have a recording of Rupiah’s campaign in Eastern Province where he was advocating this and he has never denied or repudiated his statements on this score. We also have evidence of Rupiah’s electoral corruption. An attempt to deny it was made but again when it was realised that we had the evidence, they backed off. There is also enough evidence of Rupiah’s lies against us and others that cannot be denied.

So when we accuse Rupiah of corruption, tribalism, lies or dishonesty, we are not doing so in a manner that can be said to be untrue or unfair. We challenge Rupiah to show us things that we have published about him that are not true or that are unfair. If indeed he brings up anything to show that it was not true or was unfair, we will apologise without any reservations. And there is a recent case of his statements over the acquittal of Chiluba. The position taken by Rupiah and his government on this issue is not a secret. And it is not one founded on justice, fairness and honesty. It is a position founded on corruption and its defence, dishonesty, deception, manipulation and lies. Exposing and denouncing this cannot, in any way, be said to be unfair.

We will have very little, if not nothing, to criticise Rupiah about if he turns his back on wrongdoing and wrongdoers and start to serve the Zambian people heart and soul and put the interests of our people above his personal interests. We have nothing personal against Rupiah. What we have a problem with is his attitude, deeds or rather misdeeds. And this is what we expose, criticise and denounce, and we will continue to do so.

Rupiah is boasting that he has enough powers to shut us down or remove our licence tomorrow if he wanted to. What Rupiah is implying is that we exist, we are here purely by his benevolence, his goodwill, otherwise we have no right to be here. Is this truly so? We only exist because of his goodwill, his kindness, his good heart? If we have no constitutional or legal right to exist, then ours is really a very fragile undertaking and the Zambian people need to re-examine the basis of our existence and make amends quickly. But what Rupiah is saying should make our people sit up because he is warning them of what he is capable of doing. There are only other factors restraining him.

One day he will do crazy things. After all, he had publicly threatened to get us closed. And we know that he is doing everything possible to get us closed. We don’t exist today because of his goodwill. We exist because of the support being given to us by the Zambian people who every day sacrifice their hard-earned K3,000 to buy our newspaper and to advertise in it. We are also being sustained by all those Zambians of goodwill who speak for us in the Church, in the palaces and in other gatherings. This is primarily what is keeping us, not Rupiah’s goodwill because he has none for us. His chest is full of nothing but hate for us. If Rupiah’s hatred for us is something that can sustain us, then truly we are here because uncle Rupiah wants us to be here.

Labels: RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 8:24 AM