Maravi

We wish you a happy and prosperous 2010

We wish you a happy and prosperous 2010
By Editor
Fri 01 Jan. 2010, 04:00 CAT

Today we are starting a new year – 2010. The year that we closed yesterday – 2009 – was a very difficult one for us. But it was a very educative year.
In 2009, we were taught once again the meaning of solidarity.

You and us have stood together many times, but no time has been more important than the year 2009. A relentless campaign was waged by Rupiah Banda and his minions to try and annihilate us. They never hid their intentions to destroy us; they stated their intentions publicly. But we are still here, totally uncompromised.

Regardless of our limitations and defects, we are much more at peace with ourselves because of what we stand for; what we struggle for. We have peace not because of money and all those other material things that Rupiah considers to be very important to our survival.

Material things alone don’t make for happiness. A sense of justice, dignity, self-respect, respect for others, and love for your fellow men have a great deal to do with happiness, with peace as have moral principles; the feeling of being free, equal and respected and of taking part in the battle for the progress of our country, the country we live in; and working like beavers, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of our fellow citizens, the citizens of goodwill.

There are men and women that have sold out to wrongdoers, been hired by corrupt elements, or have surrendered themselves to crooks, but we will never be for hire.

Our existence has not been easy since Rupiah came to power. But we have confronted every difficulty; pressure; financial, political or other kinds of attack. We will keep on moving ahead, winning new laurels and scoring new victories.

The struggle that stretches before us now is a struggle for the souls and the future of Zambia. Most of all, we are the trustees of our country’s dream. And today’s dreams are tomorrow’s reality. We have seen many of the dreams of the past, a great part of our utopias, become reality. And, since we have seen this, we have the right to keep on dreaming of things that will become realities someday, both in our country and in the world as a whole.

If we didn’t think this way, we would have to stop struggling, and we think that men and women of goodwill, those struggling for a more just, fair and humane world never abandon the struggle, just as they never stop dreaming.

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now, in the unfolding life and history. There is such a thing as being too late. We must work unceasingly to lift this nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion.

Let us not submerge our dreams for our country. Let us dream of the day that our country will be a more just, fair and humane society for all of us to live in. We must never stop dreaming. Let’s face reality, yes. But we shouldn’t stop with the way things are; let’s dream of things as they ought to be.

Let’s face pain, but love, hope, faith and dreams should help us rise above the pain. Let’s do everything possible to ensure that our children can hold their heads high again. Let’s not lose ourselves to cynicism, pessimism and despair. We can win.

Let’s use hope and imagination as weapons of survival and progress, but let’s keep on dreaming, dreaming about a better Zambia.

Let us dream of politicians who are more concerned about public welfare than private wealth. Let’s strive for politics based on morality. Let us try in a new time and in a new way to restore this concept of politics.

Let us teach ourselves and others that politics should be an expression of a desire to contribute to the happiness of the community rather than of a need to cheat or rape the community. Let us teach ourselves and others that politics can be not only the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculation, calculation, intrigue, secret deals and pragmatic manoeuvring, but that it can even be the art of the impossible, namely, the art improving ourselves and the world. There are elections and an election campaign ahead of us.

Let us not allow this struggle to dirty our faces by becoming entangled in the jungle of skirmishes for power. Let us not allow the desire to serve oneself to bloom once again under the fair mask of the desire to serve the common good.

It is not really important which party will prevail in next year’s elections. The important thing is that the winners will be the best, in the moral, civic, political sense. The future policies and prestige of our country will depend on the personalities we elect to lead our country.

Let’s dream of teachers who teach for life and not for living. The incredible backwardness of general and technical education – which education is absolutely necessary for any process of real development and for the use of the great scientific and technical advances that man has made in all fields – is one of the most serious negative consequences of our country’s underdevelopment. Let us dream of doctors who are concerned much more about public health than money for themselves.

Health is an essential right of all men and women and a responsibility of society as a whole. Let us dream of lawyers more concerned about justice than positions and social climbing. Let’s dream of preachers who are concerned more about prophesy than profiteering and brown envelopes from corrupt politicians. Let us dream of the high road of sound values.

And as we enter 2010, Zambia must never surrender to a high moral challenge.
Don’t surrender to corruption, nepotism and tribalism.

Let’s go forward. Zambia must never surrender to hunger and malnutrition. The existence of large numbers of hungry and under-nourished people in our country constitutes an affront to all of us. A stable, permanent solution must be found for this serious problem. We should strive to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. We must never surrender to illiteracy. Let us invest in our children.

We must never surrender to inequality. Women must not compromise on their rights and on fairness.

Let’s not forget our sisters and brothers who live with AIDS, they deserve our compassion and love. And those living with HIV should not surrender. Let’s reach out to them across our nation. We know it’s tough sometimes. People look down on them. No one should look down on them, but sometimes senseless or mean people do. Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it.

It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t surrender. Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint. We can make Zambia better and we must make it better.

No matter how enormous the difficulties, no matter how complex the task, there can be no room for pessimism, for surrender. This would be to renounce all hope and resign ourselves to the final defeat. We have no alternative but to struggle, trusting in the great moral and intellectual capacity of our people and their instincts for self-preservation, if we wish to harbour any hope of survival. Only with a tremendous effort and the moral and intellectual support of all can we face a future that objectively appears desperate and sombre.

We have never been characterised by resigned submission or defeatism in the face of difficulties. We have confronted complex, difficult situations in the last year with unity, firmness and determination. Together we have striven and struggled and together we have scored some victories.

In this same spirit and with this same determination, we must be ready to wage the most colossal, legitimate, worth and necessary battle for our people’s lives and future. We must not allow anybody or anything to divide us. We must use political formulas and negotiations to solve those problems which make some of us occasionally oppose each other. We should also rise above the controversies that sometimes turn us into enemies because of old disputes or intrigues, ambitions or the machinations of unscrupulous politicians.

It is in this spirit that we should face this new year, 2010. We wish you a happy and prosperous new year.

Labels: RUPIAH BANDA, THE POST

posted by MrK @ 10:45 AM