Maravi

Kaingu and dog-loyalty

Kaingu and dog-loyalty
By Editor
Wed 24 Mar. 2010, 04:00 CAT

As we have stated before, it is very important in life to be clear about things.

And things must be called by their names. A dog is a dog. It cannot be something else. An attempt to call a dog something else will not help matters because people will still see a dog for what it is even if it is given another name, it will still remain a dog in its behaviour, in its barking, in the way it moves and so on and so forth.

To be clear about this whole issue of dog-loyalty that Mr Michael Kaingu was talking about, it is better to put everything in context. And to put this matter in context, we need to know its origin, its genesis, where it all started and who started it and for what reasons.

When Mr Kaingu talked about dog loyalty, he was adding his voice to a discourse that has been going on for some days on a very serious matter. As it may be recalled, at the MMD card renewal exercise held at Mulungushi International Conference Centre not too long ago, William Banda, the Rupiah Banda handpicked MMD Lusaka Province chairman decided to attack Cabinet and deputy ministers for what he called their disloyalty to Rupiah. As a junior party functionary who has not been elected by anybody, William Banda made very grave threats against ministers. According to him, some people who are eating and drinking with Rupiah and smiling at him are not loyal to him. He said he knew those who were not loyal and that Rupiah should not be surprised when they start barring some of these people from attending MMD national executive committee meetings.

William Banda had decided that he was the investigator, prosecutor, jury, judge and executioner. William Banda, a self-confessed troublemaker, made these ridiculous attacks and threats against ministers in full view of Rupiah and the ministers themselves. These comments served to completely undermine the dignity and importance of the offices of ministers. A party cadre who not too long ago was nowhere was dressing down ministers in public.

This is the issue Mr Kaingu should have been dealing with. This is the matter he should have been responding to. But what did he do? Mr Kaingu decided to tell the nation that he is very loyal to Rupiah. He chose for his metaphor the dog posture. Mr Kaingu said in his own words that even dogs are loyal to their owners. In other words, ministers should be loyal to Rupiah in the same way that dogs are loyal to their masters. In short, Mr Kaingu is telling us that the relationship between ministers and the President is comparable to the relationship between a dog and its master. We didn’t manufacture these words.

And he has confirmed them. In fact, Mr Kaingu says he has no problem with the story that we carried. He says it was very good. What is troubling him is the editorial comment, our analysis of the meaning and implication of the words he said. The meaning of ministers having loyalty similar to that of a dog or loyalty like a dog to its master. Even as he is complaining that we are misunderstanding him, today, Mr Kaingu has gone on further to say that, “As a minister, as ministers we are appointed by the President. These jobs belong to the President. He can hold them himself at State House there today. If he wanted he can be a Minister of Home Affairs, he can be a Minister of Community Development. It’s true, that is how it works.”

Truly, that’s how it works. But that is not how it should work when it comes to the issue of loyalty. We say this because when it comes to the issue of loyalty for ministers and other public officers, their obligations to the people take precedence over loyalty to an individual. And Mr Kaingu need not look very far for an example of this. He was there in 2001 and saw for himself where the true loyalty of ministers should lie. When Frederick Chiluba tried to mutilate our Constitution and destroy the political administration of our country by corruptly trying to alter things and give himself a third term of presidential office, he was deserted by his vice-president, Cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and even by ordinary members of parliament from his party.

If those men and women exercised the loyalty of a dog to Chiluba as their master, the giver of their ministerial jobs, they would have stayed and assisted him to do the wrong thing.

Clearly, the loyalty that is required of our ministers to the president can never be sensibly compared to that of dogs to their masters. Firstly, the relationship between a minister and a president is not that of dog and master at any level. A dog will never become a master, or step into the shoes of its master no matter how much it improves itself, no matter how many tricks you teach it. A dog will never become a master. A dog does not even know that it is a dog. It may know that other dogs are dogs. A minister is not a servant of a president or the President a master of a minister. Mr Kaingu is not a servant of Rupiah or Rupiah a master of Mr Kaingu. Even at best, Mr Kaingu cannot be said to be an employee of Rupiah. Mr Kaingu is an appointee of Rupiah as a minister but does not work for Rupiah. It is not Rupiah who pays Mr Kaingu’s salary. It is the people of Zambia who pay Mr Kaingu’s salary as well as that of Rupiah – these are the only masters of both Rupiah and Mr Kaingu.

But this is where the problem is. Mr Kaingu doesn’t understand what his true role is. And this is what our editorial was about. The metaphor that Mr Kaingu used demonstrated a serious complex in his mind about his relationship to Rupiah. Even his attacking our colleague George Chellah goes further to demonstrate this problem. Mr Kaingu thinks he is Rupiah’s servant and somewhere deep inside he owes Rupiah the same loyalty that a dog has to its master. It’s OK for Mr Kaingu to accept being equivalent to a dog when it comes to his relationship with Rupiah. But he should not force other people to turn themselves into creatures they are not – into dogs.

Mr Kaingu should stop and think. He is a grown man. We have not used any words that he did not use himself. When he sits down with those closest to him, how is he explaining what he meant? What was the purpose of comparing his loyalty to Rupiah to that of dog and master? Was it to say he was better than a dog?
Even if that is what Mr Kaingu meant, how does it help him? Why should someone performing such an important function on behalf of all of us begin to compare himself to a dog? This is what politics of patronage look like: grown men who are otherwise intelligent, well-loved and respected by their families reduce themselves to behaving like clowns before the emperor.

Instead of attacking The Post, Mr Kaingu should reflect on his own words and his obligations to the Zambian people. True representatives of the Zambian people can never become anybody’s dogs or even be seen to be behaving like someone’s dogs.

And this is one of our biggest challenges as a people, because people’s representatives abandon their obligations to the people in pursuit of dog-loyalty, blind loyalty, unreasoned loyalty – because a dog does not reason – to a President who appoints them to jobs and dispenses favours to them. Even if the jobs he is giving them and other favours he is extending to them don’t belong to him, he is worshipped and turned into a demi-god. And some of us who don’t see the President that way are thought of or seen as being disrespectful, and to use Mr Kaingu’s words, we are little devils. A president is not a master or a god to a minister; he is simply a Cabinet colleague with a bit more responsibility. And as such, a minister can step into the President’s shoes.

But a dog, however loyal it might be, will never step into its master’s shoes.

Government is supposed to be a collective effort. A president working with colleagues who are not inferior to him, who are not his servants or dogs, but independent-minded representatives of the people. And it doesn’t matter whether these representatives have been directly elected by the people or have been nominated by the President on behalf of the people, they still remain colleagues or comrades. Clearly, this is not the kind of government Mr Kaingu works in. He works in a theocracy where the President is a god and ministers are dog-loyal underlings. But is this the type of government the Zambian people want? What can this type of government deliver to the Zambian people?
There is no doubt that such a government delivers to the President personally.

Dog-loyalty to the President cannot deliver to the people. Mr Kaingu is free to turn himself into a dog for the sake of a ministerial job from Rupiah but he should not be allowed to turn all of us into Rupiah’s dogs. And this is what we oppose. This is what we challenge and call upon all Zambians of goodwill to repudiate and denounce.

Labels: MICHAEL KAINGU, MMD, POLITICS

posted by MrK @ 2:52 PM