Maravi

Ungrateful William Banda

Ungrateful William Banda
By The Post
Wed 05 May 2010, 04:00 CAT

WILLIAM Banda is a very strange human being. After what William has gone through, one would have expected him to be very compassionate, humane, understanding, accommodating, forgiving and so on and so forth. William is a man without any sense of gratitude. For all that the Zambian people, including ourselves, did for him, he is the last person one would expect to be championing intolerance and violence in our country.

William was one of the victims of the worst forms of intolerance this country has seen. Frederick Chiluba, in connivance with some elements within our judicial system, threw William out of this country and dumped him into Malawi. Chiluba claimed William was not a Zambian but a Malawian.

William was not in a position to defend himself and was taken to a country that although he might have originated from knew very little, if not nothing, about. William was a Zambian and this was the only country he knew as his homeland. He was virtually left stateless by Chiluba’s intolerance.

It is not difficult to guess why Chiluba had thrown William out. It was simply out of vengeance for William’s own intolerance, cruelty and violence against the opponents of his political masters. When William was in UNIP under the one party state, he was a master, commander of terror. He was even nicknamed Tekere because of his violence, intolerance and terror.

But Zambians put aside all this record of William and defended his right to be in this country, a country he had made his homeland. It was a difficult campaign we all waged to have William and his late friend John Chinula, who also had been deported to Malawi by Chiluba, come back home. It took a lot of effort, a relentless campaign to convince Levy Mwanawasa to allow William to come back home.

We all thought this experience would have taught William something noble about life and the value of other people’s lives. But to our surprise these unpleasant experiences have not made William a better person. It is in the character of growth that we should learn from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences.

Of all people, we thought William would be the first person to know that this country will not be a good place for him and his friends, his political masters to live in unless it’s a good place for all of us to live in. Peace and prosperity, tranquillity and security are only possible if these are enjoyed by all without discrimination on the basis of political affiliation.

Violence and intolerance have been weighed and found wanting. We therefore need leaders who hate violence, who don’t think through their blood but with their brains.

We should detest intolerance and the violence that accompanies it because it is a barbaric thing, whoever it comes from. Intolerance and violence pollute the atmosphere of human relations and poison the minds of the backward, the bigoted and the prejudiced.

We must ensure that political affiliation becomes only a citizen democratic right of all of us and not an indelible mark or attribute that accords a special status to any citizen. Intolerance and violence is a blight on our conscience.

We should never again allow our country to play host to William’s intolerance and violence that resulted in the revenge against him – the vengeance that got him deported from his homeland. Nor shall our voices be stifled if we see that a fellow citizen is a victim of this tyranny, of this intolerance and violence.

Intolerance and violence must be consciously combated and not discreetly tolerated. The very fact that intolerance and violence degrade both the perpetrator and the victim, commands that, if we are true to our commitment to protect human dignity, we fight on until this is removed from our dealings – political or otherwise – with each other.

We hate intolerance and violence, and in our hatred we are sustained by the fact that the overwhelming majority of our people hate it equally.

You can’t build a united nation on the basis of intolerance and violence. And the great lesson of our time is that no regime can survive if it acts above the heads of the ordinary citizens of the country.

Our daily deeds as ordinary Zambians must produce an actual Zambian reality that will enforce our belief in justice, strengthen our confidence in the nobility of our human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all. Let’s take away our people’s despair and give them hope. We cannot do so with intolerance and violence. We can only do it with compassion and care.

It is said that strength without care, without compassion is savage and brutal and selfish. Care is the essence of strength. Strength with care is compassion – the practical action that is needed to help people lift themselves to their full stature.

There’s no need whatsoever for William to be threatening Fr Frank Bwalya with violence for simply exercising his democratic rights. If Fr Bwalya has violated any laws of this country through any of his civic programmes then let the law – and the law alone – take its course in fairness and justice.

It is not the duty of William to punish Fr Bwalya over his red card campaign and threaten him with all sorts of reprisals. This is not civility; it is barbarism in its most intolerable form. Fr Bwalya is daring and brave, and he has that special grace, that special spirit that says, “Give me a challenge and I will meet it with joy.” Fr Bwalya hungers for justice and he has been harassed, abused, humiliated, brutalised, arrested and detained for it.

He wishes to serve, and he serves. He serves all of us. We know it’s difficult to understand the difficulties, the pain and suffering Fr Bwalya is going through as a result of trying to live the social teachings of his church. But sometimes painful things like these happen.

It is part of life, it is part of a good life, of a life well lived struggling for just causes, for a more fair and humane society. It is said that the future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted; it belongs to the brave like Fr Bwalya. He lives by the social teachings of his church, and if need be, he will die on it and be buried in it. This is the man William is threatening with reprisals! But can he be intimidated by William’s threats and actions? The answer is a categorical no!

We believe that we must always be mindful of this one thing, whatever the trials and tests ahead, the ultimate strength of our country will lie not in the intolerance, threats and violence of those in power and others who wield influence, but will lie in the unity of our people, in their tolerance and accommodation of each other, in their love and compassion for each other, in the unity of all our people. This we believe very deeply. Let’s put the unity of our people first.

Let’s put it ahead of any divisive partisanship. And in these times as in times before, it is true that a house divided against itself by the spirit of faction, of party, of region, of religion, of tribe, of race, is a house that cannot stand.

So, we would ask all Zambians, whatever their personal interest or concern, whatever their political affiliations, to guard against intolerance and violence; to guard against divisiveness and all its ugly consequences.

If we positively respond to this, our reward will come in the life of freedom, peace and hope that our children will enjoy through the ages ahead. What we won when all our people were tolerant and accommodating of each other, were united just must not now be lost in greed, selfishness, intolerance, violence and politics among any group of our people.

Believing this as we do, we have concluded that we should not allow ourselves to become involved in the negative, primitive and barbaric partisan divisions that are developing in our country and in which the top political leadership of our country is basking. Let us not fall in the besetting temptation of politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.

Only a resolute and urgent action will avert the dangers of this growing intolerance and violence. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain an end to this intolerance and violence of William and his boss Rupiah Banda, we don’t know. All we know is that to see intolerance and violence, and not speak against it, would be the great betrayal.

As for William, it is important for us to remind him that he has an unpaid debt to the Zambian people who campaigned and worked tirelessly for his return from Chiluba’s deportation.

And that debt can only be repaid by William being a good citizen – one who is loving; one who cares about others; one who is tolerant and accommodating of others; one who is civil in his political discourse; one who abhors intolerance and violence; and one who is moved with indignation every time an injustice is committed against anyone, anywhere on this planet and beyond.

Labels: POLITICAL VIOLENCE, WILLIAM BANDA

posted by MrK @ 5:00 AM