Maravi

William Banda’s hour has come

William Banda’s hour has come
By The Post
Sat 19 June 2010, 04:10 CAT

It is said that “an intelligent person learns more from one rebuke than a fool learns from being beaten a hundred times” (Proverbs 17:10).

And “evil people look for ways to harm others; even their words burn with evil” (Proverbs 16:27); “Wicked people bring about their own downfall by their evil deeds, but good people are protected by their integrity” (Proverbs 14:32); “Anyone who thinks and speaks evil can expect to find nothing good – only disaster” (Proverbs 17:20); “Wicked people are always hungry for evil; they have no mercy on anyone” (Proverbs 20:10).

We are saying all this in response to the utterances and threats from William Banda. William has vowed to fight The Post, the opposition and others he has accused of insulting Rupiah Banda until he defeats them. And William threatened The Post: “You will see what will happen to you. We are tired and if you want to become a politician, form a party and start attacking as a president of the party and not do this through the media.

I will fight until I defeat them. We have stayed away from all those people, we have kept quiet for a long time but now the hour has come.”

And declaring us the enemy of MMD, William says whoever was insulting Rupiah became an enemy of the party.

We are not bothered by William declaring us an enemy of the MMD. He has every right to hate us but he doesn’t have the right to harm us. William is not a law enforcement agent or officer. But he behaves and acts as one.

He has become a law unto himself. If there is any law that we have violated, if there is any crime that we have committed, the logical thing for William and his friends to do is to get us arrested and prosecuted.

Taking the law into their own hands is anarchy, is lawlessness. If every other citizen behaved the way they want to behave, this country would be destroyed because anarchy and veritable chaos would reign. But they should never forget that every lawless act leaves an incurable wound, like one left by a double-edged sword.

Moreover, we don’t know what William is talking about when he says we have been insulting Rupiah and his ministers and the Inspector General of Police. What is William’s understanding of what constitutes an insult? And which part of our laws is he relying on to define ‘insult’?

The language we use contains no insults and it’s the same language that is used in the Holy Bible. To criticize Rupiah or any of his ministers is not an insult. It is actually a right of every citizen of this country.

And criticism should not be confused with insult. To call a president who has lied a liar is not an insult if he has actually lied. And we have truthfully called Rupiah a liar because the man has lied about us.

Is this an insult? The answer is a categorical No. What else can one call a person who lies if not a liar?
William is certainly living at the grace of Rupiah. Without Rupiah, William would be starving today and would be nowhere.

He is where he is today and what he is today because of Rupiah. But not all of us live the way William is living.

We don’t earn our living by doing errands for Rupiah or praise-singing his name. Moreover, Rupiah is not an emperor or a king of this country.

He is merely a president and as US president Roosevelt once put it, “The president is merely the most important among a large number of public servants.

He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able and disinterested service to the nation as a whole.

Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right.

Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else.”

If there is anything untruthful that we have written about Rupiah or anyone else, including an ordinary and humble citizen of this country, we will apologise unreservedly and without hesitation.

There is no dignified alternative than to apologise for any incorrect or untruthful statements that we have published.

We are not in the business of lies. We actually detest lies and that’s why we expose and denounce them whenever and wherever they are told.

To expose lies and denounce liars is not a wrong, is not a crime.

We challenge William to come up with any false statements or insults that we have made or published against Rupiah. If he does so, we will without hesitation apologise for those statements or insults.

But the truth is we have not published any lies or insults against Rupiah. We have called Rupiah what he should be called following his utterances, actions or deeds.

And we will continue to call those who tell lies liars. We have called Rupiah a liar and we still maintain that he is a liar because he has lied about us on so many issues.

And no amount of threats from William or any other quarter will stop us from holding that position because it is a truthful position.

It is sad that William can today declare us enemies of the MMD. When did William cease to be the enemy of the MMD? Or has he become the enemy within the MMD?

When we were forming the MMD in 1990, William was a UNIP cadre and a very ruthless one for that matter. William saw the MMD as an enemy of UNIP.

And so was Rupiah – they both became MMD members recently when it was beneficial to do so.

We founded the MMD when it was very risky and unbeneficial to do so. It is unwise for William today to tell us to form a political party if we want to criticise the president of this country and his ministers.

Our answer to William is that there is no need for us to form a political party, we have already formed the MMD for him to enjoy the benefits of belonging to a political party in power.

We will survive outside government; we don’t need to belong to the ruling party to put food on the table.

If it means starving, we will starve with the rest of our people who have no positions in the ruling party or in government and have to toil for everything every day.

As for William, we can only say enjoy the fruits of our sacrifices, of our work in forming the MMD while it lasts.

We know that William enjoys power very much and that’s why he has moved from UNIP to the party in power and he says: “Who told you that we are going to surrender power on a silver plate?”

We are not asking William to surrender power on a silver plate because that’s his only source of livelihood. We know what he is ready to do to stay in power. We saw what he did when he was in UNIP to stay in power.

We now fully understand, although we do not support it, why Frederick Chiluba had to deport William to Malawi. It was unfortunate but it’s understandable. It’s time William learnt to respect our rights and all the rights of all his fellow citizens.

And again we remind William to have a sense of gratitude to the Zambian people, and to all who did so much for him when he was a helpless deportee in Malawi.

No one is expecting anything in return from William, but we all expect William to be a good citizen, a peaceful human being with love and compassion towards his fellow citizens and other human beings.

As for William’s declaration to defeat us, we can only say we are ready to see what will happen to us as he has promised to show us. We have no fear of defeat because there is nothing like defeat in our work. The truth that we seek is never defeated. It may only suffer setbacks. Kill us, or do whatever you want to do to us, you will have nothing to win; your victory will be very short-lived.

You are a troubled man with a very small mind and headed for self-destruction. You are saying the hour has come, what hour?

Your hour to destroy us, to defeat us? Go ahead, it’s your hour! Even in our death, our defeat – if there is such a thing – our hour will also come!

Labels: POLITICAL VIOLENCE, WILLIAM BANDA

posted by MrK @ 2:39 PM