Rupiah is headed for grief

Rupiah is headed for grief
By The Post
Sun 03 Apr. 2011, 04:00 CAT

The behaviour of the MMD leadership and their cadres seems to suggest that political participation in this country is only possible within the context of the machinery of the ruling party.

And this is tantamount to saying that what is good for MMD is good for everyone, a suggestion which is patently false in as far as what is known about the diversity of the human condition goes.

The political interests of the Zambian people are too complex and by far larger than the combined similar interests of all MMD leaders and their cadres.

Failure to realise this constitutes part of the explanation why MMD’s performance has been seen by some citizens to be unsatisfactory in that the ruling party has sought to restrict rather than broaden democracy. It is not surprising that today, MMD cadres and their leaders consider themselves as the government and the government as the state.

And as such, the ruling party, government and their leaders become as sacred as the state. Any denigration of these institutions and their leaders is seen to be tantamount to serious crime. This may also explain the violence of the MMD cadres and the arrogance with which they are going round intimidating, harassing and humiliating innocent people. How can one explain the presence of MMD cadres at the funeral of the young boy who was killed by Drug Enforcement Commission officers trying to determine who should attend and who should not be at this funeral? Why should MMD cadres stop journalists from interviewing the relatives of the boy who was shot? And why should they also stop politicians from other political parties from attending the boy’s funeral, accusing them of trying to politicize the whole issue?

The killing of any human being is a serious political matter and no politician worth the name can ever think of staying away from that issue, more so when the killers are state agents or characters commanded by politicians.

Rupiah Banda and his friends need to learn from very recent history that has taken place in North Africa – the events which Rupiah has directed other African leaders to pay great attention to and learn their lessons. Rupiah needs to take very careful stock of his behaviour even as he preaches to others. It is very clear that his words to other African leaders are a question of ‘Do as I say, not as I do’.

If Rupiah had cared to study the revolutions that have engulfed a significant portion of the northern part of our continent, he would understand that that whole upheaval started in very inauspicious circumstances. In fact, if we were to trace those revolutions to their starting point, we might have to call those revolutions the “vegetable and fruit revolutions”.

We say this because the man who sparked the revolution in Tunisia was simply asking for the right to sell his vegetables and fruits in peace. The heavy-handed Tunisian authorities did not listen to the man’s pleas that the goods that had been confiscated from him were a matter of life and death. In an act of helplessness, that man set himself on fire and died. It is that death that has swept at least two presidents from their positions and now risks many others in North Africa and the Middle East. The Tunisian government thought it could suppress its people forever, it thought it could kill them at will. Hosni Mubarak thought he could stay in power forever through rigged or fraudulent elections and the suppression of people’s liberties using the police and other security agencies. Where is he today?

Muammar Gaddafi resorted to calling his own people rats and cockroaches in the mistaken belief that that would scare them and maintain him in power. But today the poorly equipped bands of determined Libyans have resolved to take on the might of his army to defend their right to be heard.

Since Rupiah is telling his friends to learn from the upheavals in North Africa, what has he learnt himself? We say this because he is correct as we have observed before that it is important not to take for granted the legitimate expectations of our people. But what are those expectations in the context of the problems that we are seeing in our country today? Rupiah is presiding over a government that is becoming notorious in the excessive use of force to deal with any public disquiet. We say this taking into account that when the people of Barotseland attempted to express their legitimate expectations, as Rupiah himself calls them, regarding how they should be governed, his government reacted with bullets, with brutal force. Young people were murdered in cold blood and others maimed. Is this the lesson that Rupiah has learnt from what is happening in North Africa? In Mazabuka, people were killed by Rupiah’s police over a football match taking place in England, many thousands of kilometres away from Mazabuka. Rupiah has not said anything meaningful, if at all, on these sad events. His silence when such things happen shows that he, as president, approves of this kind of brutal use of force by his government. And indeed in the case of Barotseland, his Vice-President and Minister of Justice told Parliament that the killings and the maiming in Barotseland were justified. And now we see this evil specter repeating itself in Lusaka’s Garden compound. A poor, defenseless seven-year-old has lost his life to a cruel bullet fired by Rupiah’s reckless government. And today, his party cadres are on the rampage stopping well-wishers from expressing solidarity with that poor boy’s grief-stricken family.

Why are we saying all these things? There is a frightening picture clearly emerging that shows that Rupiah approves of violence to subjugate the citizenry. Somehow he seems to think that it is part of his privilege as President to instill fear in those around him and all of us because he can threaten force. We say this because the recklessness that we are seeing with the police has not ended with the police. Rupiah is also allowing his party cadres to use force as a means of gaining political advantage, as a way of silencing opponents. Even as the family in Garden mourns over the loss of their boy, Rupiah’s cadres are insensitively interfering with the family’s right to express their grief through the media if they so wish. Rupiah does not want people to express themselves about anything that is not advantageous to him, that does not glorify his heinous deeds. This is why we ask the question: has he learnt any lessons from what has happened in North Africa? Those momentous “vegetable and fruit” revolutions are about the people’s quest to express themselves fully and to have their will represented in the way that they are governed. The Tunisians, Egyptians and now Libyans, have fought and died to secure the right to protest and be able to have their voice heard. Let Rupiah not fool himself, Zambians are not different. Of course, the leaders are fooling themselves thinking Zambians are a docile people. And George the other day was bragging or boasting saying they can rule this country for 100 years.

What arrogance is this? What self-deception is this? What type of contempt for the people is this? Rule for 100 years! We will see. Gaddafi has ruled for 42 years and started to believe he was Allah sent to rule Libya forever.
The violence and intolerance that we are seeing from the government and the ruling MMD’s cadres in an election year is not a good sign. Rupiah wants to try and win the election through bloodshed. But this will not take him anywhere. If our people want change, they will get change, with or without Rupiah’s militias. We told the nation that Rupiah was mobilising militias for this year’s elections. They denied it. But now it’s becoming clear that under Rupiah’s minister in charge of violence, William Banda, the MMD has prepared militias to try and force their will on our people. But this will not work. Rupiah, William Banda and their cadres will end up in grief.