We wanted peace but Rupiah opted to kill - Mututwa

We wanted peace but Rupiah opted to kill - Mututwa
By Mwala Kalaluka
Sun 03 Apr. 2011, 04:02 CAT

MAXWELL Mututwa says while they wanted peace President Rupiah Banda wanted to kill. And Mututwa says the MMD has reached its full life span of 20 years. Mututwa says President Banda rejected his overtures to advise him on the Barotseland Agreement issue and instead preferred killing people rather than having peace.

Reacting to assertions by information minister Lieutenant General Ronnie Shikapwasha that he was being used to peddle a political agenda by discrediting President Banda’s hard work, 92-year-old Mututwa said in an interview from Senanga yesterday that he only spoke the truth.“That is why I am saying the life cycle of MMD is 20 years, Sikota Wina knows this. Now where am I being influenced?” asked Mututwa.

“The MMD was composed to live for 20 years so that it gave chance to other parties to rule because we were in a multi-party.”

Mututwa, a former Ngambela prime minister of Western Province was in January this year arrested and charged with treason on issues related to the Barotseland Agreement but was released through a nolle prosequi.

“I am not being used by any person. All I have spoken comes from me. I am a member of the MMD, I founded the MMD in Senanga in 1990,” Mututwa said. “I founded it with my own money, my own resources, from my own pockets. So there is no one who can say I am being influenced by somebody. All I have talked about comes from my heart.”

Mututwa wondered what else he could have done following President Banda's outright rejection of his overtures to advise him on the Barotseland Agreement.

“I was ready to advise His Excellency the President Mr Rupiah Banda as I did to Kaunda in 1970, as I did to Chiluba in 1996. So that is why I wanted to talk to Mr Rupiah Banda and help him, but he refused. What can I do?” Mututwa asked.

“What we wanted was peace but he didn't want peace, he wants to kill. Then who has influenced me when I am telling the truth?”

Mututwa said President Banda even had a son who was Lozi on his mother's side and that on that basis he could have shown leadership by sympathising and mourning with the people of Western Province during their predicament, but did not.

“If violence occurs in any province, he must apologise and sympathise with those people,” he said. “But he has not done that. He is also the father of the people of Western Province. He is not only President for the Ngonis.”

Mututwa said he was ready to meet President Banda and tell him the truth regardless what the government did to him by arresting him.

“I will go and tell him the truth,” Mututwa said. “President Banda is supposed to do that apologise instead of the government abandoning us in our grief given what the Vice-President is saying.”

Mututwa said he would continue to criticise President Banda should he remain unsympathetic to the people of Western Province.

Mututwa on Monday said President Banda must go because he was unapologetic over the Mongu killings of January 14.