Maravi

Unity

Unity
By The Post
Mon 28 May 2012, 13:30 CAT

WE should all join General Malimba Masheke in what he says is his prayer to see the country united to preserve the freedom that was fought hard for.Contrary to what some reactionary people would want us to believe, our country's independence struggle was not easy, was not without great sacrifice. Our independence was not given to us on a silver platter.

People suffered in all sorts of ways to give us the independent Zambia we today enjoy. Those who struggled for the independence of this country fought a noble battle and lived their lives in pursuit of a better life for all who follow.

The Zambia we are enjoying today, the Zambia Michael Sata was honouring some of them in on Friday, is the sweet fruit of their lives of struggle and sacrifice.

This is a generation now reaching the end of a long and heroic struggle. It is a generation that is very rich in principles, values, standards and a spirit of self-sacrifice and selflessness. When members of this generation speak, we should listen carefully.

And when they give advice, it should receive the most favourable considerations. And we should never allow indifference, cynicism or selfishness to make us fail to live up to the ideals set by this generation of heroic freedom fighters. They deserve the respect and honour.

And we are glad that Michael is giving that honour and respect in a way and in a manner that no other president of our country since KK has ever given them. Every one of these freedom fighters deserves our greatest respect. They carried out their responsibilities on our behalf with sufficient honour and integrity. They lived extremely honest and selfless lives.

If they were selfish, they could have shared so many things that the colonialists left as was the case in Kenya where the key leadership shared all the land among themselves. Today in that country, the biggest land owners are the children of freedom fighters. This is not the case in our homeland.

Malimba's call for unity in our country is timely. Before, the tactics of those who used to rule over our destiny consisted of dividing us and of setting one humble section of our people against another. They set one tribe against another.

They set the interests of one tribe against the interests of another. They set every faction of the people against the other factions as part of a strategy to continue their domination of us. They even set sister nations against each other and they set the various sectors of each nation against each other to serve their own interests.

They weakened the people by their practice of setting one humble section against the others. They divided the people into petty political parties that brought no guidance to the nation. They divided the ignorant and misled people into factions, supporting unscrupulous, greedy and corrupt politicians. They thus weakened the people. They thus confused the people.

For our country today, one of the most important things is unity - of our people and of our country - which has made it possible for us to achieve what we have achieved over the last 47 years or so. How could our country have stood firm and tackled all these problems we have had if it had been split into several pieces of Bantustans?

It would not be possible for us to tackle our basic problems if our country was divided into countless parts. So for us today, the form of political organisation we take should always promote unity. And we must always be mindful of this one thing, whatever the trials and tests ahead.

The ultimate strength of our country will not lie in infinite resources or boundless wealth, but in the unity of our people. This we believe very deeply. Let us consider ourselves as Zambians first and then whatever we want to call ourselves or we want to be. And it should be in that order always and only. We have to put the unity of our people first and 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 based on all sorts of things, is a house that cannot stand. So, it is necessary for us to join Malimba's prayer for national unity, whatever our personal interests or concerns, and guard against divisiveness and all its ugly consequences.

United we have come this far. Those who have made this unity possible deserve honour and respect. What they have won us when all our people united must not now be lost in suspicion, distrust, selfishness and politics among any of our people.

We know that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live unless it is a good place for all of us to live in. Some of the divisive tendencies we have seen do not necessarily come from the people. They come from selfish, greedy, corrupt and failed politicians. What we need are leaders who will help us safeguard our unity and deepen it.

The greatness of our leaders should be measured by how much unity they bring to our people and our country. Divisive leaders are not leaders at all. A leader who wants to lead a divided nation, a divided people is no leader at all and will lead nothing in the end.

It is not possible to lead a divided people. Good leaders unite people, bad leaders divide people. Anyone who sows the seeds of division is not fit to lead. And we are lucky that our people have been very alert when it comes to divisions. They have never allowed any divisive leader to lead this country or lead it for long.

Those who are banking on sectional, regional or tribal politics will never lead this country. And probably they know that they will never be able to lead this country with their divisive tendencies and that's why they are always fanning divisions among our people.

Of course, nobody can deny the fact that we have many challenges in our country today. Our greatest challenge today is poverty and the inequalities that accompany it. Some of our people are left far much behind, they are still living in very primitive centuries.

But these challenges need a leadership that can square up to them because greatness comes not when things are going well, but greatness comes when we are really tested, when we take some knocks. This is so because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

Freedom fighters like Malimba remind us where we are coming from. There is need for us to recall our past, so as to foresee and plan for the future better.

By recalling the past, we will realise that our struggle for independence was intrinsically bound up with the fight for unity. The struggle to defend and consolidate unity, the driving force of our independence struggle, demanded permanent vigilance and action to neutralise and eliminate the manoeuvres of divisive opportunists.

It was not by accident that KK and his comrades defined racism, regionalism and tribalism as enemies to be fought against, just like colonialism. This was necessary because it helped to deprive the opportunists of the chief instruments of their anti-people manoeuvres. And it is also necessary to understand the grandeur diversity and complexity of our country.

Knowing this complexity means studying the divisiveness in our country and the ways of combating it. It cannot be denied that each part of our country has its own specific peculiarities. But it is imperative that all these specific peculiarities should be made to give way to real unity among all our people.

We should detest divisive politics and look at it as a barbaric thing wherever it comes from. This is so because divisive politics pollutes the atmosphere of relations among our people and poisons the minds of the backward, the bigoted and the prejudiced. The founders of this country, of this Republic, never allowed divisive politics and other practices to dominate our country.

Equally, we should never allow our country to play host to divisive politics. Divisive politics must be consciously combated and not discreetly tolerated.

Labels: INDEPENDENCE, MALIMBA MASHEKE

posted by MrK @ 4:48 PM