Maravi

Hakainde should value himself at his true worth

Hakainde should value himself at his true worth
By The Post
Wed 13 June 2012, 13:25 CAT

FOR the economy to grow, we are always told that business should have access to credit at reasonable interest rates. This is so because businesses grow by borrowing money and investing it. Those with bankable ideas should be able to go to the bank and borrow money and produce something of value. It is therefore not a crime for businesses to borrow money. And business, including the business of lending money, is sometimes a risky undertaking. Businesses do fail.

It is therefore difficult to understand why Hakainde Hichilema should criminalise Zambian Airways' borrowing of money from the Development Bank of Zambia and try to use that to scandalise us. Hakainde himself has been a shareholder in businesses that have failed; he is a shareholder in businesses that owe others money and have difficulties paying. No one has criminalised him for all this.

Today, Hakainde wants to portray us as thieves simply because the company in which we had invested US$3 million of our own money failed, and failed for reasons that can partly be explained by primitive and vindictive politics.
Hakainde says "unama banthu ati uli na ndalama.

Kansi ulibe ndalama. Ndalama ni zokongola". We have never claimed to be rich people. And we have never carried ourselves as rich people. We are not so shallow to behave in that way, to carry ourselves in that way. This type of conduct is for Hakainde. It is Hakainde who is that shallow to occupy and torture himself with the idea of being seen to be rich when in actual fact he isn't.

We would a thousand times rather think of the place history will assign to the causes and ideas we are defending, to the rights of humanity and to the people's happiness in the world of the future than to torture ourselves with a place we occupy on the list of the richest in our country or in the world.

To us, as José Marti once put it, "All the glory in the world fits in a kernel of corn". When we embarked on this path of producing a newspaper, it was not for glory and there was no glory to be gained from being a journalist, from running a very small weekly newspaper. The Post of today is not The Weekly Post of 1991.

We have been involved in many things, in many struggles in our country and in the world. And it has never been for the purpose of making a name, for personal glory or aggrandisement. It has been simply to fulfil a duty, a revolutionary duty.

We know it is difficult for Hakainde to understand this because for him, everything is calculated in terms of money. For Hakainde, if you have more money, then you should be made the leader - money speaks, money is everything to him. Money is not everything to us.

We sometimes make a bit of money, but it still means nothing much to us. It is not the source of our worth. We are worth much more as human beings than money can make us. Kenneth Kaunda is worth much more to us as a human being, but he has no money, he has never had money, money has never been an issue for him. Comrade KK's wealth can all fit in the pocket of his safari suit shirt.

But look at his value! Look at his standing! Look at his dignity! Look at his example! How many of us would want to be like KK! How many of us would like our children to grow up and be like KK! Nelson Mandela is Nelson Mandela not because of money but because of the ideas he stood for, struggled for, and if necessary was ready to die for.

In a word, what we are trying to say is that yes, money is important because it enables us to buy the necessities of life since one cannot walk in a supermarket and pick up all the foodstuffs he requires without paying for them. But beyond that, money is not everything. If we have it in abundance, we will use it to support the legitimate causes of our people.

We will never be like this cheap braggadocio, Hakainde who thinks money is everything and if he is seen to have a lot of it, then the people of Zambia will make him president. Yes, the people in UPND might have made him president on that basis and on the basis of his tribe, but the broad masses of our people have seen through him and have not fallen for his cheap and deceitful politics.

Hakainde has been making declarations of his wealth whenever there are presidential elections. What he has declared so far doesn't make him a rich man unless he claims to have been lying, making false declarations on oath, which is of course an offence for which he can be jailed. But the truth is Hakainde is incapable of understating his worth; he is always over-valuing himself even if the Bible advises to "value yourself at your true worth" (Sirach 10:28).

It is our impression that Hakainde is debilitatingly hampered by a bitter, excessive and unrealistic ego, pre-occupied with misleading its owner that he is rich, intelligent and can be of some use to larger interests.

We haven't ever detected any intellect or originality on Hakainde's part in analyses which he has made from either a political or economic standpoint. It might be that there is neither a spark of originality nor a trait of intellect in him, or that he is holding these in reserve.

Since, however, we have known him for a long time and he has never hesitated to express his opinions on a wide variety of political and other subjects, we would incline toward the former hypothesis.

It is a great pity because Hakainde likes to talk and is not inhibited when it comes to saying everything on anything. But the more he talks, the less sense Hakainde makes to many people, to our politics and the more it exposes his simple view of things.

We detected this problem of intellectual and leadership incapacity when Hakainde assumed the leadership of the UPND in 2006. Instead of holding the party together, a party that he found united, Hakainde caused to be hounded out its founding leaders, rank and file.

Instead of addressing himself to his campaign team's insistence that a Tonga must succeed Anderson Mazoka, the basis upon which Hakainde was elected, he has continued to disparage other ethnic groups and to proclaim that he would be the last Tonga standing. When we first noted this ailment in him, we thought it would pass.

He was a political undergraduate who knew very little, if not nothing, about politics and leading a political party, though we were very much struck by his lack of judgement, initiative and tact even at the time. We thought he was worth giving time and space. Clearly, we were wrong. Hakainde's political immaturity is a fixation, a serious disability, an incurable political disorder.

Normally, when people enter politics, they are full of ideas. Hakainde, like all new entrants, was full of them. The only difference in his case was that his were very shallow and petty ideas. We were struck by his obstinate conventionality and a pathological fear of being led into paths which might disturb his rather simple understanding of politics, of things.

We thought this would pass with time, with a bit of political experience. Thus far, it has not. Few politicians, if any, have been as consistently immature and irritatingly useless since independence as Hakainde has been to our country's politics.

Even Chama Chakomboka or Cosmo Mumba have been useful! Probably, the only usefulness of Hakainde is that he can be cited as a bad example. For he represents, almost exclusively, everything that a politician should not be, say and do. Somehow, his acute shallowness and severe pettiness seems to have got the better of him.

And we wonder how long it will take the UPND to realise that Hakainde is a serious liability and a danger to their declining political fortunes and consider replacing him with a better candidate. But again, perhaps he is simply the leader of like-minded characters, who see absolutely nothing wrong with him and his kind of politics, because they share mutual vices!

Since Hakainde wants political discourse on us and consequently on himself, there is need for us to delve deeply into his politics, character and attitude. And this will do because he has invited us to it by his own utterances. We will give him what he has asked for as we await our crucifixion at his hands in 2016. As we have stated before, we will wait for him, we won't run away.

If Hakainde won't find us in Lusaka, he will certainly find us in Chinsali or Mongu. If we are not there, he should check for us in Pemba or Itezhi-tezhi. We will certainly be there waiting for him to fix us, to crucify us. But Hakainde should not forget that where there is a crucifixion, there is always a resurrection.

Labels: HAKAINDE HICHILEMA, UPND

posted by MrK @ 2:29 PM