Former president Edgar Lungu can be an enigma—a person from whom, if his handlers loved or respected him, they should hide the microphone.
He makes such puzzling statements that, in one moment, he describes himself as a dove, but as soon as he swallows his saliva, he proclaims himself to be a snake!
Then, for totally miscalculated political mileage, the man goes to tell people at a rally in Kitwe on Saturday that he is the solution to the country’s current problems—the very problems he created!
“If the man [President Hakainde Hichilema] you chose in 2021 consulted me, he would not have made certain mistakes,” Lungu stated in Bemba while claiming that he was a listening president.
“If you give us power in 2026 with my colleagues, we will form a brand new government that will incorporate all of us, and through us, we will be listening to you, and things will be better. We will fix everything.”
Now, if Lungu had been listening to what people kept telling him when he was president for seven years, what exactly would he have done with what people kept telling him?
For instance, isn’t this the person who was told to put a complete end to the havoc his cadres were causing, but he rewarded the same people with contracts to keep his looting machinery constantly oiled?
If he were a listening president, why did he not heed advice when people warned him against reckless borrowing or completely keep his hands off Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), which he purported to liquidate without a plan?
The mining sector was left in such a mess that the large part of the forex problems Zambia has now can be squarely laid on Lungu: our primary foreign exchange earner is mining, so when the sector is crippled, we can’t export as much, and the local currency takes a major hit.
Indeed, Lungu was a ‘listening’ president who infamously dismissed allegations of corruption by throwing a tantrum at the airport, saying you don’t just scream “mfwiti mfwiti” [wizard] without evidence.
Honestly, a shameless man who had zero interest in what people were telling him could not claim to be a listening leader and, later, be the air freshener for the stench he left behind.
When Lungu says that he was now experienced enough to be trusted with the mantle again, which experience is he referring to having taken over office without a vision of his own, as he confessed?
Rather, when he says he will fix things if he comes back, can he give us practical ways to go about that, especially given the mess he has left Zambians to endure?
You see, finding solutions for Zambia’s enormous problems is not as simple as shouting abracadabra or playing aka red naka black—it requires proper planning and a solid team of advisors, not the likes of Kaizer Zulu or Freedom Sikazwe.
Here are a few things that UKA and Lungu will not convince Zambians otherwise as they go about their short-lived lying expeditions:
- They claim our children have free education, but they go hungry: The government has introduced a school feeding program and has just more than tripled the budget to expand coverage in the supplementary budget.
- Zambia National Service recruits: We’ve just had passout after passout of military recruits, even one on Friday. How many were recruited under the PF?
- Nurses finish school but don’t find jobs: Have Lungu and his cohorts become so detached from this country that they don’t even see newspaper adverts for government workers who are recruited in their thousands?
- UPND refused cheap oil from Russia. There’s a whole unpaid debt for fuel that PF kept artificially low and is now being repaid. 36% of the supplementary budget presented by the Minister of Finance has been dedicated to dismantling these fuel arrears. This is the largest single expense item of this budget, even higher than the allocation to external debt!
- Russia offered electricity: First, it’s not a Russian power ship. Importantly, PF imported power from the Turkish Karpowership during the 2016-2018 power crisis and never paid for it. The UPND is paying that debt now.
For all the complaints we heard that Zambia had shrunk its democratic space by not allowing gatherings by opposition leaders, some of us expected a message of hope when the people vying to unseat the government finally had an opportunity to win our hearts over through a public rally.
Alas, their collective performance was mediocre, so lackluster that you wonder why the police were not allowing them to have meetings all along. We could have long judged them for their rhetoric and cheap lies!
Thank you, Zambia Police, for letting the rally proceed – that’s how it should be in a democracy.
After all, Zambians are intelligent enough to separate doves from serpents through their lies and deception.
