By Sean Tembo – PeP President

1. By now it is common knowledge that while on a tour of Eastern Province, Minister of Infrastructure; Charles Milupi said that the Chipata – Vubwi and Chipata – Chadiza roads are not economically viable and will therefore not be prioritized under the public-private-partnership (PPP) model. Of course this attracted a lot of sharp reactions, firstly from the Catholic Church and more recently from a group of Eastern Province elders led by Hon. Lameck Mangani, who demanded that Charles Milupi withdraws his statement and apologizes to the people of Eastern Province. Of course Milupi has tried to re-explain his statement, although l personally could not see much difference between his initial statement and his subsequent explanation of what he meant in the initial statement.

2. Anyway, the purpose of this my article is not necessarily to dwell on what Charles Milupi said or how wrong it is, no. Am sure enough people have debated that statement already and they have pronounced their respective verdicts. The purpose of this my article is to discuss a particular narrative which the Eastern Province elders raised which l feel is too dangerous to be left unchallenged. In trying to justify that the Vubwi and Chadiza roads are important for Government to work on, Hon. Mangani and his fellow Eastern Province elders kept emphasizing that the Province had overwhelmingly voted for HH and his UPND and therefore deserved to be repaid with developmental projects. The elders further went on to give an example of Chadiza District Council, where they stated that 15 of the 20 Councillors including the Council Chairman are from the UPND party, and hence the Chadiza and Vubwi roads deserve to be prioritized.

3. Such a narrative that people or areas of the country deserve national development when they vote for a ruling party is wrong. All parts of Zambia deserve national development from the Government of the day, whether or not they voted for them in the last election. It should be noted that national development is not undertaken with HH’s personal money or Charles Milupi’s personal money, no. National development is undertaken with taxpayers’ money. Each and every citizen of this country is a taxpayer. Even those that do not have a Tax Personal Identification Number (TPIN) like my grandmother; Dailes Daka in Mulima Village of Chief Kapatamoyo, when she goes to buy boom detergent paste at the nearby Kantemba to wash her apparel in readiness for church on Sunday, she pays Value Added Tax (VAT) which finds its way into the treasury and is subsequently used to fund national developmental projects.

4. Hakainde Hichilema’s New Dawn Government has a duty and obligation to develop all parts of Zambia regardless of whether those parts voted for him or not. That is because Hakainde Hichilema and his Government are merely custodians of this nation’s financial resources, for now. The country’s financial resources belong to the people of this nation. Therefore, the narrative which was driven by Hon. Mangani and colleagues that Eastern Province deserved national developmental projects because it overwhelmingly voted for HH is wrong and in bad taste. Perhaps even comparable in its bad taste to the statement by Milupi that the Chadiza and Vubwi roads are not economically viable and do not deserve to be prioritized.

5. The reason l found it particularly necessary to publicly challenge the narrative that areas or regions of Zambia that voted for HH are the ones that deserve developmental projects is because of the adverse effects it can have on provinces such as Luapula and Muchinga which did not support UPND in the last election. Going by the narrative of Hon. Mangani, what are we saying about these two provinces? That they deserve no developmental projects under HH because they did not overwhelmingly vote for him on 12th August? That kind of mindset is totally wrong and undermines national unity. Apparently a lot of people preach national unity but few practice it. Most people feel that if they preach national unity, they are immediately absorbed of the responsibility to practice it. That preaching it alone is enough. Practicing national unity is more important than preaching it.

6. Since we are talking about Eastern Province, a part of Zambia where l come from, allow me to extend some counsel to my fathers, mothers, uncles, aunties, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews in the province. I know that the ascendancy of the new dawn to national leadership has caused anxiety especially to those who were staunch supporters of the previous regime. Most are anxious of what the new order of things will entail for themselves individually and for the province at large. Of course that is natural and expected. But my particular concern is that in an effort to re-align with the new Government, some are going overboard by disparaging the opposition and sometimes the previous regime. That is absolutely unnecessary. If you supported the previous regime, be proud that you exercised your constitutional right to do so. If you currently support the opposition, again be proud of your chosen political affiliation. If you wish to support HH and his new dawn, remember to only bow your head. Do not stoop. Let us maintain self-dignity for it is what people will use to judge us. Political parties will come and go, Governments will come and go, but our self-dignity as a people should be allowed to live forever.

By Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba

President Hakainde Hichilema must fire Ministers that have been implicated in the illegal mining and smuggling of a rare gemstone called Sugilite in Chembe District, in Luapula. President Hichilema must also discipline the UPND Deputy National Youth Chairman, Stephen Chikota who stormed the area under dispute, with a horde of cadres and threatened the Police guarding the area, with dismissals and transfers if he was not allowed access to the premises.

Mr. Chikota also demanded to have “a word” with the investor, an action that clearly threatens the investor. It is a government that issued the licenses and if there are any complaints or grievances, they must be dealt with in a legal way and not through the lawlessness perpetrated by Mr. Chikota. These lawless actions instill fear in law enforcement agencies and were roundly rejected by Zambians on the 12th August 2021 elections.

WHAT THE VIDEOS SHOWED US

Mr.Chikota stormed an area in Muombe Village in Chembe District accompanied by a group of UPND cadres. The area is being protected by the Zambia Police because of a raging dispute between the Indian farmer/Miner and the UPND.
What is worrying in the video are the allegations made by Chikote. He has also threatened to expose corrupt Ministers allegedly protecting the investor. He also defied the Police and threatened to have them transferred or fired if he was not allowed access to the premises.

From the video, he claims that the farmer has a prospecting mining license for copper, cobalt, and manganese but he is mining Sugilite, a rare and expensive gem, popular and won as an ornament for its healing properties. Whatever the facts, the actions by Chikota remind us of a period of lawlessness perpetrated by party cadres and their senior officials holding state institutions captive and paralyzed.

ZAMBIA’S NATURAL RESOURCES

A systematic way must be established to protect our natural resources, especially mineral resources that are being stolen in the name of prospecting. Further, the favoring of or giving official preference to foreigners and foreign entities over Zambians and Zambia’s interests is extremely worrying. Let us empower our people.

DEMANDS

Numerous reports are now emerging in the public and media domain that Ministers and senior Government officials engaged in wanton acts of corruption and abuse of offices. It is sad that when these matters are being reported, like in the past, the reports are being casually dismissed or people are advised to report to Law Enforcement Agencies. President Hichilema has a noble duty to establish facts as President and deal with the rise of corruption and lawlessness among his senior appointed officials.

By McDonald Chipenzi

The Electoral Commission of Zambia-ECZ- May have acted extravagantly on its expenditure of K1m on rebranding the new logo for the Commission.

GEARS initiative agrees with George Mpombo on his observation in Mast Newspapers that spending K1m on a new ECZ Logo by ECZ was a toe-curling act.

However, Mr Mpombo’s argument that the K1m was have been on electoral law reform may not be accurate because it is not the ECZ that must push for the review of the electoral laws as suggested by Mr Mpombo but the Government and other stakeholders like CSOs or NGOs, political parties.
It is indeed a toe-curling act for ECZ to rebrand its logo in an excess of K1m.

It is our considered view that rebranding a corporate logo must not even have been a priority for the Commission.

This expense is unbelievable for an institution that has failed to respect the provision of the law since 2016 on account of limited funding.

Provisions of the law which the ECZ has disrespected on a claim of having no money include, section 7 of the electoral process Act on registration of voters on a continuous basis and Article 229 of the Constitution on decentralizing the operations of the Commission to provinces and progressively to districts.

Currently, ECZ borrows poll staff from ministries of Education and Local Government respectively, most of them have questionable loyalty to the Commission but their parent ministries.

The hired poll staff usually get excited to work with ECZ for extra allowances and are exposed to political interference especially at the recruitment stage.

It is clear that the reasons for not embarking on decentralizing its operation to provinces and failure to undertake continuous voter registration exercises are not limited funding now but limited political and institution will.

This is a misplaced priority by the ECZ the institution has undertaken as a public body.

Wouldn’t K1m enough to create offices in the 10 or at least 6 provinces of this country to ease its operations and avoid hiring government workers to do its job?

Or wouldn’t it be enough to reopen the closed office points and make their permanent offices in Lusaka and the Copperbelt for the continuous registration of voters to show some commitment to the demands of the law for continuous registration of voters ahead of the 2026 General Election?

Spending K1m public money on rebranding a corporate logo and justifying it is being insensitive and unaccountable to the public demands for efficient, prudent, and accountable use of public funds for quality electoral service delivery.

Who complained against the previous corporate logo for the Commission to prioritize its change so quickly after the general election for it to attract an expenditure of K1m for a new logo?

Are there no priority areas and complaints on ECZ operations lodged to the Commission that it has not acted on due to the claim of limited resources or poor funding?

Is it that now the Commission is well funded to an extent of being such an extravagant spending agency of government with a hopping K1m for a new logo?

The public expects better use of public resources than this surely. Only for a new logo whose impact on the electoral process is nil to gobble K1m?.

Government must help its institutions to avoid such acts in the future where possible so that they are not wasteful because the K1m the Commission has spent on the new logo is a clear act of wastefulness of public funds.

It is a disgusting expenditure truly speaking.

This kind of exaggerated expenses is what makes the electoral process dummy expensive in Africa and Zambia in particular.

No wonder as a country we still take pleasure to print ballot papers in the most expensive places like the United Arab Emirates (Dubai) with excitement deliberately refusing to do it locally.

We must come down to our level of economic development for us to do the right things and compete with equals not with unequal.

The Author is the EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR GEARS Initiative Zambia