IS THE UPND A REINCARNATION OF THE ANC?
ISTILL have faint memories of that distant afternoon in Mufulira’s Central Street in the late 1950s. I was a little kid when Mr. Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula came back from England; he was received by a large crowd as he rode in a convertible. People marched alongside the motorcade and they were singing to the praise of the Old Lion.
“Ba bwela eee, ba bwela, ba bwela eee ba Nkumbula, ba bwela eee ba bwela, ba bwela uko baile” (He has come back, Mr. Nkumbula has come back from where he went).
I was barely six years old but that day remains a silhouette stuck in my memory. At that time, there was only one African political party, the African National Congress. I also remember very well that my late cousin Lawrence Chola Katilungu was once a vice president of the ANC under Mr. Nkumbula.
I also remember that another cousin Mr. Jeffrey Milandu who was nicknamed “Jimen” because he liked Jimen Taxis, was an organiser of the ANC in Kansuswa Township. Those who lived in Mufulira at the time will remember Jimen Taxis.
But as would be normal in any mass organisations, differences soon developed in the African National Congress. A more radical faction broke away and formed the Zambian African National Congress (ZANC), which later became the United National Independence Party (UNIP).
Soon after the formation of UNIP, the African National Congress went into panic mode. Their strategy was to oppose everything that UNIP demanded from the colonial powers; and in so doing, they resorted to dirty tactics.
UNIP burnt schools and bridges to force the colonialists to give power to the Africans, the ANC said this was savagery by the Bembas who did not want to go to school.
UNIP preached national unity, but the ANC told its supporters that UNIP was a party led by thieves who would take away their cattle and wives. They called Elijah Mudenda and Mainza Chona tools of the Bemba thieves because the two nationalists were supporting independence.
UNIP demanded immediate independence but the ANC preferred continued colonisation. As a result, when the first one-man-one-vote election was held in Northern Rhodesia, the ANC stronghold of Southern Province voted against independence. Yes, they did not want Zambia to be free. It was the only province that voted against independence!
In post independent Zambia, the Southern Province was the only province which voted against the referendum held in 1969. Fortunately for this country, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda acted magnanimously and gave the southerners jobs in the highest levels of government.
This seems to be the scenario we are witnessing with the United Party for National Development (UPND). The party was formed as a truly national party to provide checks and balances and possibly be a shadow cabinet.
Soon after the death of its founding father Anderson Mazoka, the UPND went back to negative mode. All potential successors to Mazoka were hounded out of the party on openly tribal lines. Old habits die hard as they say.
The UPND has since then been an opponent of every proposal made by any ruling party. Under the MMD government, they participated in the Constituent Assembly only to shoot down the constitution enactment in parliament.
Under the Patriotic Front (PF) government, the UPND opposed the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in our constitution. To the UPND leadership, it did not matter whether the legislation would protect all Zambians including their own supporters.
A Bill of Rights is an important piece of legislation which protects all citizens. But the UPND told its supporters to vote “no” in the referendum for the Bill of Rights. For the UPND, some form of victory was more important than the welfare of all Zambians.
The UPND complained bitterly about the new Zambian constitution soon after the 2016 Presidential and General Elections. One would have believed that the party would have been very happy to participate in any efforts to refine the constitution.
But the UPND instead refused to attend the National Dialogue Forum without proposing any alternative vehicles of how to deal with the lacunas they complained of in the constitution.
For the UPND, it is more important to be seen to be more powerful and victorious over the other parties than to apply common sense and reason with sound rationale over national issues.
For the UPND, the lives of Zambians do not matter. Even in legal matters in court, they side with foreigners. Zambians will soon have full exposure of the dirty tactics and deception the UPND leadership uses while killing innocent people in silence and despair.
And what they do to achieve their meaningless battles is to apply dirty tactics. One such tactic is to stage manage events such as the recent debate on Bill 10. All the organisations involved in organising that debate are UPND agents.
The big surprise is how the PF leadership does not know about the ownership of all those organisations. Someone should do research and they will find out that those companies are owned by one individual or organisation through the use of proxies.
The behaviour, attitude and DNA of the UPND suggests to me that it is a reincarnation of the ANC.
Yours truly,
Troubleshooter.
UNIP preached national unity, but the ANC told its supporters that UNIP was a party led by thieves who would take away their cattle and wives. They called Elijah Mudenda and Mainza Chona tools of the Bemba thieves because the two nationalists were supporting independence.