TRUTH AND MISINFORMATION
MINISTRY of Information and Media Permanent Secretary Thabo Kawama is right that police have a mandate to restore order when people are unruly.
But he was not being honest when he claims that there was an unruly crowd at Kabwata Police Station yesterday when former President Edgar Lungu showed up there.
The handful of people gathered at Kabwata Police Station were seated across the police station and had gone there to show solidarity to Patriotic Front Secretary General Raphael Nakacinda who was locked up the previous day.
That is when the police pepper-sprayed and fired teargas, demanding that they leave. In the ensuing melee, Mr Emmanuel Mwamba, the PF information and publicity chairperson who was with them was picked up and thrown into a police cell.
That is when former President Lungu along with Mr Nakacinda, who it later turned out was whisked away to Chelstone Police Station and been released tried to enter the police station to check on Mr Mwamba.
Mr Kawama should therefore not deliberately mislead the public that there was an unruly crowd that forced the police to react brutally when in fact, nothing of the sort occurred until the officers themselves became unruly and fired teargas.
Mr Lungu accompanied by Mr Nakacinda tried to enter the police station but were denied entry. Like any Zambian, the former President has a right to visit any police station and ask to be assisted and inquire about any person held in the police cells.
But the police officers, who could have been under instructions or orders from above sought to humiliate the former head of State. They did not allow him into the police station and asked him to join the crowd at the nearby Kabwata market.
Mr Lungu did not make any incitement that could be construed that he was preaching insurrection as Mr Kawana has started insinuating and trying to make the public to believe.
The former President, a lawyer himself understands the law and could not chose to be careless in his selection of the words in cautioning his successor that the manner in which the police were behaving could make the government unpopular and force early elections if people become disenchanted.
There is nothing wrong to call for early elections. That is what the United Kwacha Alliance (UKA) has demanded.
It is normal in a democracy to demand for an early election.
President Kenneth Kaunda for example was compelled to call for early elections when he bowed to demands for a return to multi-party democracy.
This was two years before his term ended. He lost the elections to the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy led by Frederick Chiluba and conceded defeat.
It is only true that Zambians are getting agitated by the heavy-handedness of the UPND government and the State police, which was not part of the bargain when President Hichilema was in the opposition and campaigning on the principle of change and the rule of law.
The whole saga involving Mr Nakacinda is reminiscent of the police state that one only reads in novels about the oppressive nature of the police in former Communist countries.
It is therefore not surprising that Mr Nakacinda describes his ordeal and strange transfer from Kabwata Police Station cells to Chelstone Police Station as an “abduction.”
How else could one explain the motive of the Zambia Police Service to shift Mr Nakacinda from Kabwata at about 03 hours, driving him around Lusaka for hours on end, before depositing him at Chelstone?
PURSUING JUSTICE AND EQUITY WITH INTERGRITY