By Mpombo Wonani
Tears rolled, hair froze and my heart dropped as an excellently choreographed television package by Muvi television reporter Mwape Kumwenda streamed the small screen on the evening of Friday June 15, 2013.
For a moment, I was numb. The images were graphic. The narration was perfectly scripted for the moment. There was nothing one could miss from this ordeal. But in the first few minutes, there was nothing to say. What could one say when lifeless bodies brazenly taken away in bizarre circumstances at the order of the Commander in Chief President Michael Sata are thrust in the full glare of television cameras?
“Is this really, really happening in Zambia?” The first question popped. It gave birth to several other questions no one is answering, not a single person has bothered to explain.
The questions keep pouring out. They were made worse by that useless statement by the chief government spokesperson Kennedy Sakeni. Where is Sata? In Feira campaigning for a costly PF induced by-election? Was he celebrating or drinking that blood we saw on TV?
Is our President so blood-thirsty that from pangas, machetes and sticks at BIGOCA, we can move to the loss of kidney by a soccer fan while on a queue for match tickets?
Is Sata so proud of harming his own people that Father Frank Bwalya will be drenched in opaque beer and his people assualted for exercising their inherent democratic and fundamental human right to speak freely in their own country?
Even after killing those two innocent Kampasa men and drinking their blood, he still wants more blood when sending Sylvia Masebo to the funeral.
How much blood is Zambia going to spill under Sata? And will this blood be spilt or it is for Sata’s consumption since there is an element of witchcraft being practiced at State House?
And it seems those two who were brutally killed in Kampasa are part of the bigger sacrifice. The brutal and gruesome killing of those two defenceless individuals – Pumulop Lungwangwa and Clement Muloongo – whose sleep was disturbed, probably at the sweetest time of rest, only to meet their fate speaks volumes of what to expect from this intolerant and cruel regime bent on nothing but destruction of lives.
Look at the wailing women of Kampasa Community just a few kilometers outside Lusaka city centre. It’s such an emotional and breathtaking experience. Their outcry was to the government. And their pain resonated deep in me, as if I had personally known those two humble citizens. I didn’t need to know them.
The mere fact they are Zambians whose life was terminated in that cruel manner made it worse. What if it was me? What if it was you? Those that ended their lives were officers from the Zambia National Service (ZNS) acting on Sata’s instruction. If Sata can tell soldiers to fire at Lozis and kill them for fighting to secede in the Western Province, what would stop him from telling ZNS officers to clear Kampasa residents?
Two very important citizens, leaving behind young children, neither of them protesting or possessed any weapon to fight back at the time of the ZNS raid are gone. Their lifeless bodies are displayed in pools of blood.
From 05:00am to about 08:00, there was no effort to save those lives. The aim was to kill – to unjustifiably end life. This is the Zambia Sata is giving us. A Zambia where blood will spill and shall be drunk by him and his lieutenants at State House – those wizards freaking out at the sight of bald-heads.
When you look at Sylvia Masebo, the tourism minister, who is best suited for Addis Ababa Drive, Joseph Mwila Road in Lusaka’s Rhodes Park or Cockpit in Gardern compound, better still Cinderella in Kitwe or Masaka in Livingstone where her trade will be most appreciated by a plethora of machine guns, you realize why Zambia is subjected to such nonsense.
Without shame, if at all she has any shame, she even admits that PF cadres were planted at the funeral house to deal with opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) leader Hakainde Hichilema.
Masebo wants to shift the blame to a Goma, and somehow to Hichilema, and claims this same person is more MMD than PF. But when did Masebo become more PF because we all know that she spent the nine years and six months of PF in opposition prostituting with not only men but political parties as well.
Who doesn’t know that her emergence on the PF radar was knitted by her boyfriends at The Post Newspapers? Can this fool of a woman play this kind of politics to a people that are not as dumb as she mistakenly thinks they are?
That is why she celebrates the inflicting of more injury to Mr Derrick Nyirongo who was at the receiving end of PF militia when they arrived at the funeral house.
Instead of taking a wounded Nyirongo for treatment, they wanted to finish the man off when they pounced on him in the company of UPND official William Banda so that they could drink his blood too.
But if you look at Hichilema’s statement, there is no need for people to die over land in Zambia. And this step-father called Sata should be careful because he will not succeed drinking the blood of every Zambian. His heavily bandaged tummy will burst soon rather than later.
“In a country where the population density is 17 people per square kilometre or 17 people per 100 hectares, meaning each one of us, from a day old to the oldest person can have access to 5 hectares of land comfortably.
“People should not die or be killed for claiming as little as half hectare of their 5 hectare entitlement (69 plots of 40x20m),” he said.
Hichilema says Masebo’s remarks asserting that President Sata is not responsible for the Kampasa killings is completely false and a futile attempt to run away from responsibility.
“Armed forces are tightly controlled establishments throughout the world by the executive branch of the government and Zambia is not an exception,” the opposition leader says.
“It is standard procedure for the President to authorise all deployments of troops within and out side the country in writing,” he stresses.
President Sata deployed those soldiers at Kampasa and the blood of those innocent citizens is on is hands. The blood of Lungwangwa and Muloongo is dripping on Sata’s hands and he will continuously be haunted. Time will catch up with the wizard.