By Staff Reporter
Presidents and those seeking public office must tame their children, says Economic Front (EF) leader Wynter Kabimba.
Asked by Daily Revelation Media if questions could be had simply on the fact that a former president’s wife and children were allegedly owning such huge amounts of money, vehicles and assets, including one incident where one of them actually got a national forest and fenced it and was only forced to let go following public pressure, Kabimba said he felt the only presidents that managed to tame their children were Dr Kenneth Kaunda and to a huge extent Levy Mwanawasa.
“Kaunda was the only one that tamed his children to the extent that most of us didn’t even know them. I remember meeting Panji after 1991 elections. I met Panji somewhere around 1995, he was occupying an office somewhere in the light industrial area there. I had met Kaweche because we were together at the Zambia National Service in Katete. I had met Cheswa because she was junior to me at the univestisity. The rest of these bene Kambarage we didn’t even know them. We never even got to hear about them,” Kabimba said. “The subsequent presidents I think failed to do what KK did. The only other person that I would give some credit to was Levy, but Levy maybe it’s because the Chipos and others were still young. There was Mirriam and Patrick who were already old but you see, Levy also to some extent tried. Chiluba with Castro’s tantrums was probably the worst.”
He said there was a lesson for the presidents, those in public office and those vying for public office to learn, saying he tells his family members to keep to their lane and stay away.
“But it must take a father that speaks to the wife, that speaks to the children. I remember Mr Sata calling me when he became head of state and saying to me I want you to speak to Mulenga and you can verify this story with Mulenga Sata because I spoke to him. And it was before he even appointed me as minister. He says speak to Mulenga, I don’t want to have another Henry Banda here at State House. That’s what Mr Sata said. And I called Mulenga to my office here at Godfrey House, and I told him that this is the discussion I’ve had with the old man. Please don’t bring his name down by being seen in the company of Chinese and that kind of thing because it rubs off your father’s image as head of state,” Kabimba said, saying one of the reasons that brought down Rupiah Banda was the ‘prominence’ of children. “We don’t even know the truth what Henry did but you see because politics is about perception, once it goes out into the public domain you can’t fix it … So there are a lot of lessons to learn from across the world.”
He insisted that Dr Kaunda epitomized humility in office in terms of taming his children, saying if children were not tamed they could easily be used as a route to get to their father.
“That’s the point I made earlier that is a strategy HH is using here so that the public then can say ‘if Daliso the child has 48 vehicles’, because we don’t even know the truth, then how many vehicles does Lungu have? So that becomes a discussion in markets, in pubs everywhere. He is psyching the public mind to withdraw that sympathy from ECL. That’s what he’s doing. So that the day that he zeroes in on ECL, ECL should have no support, no sympathy,” Kabimba said.
But asked if the alleged actions by Lungu’s children have left their father more vulnerable, Kabimba said: “Such matters must be issues of discussion in families. We must have time as parents to speak to our children. They can’t grow up like orange trees. Even an orange tree you tender it, you go and water it so that it gives you good oranges,” Kabimba said. “So there must be time when those of us that are in public office can sit down with our children and say there are lessons that we can learn from family A which are good and family B which are bad and we shouldn’t do the same thing. Look at Donald Trump with that son in-law of his, he almost caused him problems … I remember someone who wrote that politicians are very poor students of history.”
Kabimba argued that it is known by now that the person President Hichilema is gunning for is former president Edgar Lungu, and that he was getting at his children in order to build correlation in the minds of Zambians that “if the children did this, how can you say that the father didn’t do anything wrong?”
He this was aimed at playing into public opinion in order to erode the sympathy that Lungu may still be enjoying in people’s minds.
Kabimba argued that the only thing he felt has been able to save Lungu was the elaborate procedure which they introduced in the 2016 constitutional amendment, which was more complex “than the one we used against Rupiah Banda.”
He said he did not think the President was really interested in Lungu’s children and wife but trying to play a strategic trump card to create a narrative in people’s minds that “if Daliso for instance has got 48 vehicles how many more motor vehicles should the father have? He must have a 100.”
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