By Staff Reporter
The Socialist Party is just a political zygote on Zambia’s political scene, PF presidential aspirant Chishimba Kambwili has dismissed Dr Fred M’membe’s led party.
And Kambwili said he will be writing to President Hakainde Hichilema to intervene over former PF secretary general Mumbi Phiri who has been incarcerated in police custody after she was slapped with the murder charge.
Kambwili told Daily Revelation that he disagreed with those writing obituaries about PF, saying people also wrote off President Hakainde Hichilema and late president that they would never rule this country.
He described the defections to the Socialist Party as “ubwendo bwachimpelesha”, likening those who were leaving to those that have left to join or form other political parties in the past only to fail and return to their parent parties.
“You see politics in Zambia now have become politics of hunger, insala. And if people just hear that this side there are seminars and you will get a little something from that seminar, a K100, people will rush and say they have joined. But the reality is different,” Kambwili said. “So I can tell you soon and very soon you will see that most of the people that have rushed to the Socialist Party will come back to PF.”
He dismissed the argument that the PF was literally fighting for the main opposition space with the SP.
“Socialist Party is an infant in politics. In fact to say they are an infant is an overstatement, is overrating them. They are actually a zygote. Do you know what a zygote is in the birth process? They are just a political zygote. I can describe them as a political zygote. And when you look at people that are joining them, are people who don’t even have the influence,” Kambwili said, but Kelvin Kaunda and Paul Moonga held high level positions in PF before they defected. “That’s why PF lost. They are cleansing themselves…the bad eggs are going and the good eggs are remaining.”
He said those who were leaving did not “even have ubwema, political smell” and that they were just opportunists.
And Kambwili said he has made two appeals that Mumbi Phiri be put on the cause list in order to be tried or be released from police custody, something he said has not be responded to.
“So I am planning to write the President personally. Basically to ask him to intervene and have Mumbi Phiri be quickly put on the cause list (to) be tried,” he said.
But asked that the President would argue that he is not the one who handles criminal prosecutions in the country, Kambwili argued that that matter was purely political.
“Basically what we should just say is that can we try to take Mumbi Phiri before the courts of law. Because I am told since she was detained, three cause lists have come out, she has not appeared on any of those cause lists. When a person is detained for murder is not appearing on the cause list, it simply means in the next six months or so he or she is not likely to be taken to court. That’s why we are saying we don’t want to judge that Mumbi Phiri is not guilty or innocent but all we are saying is take her before the courts of law,” he said.
Kambwili further said not all the mistakes being committed by the UPND were part of what PF Kantanshi MP Anthony Mumba described as teething problems, such as what he described as vengeance in the arrest the arrest of Phiri. He said the same things which were done against UPND members Obvious Mwalileta and Matambo during the UPND times in the opposition, is what was being done against Phiri by the UPND administration now that they were in power.
Kambwili said it was inhuman to inflict pain on other people just because they inflicted pain on you.
“Please I plead with you, those in power, either release Mumbi Phiri or take her to court. She’s been in detention for over six months now, and she has never appeared in court for trial. She’s a mother, she’s s wife, she’s a grandmother…but languishing in prison the way Mwaliteta languished in prison when you even know that this person has not committed an offence it is a big sin to God,” he said.
Kambwili said Mumba had already said that he would accept a ministerial job from President Hakainde Hichilema, saying that summarized his behavior of late.
He said Mumba was becoming part of the same problems he was talking about by his “careless talk”.
“I am not refusing that there are problems in PF that need to be resolved. But it’s the way you resolve the problem,” Kambwili said, saying what Mumba was saying was putting the party into more disrepute, and that he was advising his “young brother whom I respect so much” to avoid discussing internal party matters in the press.
He said everything that Mumba will say will be aligned to his statement that he would accept a ministerial position in the UPND administration, saying he would rather Mumba called for a caucus between party leaders and members of parliament “to agree to disagree.”
Kambwili said when a party was at its lowest ebb in the manner PF was, it was unreasonable for Mumba to start saying he would accept a ministerial appointment.
