By Isaac Zulu
Southern Province minister Cornelius Mweetwa has distanced UPND cadres from the matchet wielding youths that harassed and attacked bus drivers in the Central Business District of Lusaka on Monday.
Mweetwa has said that the people that were involved in the fracas were not UPND cadres, but some call boys who were resisting Flash buses from picking passengers from Freedom Way instead of ferrying them from designated bus stations.
“Those are not UPND cadres. Those are call boys who were resisting the fact that Flash buses have been unleashed to pick people from Freedom Way where there’s no bus stop as opposed to picking them from designated bus stations,” explained Mweetwa in an interview. “That is where that whole debacle was about. It was not political…it was not about UPND cadres. It was about call boys and any other people who joined in that fiasco.”
Mweetwa, who is also UPND spokesperson, insisted that UPND cadres are not unruly and as such cannot engage in lawlessness, adding that the whole thing has been misconstrued by some media outlets.
“And when we say that we have ended cadreism we mean just that. That is not cadreism and those are not UPND cadres. The fact that a group of youths had to behave in unruly manner does not cadreise them. They are not UPND cadres. UPND cadres are not and cannot be unruly,” said Mweetwa. “Those are people that just decided to rise against one another. And we are not going to completely stop people from rising against one another because this how it has been. But you saw that police officers moved in quickly to restore law and order. So there should be no misinformation on the side of certain media outlets that that is cadreism.”
