By Staff Reporter
Edith Nawakwi says she will be the next to be arrested by President Hakainde Hichilema, whom she says is arresting people for using the word menstruation, which word she feels should be discussed freely on the table between fathers and daughters with brothers seated around too.
And Nawakwi has accused Inspector General of Police Lemmy Kajoba of guarding President Hichilema’s farm in Namwala, saying “police are not supposed to be scouts for rustlers.”
“Actually I got to learn over the weekend and one of their party officials sent me a recording where they are saying after Sean Tembo let’s target Edith Nawakwi. Yah! But you see for some of us these are little people, these are small people. We have faced giants before, the Chilubas, we have faced the Kaundas, I think you remember that,” Nawakwi said to Daily Revelation Media. “These are people without political strategy. So what they are doing they are not even making a dent in the political careers of their opponents, which they think they are doing by locking up Tembo. Otherwise what is happening, they are turning the tide against them. Because what is Sean Tembo talking about? Sean Tembo is talking about fuel increases. Is that not a fact?”
Nawakwi further took issue with NGOCC, saying their statement was out of taste, saying they should keep quiet if they did not know what to say.
“If the word menstruation is taboo what do they think they are doing to the young girls in schools, because in the last couple of years, men and women in this country have been mobilised to say to the young children, the young women that having periods is not a shameful issue? That’s what we have been doing,” Nawakwi said. “We have members of parliament like Sebastian Kopulande, former members of parliament who are literally taking their little money, they go to a shop, they buy sanitary towels and get to the schools.”
She said now “President Hichilema is locking up people for using the word menstruation.”
“What is he trying to do in as far as sensitizing young girls in school to say don’t be ashamed when you are near the moon, it’s a normal occurrence in a female, in a young person? What are we trying to do? We are trying to reverse the gains we have made as a nation in bringing the issue of monthly cycles of the female gender to the dining table,” Nawakwi said, “where we want fathers, male parents to discuss this issue openly with their young ladies, at the table with brothers seating there. A girl should be able to say ‘dad I want sanitary towels’ and not feel ashamed and go and hide the way I used to hide when I was a young girl. You should never be thought that ulikumweshi, it’s a taboo. This particular issue is keeping a lot of young people out of the classroom and now the President is saying it’s a criminal offence to mention this word, in a metaphorical statement. It’s just a metaphor.”
Nawakwi said they were trying to frame a charge of defamation of the President, reading from what Tembo posted about “menstruation.”
She said she does not want to focus on the Inspector General of Police whom she described as just a worker, saying his boss is “Hakainde Hichilema and that’s why for me I have said can Hakainde Hichilema release Sean Tembo.”
Nawakwi argued that if the police arrested someone for defamation of the President it must be the President of the Republic, as no one has been called by the name Bally of all the president the country has ever had.
She charged that Kajoba was engaging in the polemics of policing, saying this was a political issue and he must stay away as “we want law and order but we don’t want police anarch unleashed by politicians on citizens”.
“As far as I know he must concern himself with abuse of office by the President and advise his commander in Chief that he is abusing his powers,” Nawakwi said. “He shouldn’t think we don’t know that he as Inspector General of Police is guarding Hakainde’s farm in Namwala. Tell him. Tell him that police are not supposed to be scouts for rustlers. So now he wants us to defame the president so we tell him the facts.”
Nawakwi said she did not want to be involved in policing polemics with Kajoba saying “that’s why I am targeting his boss who has given him instructions to arrest us.”
“Honestly, which country does Bally run? Do you know any President in the world who is called Bally, to the extent that you can defame that person?” asked Nawakwi.
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