By Staff Reporter
UPND secretary general Batuke Imenda says he cannot authoritatively comment on the list that has gone viral showing extreme tribal inclination in diplomatic appointments.
And Imenda said people like Paul Moonga who recently defected from PF to Socialist Party (SP) will not have found any position in the ruling UPND.
Speaking with Daily Revelation in reacting to Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba’s assertion that the tribally inclined appointments will cost President Hakainde Hichilema in 2026, Imenda said Mwamba must be mature enough to verify information before “he starts waffling.”
Imenda said Mwamba was a loser in MMD after he was beaten by Given Lubinda in Kabwata, and that he kept on losing until when Sata adopted him to stand in Kasama, but after that he started losing again.
“As far as we are concerned we are glad that man left because he was going to make us lose. His careless talk, his tribal talk, I have never seen someone who believes, dreams of tribalism like GBM. He is a staunch tribalist. So today he cannot turn round tables when he himself smells tribalism. You wait until State House gives you who is going where,” Imenda said.
Imenda asked if there has been any verification of the names showing a list of tribally inclined appointments, and when told that some names on the list have been verified as true though not conclusively on the others, Imenda said news was not about cherry picking.
But when told that he had specifically been gotten in touch with following repeated failed attempts to get to Foreign Affairs minister Stanley Kakubo, his permanent secretary Chembo Mbula and Chief Government spokesperson Chushi Kasanda, among others to comment on the matter, Imenda said he had been in the bush in Western Province for the past 12 days until today, and therefore some of these things were news to him.
“Some of the questions you are asking me, the issues happened when I was in the bush. Like I indicated as we were starting. I was in the bush I just came in the morning and some of these things I was just hearing them as we were having lunch around midday. Some of the things that have happened is hearsay, the news that I was getting when I was having lunch,” Imenda said. “But I cannot authoritatively give you something which comes out clean because I have not consulted my friends. I have not consulted my ministers to find out why they have taken action. I am not part of the cabinet meetings where some of these important issues are discussed. But whenever something is discussed I normally have an opportunity of getting to the depth of certain actions. But for now, 12 solid days, I have not been in contact with anyone in Lusaka. My concern was just to win an election.”
And Imenda said he doesn’t know of any prominent personality that has joined SP, saying people like former PF central committee member Moonga did not qualify that billing.
He said Zambia was not in a one party state and it should not be expected that every defector will join the UPND, saying that was what the Zambia people fought against in 1991 to bring sanity to this country.
“We are not going to allow a situation where one party will be dominant. Yes it can be strong but not to the point where every one just resigns to join one party. No! That is not democracy. That is not what obtains in a multiparty,” Imenda said. “You know when you are a politician, it’s simple that Moonga will not have found a position in UPND. The competition is stiff. So the best he could do if he wanted to be seen to be important is to join a small party which does not even have a councillor. So we are not worried at all. First of all we stand by the principles of democracy.”
He said the best would be to wait until the 2026 elections were done, saying the UPND said the same things when people were saying that other political leaders like Harry Kalaba were also attracting crowds, but he told them to wait until the August 2021 elections, which he said produced no members of parliament for Kalaba or even SP.
“The Moonga you are talking about, the province that he was managing, Lusaka Province lost lamentably. So how can we get worried of a loser? You are talking about losers. We know even within PF, people of substance that are still there and soon you will hear them joining us. But that does not mean that is the end of other parties,” said Imenda.
