It’s stupid to play politics when people are dying

By Daily Revelation Editor

We will not dwell so much into the politics of the Lusaka City Council vis-à-vis whether to allow or not allow the Patriotic Front to conduct cleaning in the Central Business District of Lusaka.

However, we shall state from the onset that it is stupid to be engaging in such petty back and forth when every day the nation is reporting deaths and more infections from the cholera epidemic.

President Hakainde Hichilema has called for the nation to join hands in fighting the epidemic. That is how it should be. There should therefore be no choosing in terms of who can participate or not participate in that endeavor. If those in the PF want to participate in the cleaning exercise then so be it. Arguments about who is the rightful owner of the PF should be cast aside for now. Cholera does not know any party affiliation or rightful legal owner of a political party. It is shameful some of the debates and arguments we allow ourselves to wallow in in this country.

That filthy CBD, which is in part contributing towards the same pandemic, will not tell whether the one who has swept it is a PF or even UPND member.

As a nation we must come to a level where we must learn to distinguish politics from very urgent important national matters requiring the help of everyone. If the PF feels like cleaning the CBD let them please be allowed to go ahead, they have come up with that initiative to do so. The more these politics are going on the more that CBD is getting filthier and risking the spread of cholera more.

Instead of actually talking about this, we should by now be seeing stakeholders on site, not only in the CBD, but in the compounds doing the necessary cleaning and other activities aimed at stemming the pandemic. We should be seeing the council, political parties, churches, men in uniform and the general citizenry converging to do whatever they can in working together to address this very dire situation as the cholera epidemic has the potential to actually worsen the already dire socio and economic situation, which will subsequently worsen the living standards of everybody. The earlier the country works to resolve this the better.

Since the outbreak, most families have lost out on those they used to look to as breadwinners. They have lost out on community members, school going children and so on and so forth who had a promising future. The children who were supposed to be in school by now have seen their re-opening postponed already and there is a risk of another postponement at the rate things are going, which will affect the students academically.

It’s actually stupid to be playing politics when so many people are dying and many hanging on to dear life in homes and hospitals. Please let us for once put political pettiness aside. What we have on our hands is a serious problem and if not properly handled might spiral out of control. 

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