By Merlyn Mwanza
Kantanshi member of parliament (PF) Anthony Mumba says he disagrees with anyone using strong terms like teka amatako panshi on the President, something his party colleague Raphael Nakachinda used on President Hakainde Hichilema.
Calling in to the Hot Seat radio programme on Hot FM which was hosting Economic Front (EF) leader Wynter Kabimba this morning, Mumba said he would take issue with anyone using proverbs like teka amatako panshi if he were president, considering the respect and dignity people attach to that office.
He said he was viewing the matter from the perspective of someone who has presidential ambitions for the future, and that even now at the age of 44, he could not imagine himself using terms like “he’s just an excited boy…teka amatako panshi (Keep your butts down),” if Kabimba were president.
“In my opinion I don’t think if I’m president I will take that lightly,” said Mumba during a radio programme monitored by Daily Revelation media, wondering how out of all the sayings one could pick up such a phrase to describe the head of state, and that despite holding Kabimba in highly, on this matter he disagreed with him.
Kabimba was submitting that people must interrogate the issue of culture when dealing with some of these issues, saying in the olden times people spoke using proverbs sometimes very crude ones.
He said statements like teka amatako panshi in a layman’s language meant to take it easy, and it was mainly about interpretation by the recipient, saying just because the interviewer, Hope, said she could not use the words on her parents did not mean that another person would not use them on their own parents for instance.
Kabimba said the problem with the defamation of the President clause was that it was a criminal matter, but the accused has no opportunity to cross examine the complainant, saying that was why the law must go.
He said he told late president Michael Sata then as his minister of Justice that the statement Frank Bwalya uttered in respect of Sata as a chumbu munshololwa (someone who can’t take advice) did not amount to a criminal offence, and that true to that Bwalya ended up being acquitted by the courts of law.
But a caller named Mundia said removing the defamation of the President clause was like “asking God to take away AIDS because people have failed to control their sexual immorality.”
