By Patson Chilemba
State Counsel Wynter Kabimba says he wonders when the Bemba proverb ‘teka amatako panshi’ became an insult that police have even arrested Raphael Nakachinda for.
Speaking with Daily Revelation on the arrest of PF’s Nakachinda for allegedly defaming the President, Kabimba said ‘teka amatako panshi’ simply means take it easy in Bemba.
“How can that be an insult? Police are just embarrassing themselves. Since when did an African proverb become an insult?…I don’t even feel, I don’t think what Nakachinda said is tantamount to an offence, or criminal defamation of the President,” Kabimba said. “The Bemba phrase teka amatako panshi simply means take it easy, relax for you to do what you are supposed to do.”
Kabimba said this was the problem when a country borrowed a foreign language to overlap the local language, saying police were just trying to show “their paymasters in power that they are discharging functions, when they are simply embarrassing themselves and the man they are trying to please.”
“It’s a proverb in the local Bemba language. Yes HH needs to take it easy…police must be very careful as they try to harass opposition political parties, because like it happened in PF the person they are making unpopular is the President,” Kabimba said.
He said whether the President was involved or not involved, the people will perceive this as political persecution by the President of his political opponents.
“The police will be psyching the public that they thought PF was gone but here is the UPND doing exactly the same things PF was doing, even worse. The police IG will not be in the ballot paper. The one who shall bear the brunt is HH who will be the political candidate,” said Kabimba. “And I can predict it that the same anger the PF administration they discharged through actions by the ACC, DEC, police, will be the same anger that these will create against HH.”
