By Staff Reporter
Socialist Party’s Kelvin Kaunda says new SP member Innocent Kalimanshi is a good person who was just abused by leaders in the former ruling PF.
And Kaunda said western leaders coming into the country have created a market for their own interests by “bringing in the UPND.”
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Kaunda said Kalimanshi was now an SP member.
“He’s one of the comrades. He’s one of our members as comrades,” he said.
But asked to respond if the SP should be welcoming people like Kalimanshi with his questionable background, Kaunda said it was not about the past but the future, saying some of these people were not bad people but were abused by their leaders.
He said what human beings needed was support, wondering where the leaders in the PF were for Kalimanshi to be referred to as a bad person.
Kaunda said the leaders must have used people like Kalimanshi in a manner that was going to be beneficial to society, but that there were leaders in the PF who were sponsoring young people to go and create violence.
“They would give them money ‘you go and do this. You go and hire buses.’ Some of their leaders were behind that violence,” Kaunda said. “So these are good people who were just being abused by the leaders.”
He said the SP could not be referred to as the new PF as they were attracting members not just from PF but the other political parties, arguing that the party was about the Zambian people.
Kaunda dismissed assertions from the PF that members were joining SP because of alleged financial incentives, saying “they can come and join us and see whether they will be paid as well.”
He said once in a while there were training programmes abroad in countries like South Africa and Ghana for those in strategic leadership positions and that local workshops were also organized for the general membership, saying this was something the PF themselves and others could emulate if they were serious about the subject of leadership.
Kaunda said he too would welcome the chance to train abroad as and when time allowed, saying this was a changing and dynamic world.
He claimed that SP would form government in four years time and that Zambians will see a real improvement in their lives.
Kaunda described prominent visits by leaders from the western world as “he who controls your appetite creates demand for their product,” saying by bringing in the UPND they had created a market for their interests.
“Are they coming to improve the livelihoods of our people? Or are they coming in now to reap off our resources?” asked Kaunda, adding that this was not the first time they are coming as they also came in times past and claimed “that they discovered us” and “discovered the rivers which our forefathers were already seeing with their eyes.”
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