By Staff Reporter
FDD leader Edith Nawakwi says she is wondering whether the IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva and United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are private visitors to President Hakainde Hichilema and his government or the people of Zambia, saying they should have found time to engage with the opposition and other stakeholders including taking visits to Chibolya, Kalikiliki compounds and Lusaka’s Central Business district to see the squalor ordinary people are living through.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Nawakwi said the western leaders should have also visited the local clinics and hospitals within the limitations of their time.
“So they came here for PR exercise to be seen to give condolences to the dying UPND, and if those in UPND are excited that Yellen came so be it. This is the usual PR western leaders do and it finds home to naïve leaders on the continent,” Nawakwi said. “Two days ago there was a news item of two babies dying in Nangoma in incubators and following that there is this glee from the minister that Zesco has installed a standby genset, and the MP for the area and the minister are speaking with glee without any recourse to the two children who died in incubators.”
Nawakwi accused the IMF and their associates of funning civil strife in the country by not helping to address the problems the country was going through.
“If Zambians should take the 1987 food riots, it will fall squarely on Hakainde and those two ladies because they came here not to help Zambia but to concretise their business. And it’s a very naïve and an initiated leader who goes to bed with the Americans. I always say look at the Tanzanians for the simple reason that the leader there is a woman. She is talking to China and India and there is a $3 billion pledge from that country. But a naïve leader here says he wants to get $1 billion from the IMF. It’s a joke actually,” Nawakwi said. “Here is a leader who starts exporting our maize without doing clear stoke taking. He wants to be a champion of international trade at the expense of the lives of Zambians. I went to National Milling, they have increased feedstock by K50, a bag is now going at K500 and on top of that they are operating without power. He has to export because probably that is the agreement he has with IMF.”
Nawakwi said the President could have drawn lessons from Egypt where the government there went with the opposition to negotiate for their own IMF package, for the purpose of getting opposition voices on board and so that the opposition could not use the IMF deal to de-campaign the government in the event it backfired.
“Were they private visitors for the government and Hakainde in particular or where they are visitors to the Republic of Zambia? One would have expected that they would have wider consultation with all the stakeholders concerned, and indeed take a trip to Chibolya and Kalikiliki and Freedom Way and the hospitals within the limitations of their time to see the squalor,” she said.
Nawakwi said that if she were in government, she would have engaged the two ladies differently, saying “they are not people you discuss with by standing up and they are talking down to you.”
“What have they brought? Zero. They say we have clinched the IMF deal. Where is it as in the hard cash? How can you agree with the Chinese when you are deriding them in Washington? Who is important in this? It’s the Chinese. They are telling you not to deal with the Chinese but they are taking money from the Chinese,” said Nawakwi. “Don’t try to ask me questions about the cattle economist. We are struggling on the streets. Look at the potholes, the squalor. This is not a person you can advise. Those ladies want to put it on record that they came to Africa … Americans have given us mosquitoes in the Open Bombay and the Chinese have given us Kafue Gorge Lower.”
She said that she was already on the streets and President Hichilema will join her not too long from now if he proceeds on the same path he was on right now.
