By Patson Chilemba
No PF member will go on the streets to fight for Edgar Lungu and his Patriotic Front, says Economic Front (EF) leader Wynter Kabimba.
Speaking with Daily Revelation on former president Edgar Lungu’s remarks that the PF shall fight their battles using all the legal, political and civil means and that “beyond that, I don’t know”, with Kamfinsa member of Parliament Christopher Kang’ombe re-affirming that the opposition party will give themselves justice should the courts fail to do so, Kabimba urged Lungu and others to be good students of history, as PF was not the only [pp-logged-users] political party to be found itself in this situation.
“Kaunda who was even much, much stronger than the PF group was in this situation, and all that happened is that all that we thought they would give him support in terms of the masses, they walked away from him. They walked away from him,” Kabimba said. “(Former Zimbabwean President Robert) Mugabe is another example, if people follow history. ZANU-PF had a general conference in December, (but) six months down the road there was a coup in Zimbabwe, which was heavily and widely supported by the same people that were singing for Mugabe in December. So politics has dynamics that you cannot even predict and that’s why dialogue in my view is a better avenue.”
Kabimba said going by history, what Lungu and Kang’ombe were saying, they may remain disappointed because chances of actualising the outcome they anticipated was very minimal.
“It didn’t happen with Kaunda. It didn’t happen with Mugabe. It didn’t happen with (late former president Frederick) Chiluba. You saw Chiluba reach a point where he was going to court alone with his wife. There was a point where Kaunda was going alone to court and I was there myself,” Kabimba said. “So certain perceptions, I know it’s good to make political pronouncements. It’s like my friend Fred M’membe saying that we will not allow (new ECZ electoral officer Brown) Kasaro to get to ECZ. Kasaro is there at ECZ, what has he done? So some of these pronouncements they really surprise me. If you want to make a pronouncement, see it through. Don’t say something that you know you can’t execute.”
He urged against making pronouncements simply for the sake of it.
“Kaunda who had a mass party in the name of UNIP ended up going to court alone, and I remember him telling me one day when I went to visit him, saying that ‘Nelson Mandela has advised me, why do you want to die for people that are not prepared to die for you?’ that’s what ba Kaunda said to me,” Kabimba said. “So why do you want to stock a disappointment when you know that it will be a disappointment? There will be no PF members that will go on the street as far as I am concerned. There will be no PF members that will go on the streets. That’s why dialogue within PF, this must be within PF, the solution lies within PF. Not even in court. I have said that many a time.
“So I am not even beating about the bush. I am saying to people, can’t you learn from history? Because if you are not prepared to learn from history you will repeat the mistakes that have been made by others in history.”
Kabimba described the problems in PF as an internal matter, which he thought they should have sat down by now to resolve, arguing that there will be no winner at the end of the day, with the only outcome being the destruction of a project which has remained the legacy of late Michael Sata.
He said it was a pity that Miles Sampa and his group have allowed themselves to be used by the UPND, against a project which they constructed.
Kabimba said whatever problem they had with PF, the best they could have done was resign, rather than try to be destructive, particularly that Sampa had once left the PF and aligned with UPND, and therefore knew what was good or bad with both organisations.
He said it saddened him that “Miles’” getting back to PF seemed to have been done in bad faith.
“Yes there are issues that require to be resolved within PF and issues are resolved by human beings sitting down and listening to one another, instead of digging in. If they can’t talk to one another they can find a mediator,” said Kabimba, wondering what benefit people will get from destroying PF.
He said the UPND were determined to reduce opposition numbers in order to remove Lungu’s immunity, describing the same as their primary objective. [/pp-logged-users]
