Tuesday, June 25, 2013

This is not the Sata Zambians knew and voted for

By MICHAEL CHAWE in Lusaka | Tuesday, June 25   2013 at  10:20

Police officers beat opposition demonstrators during a protest in Lusaka on June 6, 2012. The protesters clashed with hundreds of riot police officers resulting in multiple civilian casualties. President Michael Sata's administration is accused of heavy hand in cracking down on political dissent. AFP 
Zambia’s election of President Michael Sata as the country’s Head of State on his third attempt has been a mixed bag of sorts.
His election in September 2011 came like a sigh of relief for many, especially the youth that propelled him to power on the electric promise he would create jobs.
Clearly, the majority of Zambians had grown tired of the 20-year rule of the former ruling party the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) led by then Rupiah Banda, who was accused of corruption and being unresponsive to people’s needs.
Since his election almost two years ago, some of his staunch supporters have morphed into some of his fiercest critics over his style of governance and the questionable track record of human rights abuses in the hatching.
Mostly, they accuse him of cracking down on opposing views.
Of late, President Sata’s followers have developed a systematic habit of either disrupting or threatening mass meetings of those who rise up to speak against the government. Senior party officials in many cases have failed to condemn the attacks attributed to the ruling Patriotic Front youth.
These cadres of the ruling party have harassed opposition members and civil society members.
Some of those that supported President Sata prior to the election have changed their minds to form their own political parties among them a former diplomat, George Mpombo. He had been appointed to serve in Nigeria as deputy High Commissioner, but was later recalled.
Another one is former Works and Supplies Minister Mike Mulongoti, who was hounded out of MMD.
‘Noisy mad preacher’
But the most dramatic case has been that of a “Catholic priest” Father Frank Bwalya, who supported President Sata in the 2011 election with vigour, leading him to form a civil society organisation which was highly skewed towards propagating the Patriotic Front’s promises.
Fr Bwalya, a vocal clergyman, was later hounded out of the organisation by his colleagues for being “openly political”.
His support for President Sata did not come without a price. He was eventually forced, according to insiders, to go on sabbatical leave by his superiors within the Catholic Church.
In a move to reward Fr Bwalya for the work done, President Sata appointed him to lead a board to oversee the operations of a state power utility Zesco Limited.
Few months at the helm, Fr Bwalya resigned his position and formed a party, the Alliance for Better Zambia, saying he needed a free conscience to criticise Sata.
Within days, he went on private radio stations to denounce the governance style of the PF, notably the government’s decision to thwart opposition gatherings.
He also accused President Sata of "no longer representing the interests of the poor".
“This is not the Sata I knew and campaigned for," he lamented then. "The real Sata is dead and is in heaven. The one at State House is not the real one.” He spoke in his local language Bemba spoken in Northern Zambia where President Sata also hails from.
Fr Bwalya has been on overdrive citicising the government. President Sata rarely responds to the controversial priest except at one point when he referred to him as a “noisy, mad preacher”.
For the two years it has been in power, the PF party has struggled for balance, sometimes taking too tough a line on some decisions as to risk a backlash.
The controversial decision to slash a key food subsidy was bound to hit the poor and stoke inflation.
The backlash this time round was swift, but non-violent.
Black Friday protests
A coalition of civil society groups has been demanding the government reverse its decision and have since launched the Black Friday protests against the move.
The government says stopping government subsidies for staple food would lead to “real economic and well distributed growth”. However, the opposition questions the motive.
A 2012 study by the Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute said millers were not passing on their savings of around $340 per tonne from the subsidies to customers but instead pocketing additional profits.
Sata's critics also accuse him of “inducing” parliamentary by-elections where the ruling party has sought to woo members from the opposition into its ranks.
The PF's two-year record has brought cries from the opposition that country is gradually losing grip on the democratic front.
On May 31 for instance, ruling party supporters disrupted a gathering of civil society members who had assembled at a local church to protest the removal of food and fuel subsidies.
In the ensuing fracas, involving weapon-wielding government supporters, a local bishop, John Mambo was beaten and got admitted to hospital.
Other people were also harmed during the fracas in the confusion. There was no immediate condemnation from senior party officials, fuelling speculation the violence was sponsored.
“Now the outside world is wondering, what kind of a country are we creating where church congregants get beaten right in church,” said opposition MP Ronnie Shikapwasha.
"This is totally unacceptable and the government must bring a stop to this.”
Days later, a member of Parliament in the area where the incident took place, Miles Sampa, rose to condemn the violence as if by formality.
Again, among other minor incidents in between linked to the ruling party supporters, June 12 saw a disgusting incident in which Fr Bwalya was openly harassed by suspected party supporters.
Deteriorating human rights
The supporters stormed a private radio station, Flava FM, in the Copperbelt Province where Mr Sata still enjoys a groundswell of support, to demand that the talk show were Fr Bwalya was supposed to appear be cancelled.
Reason? He speaks “ill” of the government, they recited.
According to reports, Fr Bwalya had opaque beer, popularly known as Chibuku, poured on him.
But Copperbelt Province PF youth secretary Chanda Kabwe denied that the people that attacked Fr Bwalya were his party members.
Mr Kabwe said the party must not be dragged into such as it "did not allow any citizen to be attacked".
Apart from these senseless attacks on government critics, opposition members have in the past been denied police permits to address rallies.
The situation forced them to petition the Commonwealth to “come and check the deteriorating human rights situation in the country”.
After the incident an opposition leader from the former ruling party the MMD, Nevers Mumba, gave an interview to reporters in which he said: "The role of that 'militia' is to deal with the opposition leaders and supporters who oppose the policies of this government, and violence is what the militia is going to use.
"When this issue came up we thought it was a [fake] story, but it has now proven to be true," continued Mumba. "My supporters were beaten and some ended up in hospitals, but the police have done nothing about it, even when we gave them proof."
The government has not moved in to halt the violence leading to suspicion that they are behind the attacks.
On top of the violence, leaders of the former government including Rupiah Banda have been slapped with raft of criminal charges which a section of Zambians view as trumped-up by Sata just to settle political scores.
Zambian authorities are also on record for barring the former president Banda from attending several international meetings despite court orders allowing him to travel. At one point, an immigration official said "the orders were from above".
This incidents are viewed as attempts to frustrate and embarrass the former leader and perhaps make him sink into oblivion.
The Sata-led administration also rallied Parliament to strip Mr Banda of his presidential immunity just to humiliate him further.
As all this unfolds, Zambians are watching.

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