The recent News Diggers editorial that attempted to pour cold water on His Excellency President Edgar Chagwa Lungu’s comments on humility was to say the least… in bad taste.

To be humble is also to be realistic; As Charles Haddon Spurgeon a venerable 19th Century Baptist preacher who to this date remains highly influential among Christians of various denominations, once famously observed:

“Humility is to make a right estimate of one. It is no humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought.”

Spurgeon was spot –on. Humility is not self-deprecation; why should President Lungu think less of himself than he ought?

Why are President Lungu’s detractors all hot and bothered like feral cats on a hot tin roof, that he made a right estimate of himself?
Why should it offend them that despite ascending to the highest office in the land, the President has remained connected to his humble background and the grassroots?

It is not humility for a man to stand up and depreciate himself and say he cannot do something that he knows he can excel at. If God gives a man a talent, do they think the man does not know it? If a man has ten talents he has no right to be dishonest to his Maker, and to say, “Lord, you have only given me five.”
It is not humility to underrate oneself; that is the stuff of pious hypocrites!

Humility is to think of yourself, as God thinks of you…nothing more and nothing less.
Humility is not to say: “I do not have this gift.”
But rather it is to say: “I have the gift, and I will use it for the Lord’s glory”

Why should it therefore offend anyone that President Edgar Chagwa Lungu seeks to use his gifted connection with the grassroots and the people of Zambia to better their lives beyond 2021?

Why are his detractors filled with sour grapes?
Could it be because his humble disposition, warm smiles and general amiable demeanour are spontaneous and genuine; unlike certain grass root-disconnected individuals who have to hire handlers at great cost just to make them appear likable and to “fix” their laboured and contrived smiles?

Why does one also get the feeling that with all the inappropriate bitterness and acrimony that is developing into a predictable routine from certain sections of the media, they are in danger of completely losing the plot and ultimately ending up as a quarrelsome elitist medium with a grudge bone to chew…habitually splitting hairs?

As for His Excellency President Edgar Chagwa Lungu; his humble background and continued humility resonates well with the majority of Zambians, as it inspires them.

It is the testimony of the son of a woman marketeer rising to the office of President; And having risen to the highest office of the land, remains connected with the grassroots…and continuing to be humble, does not repay evil for evil; but instead tolerates those that demean him…even embracing and loving those that make it their daily bread and make careers out of their grudges to disparage him.

What humility!
What a man!

(Sunday Chilufya Chanda
Patriotic Front Media Director
Lusaka)