If Jesus came today I would aid him with a whip or a gun, says Maiko Zulu.

And NAREP president Elias Chipimo says even PF spin doctors know that President Edgar Lungu’s ‘ubomba mwibala alya mwibala’ statement is unjustifiable.

The dual was speaking when they featured on 5FM’s Kambani Radio show which was designed to raise awareness on NAREP’s TiPanGeni programme on Wednesday.

Zulu, who is a celebrated Musician and civil rights activist, observed that religious leaders had let society down and if Jesus came today, he would aid him with a whip or a gun to sort them out.

“The leadership is so detached from the people. It is so easy to abet corruption because we have a segregated kind of leadership and unfortunately, I need to emphasise on the religious side also, our religious leaders are a let down in this country. If Jesus were to come today, believe me, I don’t think a handful would survive and I would be there to aid him with a whip and this time maybe with a gun because they are killing children in hospitals, they are killing unborn babies, the mothers out there,” Zulu said.

He said Zambian members of parliament were a let down.

“Look at how the poverty levels are in the rural areas so corruption cannot finish until all Zambians rise up. And we don’t need positions, we don’t need to be members of parliament in order to fight this because our members of parliament are also a let down. They are seated there enjoying mineral water in Parliament yet $42 million they are buying fire trucks, they are building roads that are costing three times more than normal. Members of parliament are just seated there and looking at the Land Cruiser at the end of the term. It is a shame. Members of parliament you are a disgrace and I am not ashamed to say this. They are not representing their people at all. You only hear them when they are on the wrong side of the political prostitution, that is when they wake up to say ‘there is this and that’. Where were you? You were part of the system and now that you have no longer eligible for picking up the crumbs that your masters are throwing, you begin to speak?” asked Zulu.

“That is hypocritical. If you are worthy of a politician, speak your word, in opposition or in government and today, unfortunately, even the young and upcoming politicians are being bought for three pieces of silver. So we need people to rise, people are the power and once people realise that they have more power on the scale than the politician, one day you will see a revolution in this country. I am not praying for that but the way things are going, you cannot help but to think of that.”

And Chipimo said even PF spin doctors knew that President Lungu’s ‘ubomba mwibala alya mwibala’ statement was meant to justify corruption.

“Today, logs can be illegally cut, transported out of the country, we are told a sob story that ‘this is auctioned mukula’ but we all know what’s going on, we all know who is involved, we all know how high this goes. This is how we can be told that ‘take the matter to court if you think that spending $1 million on a $250,000 fire truck is a problem. We are spending millions of dollars extra on constructing roads and nobody seems to have a problem. This is how we can come up with an explanation that ubomba mwibala alya mwibala is somehow explaining that people are just earning salaries as civil servants…When you are a civil servant earning a salary, do you really need to be told ubomba mwibala alya mwibala?” asked Chipimo.

“It is what I call a dog whistle. It is when you whistle in a way that nobody else can hear but just the dog because they have a different pitch for hearing a message and it is an expression which is used to say when you want to send a message, very subtle so that maybe you can be able to say ‘no, that’s not what I meant’ but what you really meant, the people who you wanted the message to reach will understand it the way you want them to understand it and that’s why there was all this cheering taking place in a PF fundraiser…It is very clear what is going on and I don’t even believe that anybody, not even within the PF spin doctor team that believes that this was anything rather than a justification for the kind of corruption that we have never witnessed in this country.”