FORUM for Democracy and Development (FDD) leader Edith Nawakwi says it’s sexist for UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema to suggest that “what goes well with beans is Legana sausages”.

And Nawakwi says Hichilema should speak out on his shares in the state owned companies, saying she will continue talking until her death.

Following the Hot FM radio programme where Hichilema confronted Nawakwi for “telling lies about privatisation”, the UPND leader took to social media stating that what goes well with beans (lies) is Legana sausages.

But speaking when she featured on 5 FM’s the Burning Issue programme, Tuesday, Nawakwi made a sexist interpretation of the post, and went further to say Hichilema was younger than her and could not be her husband.

“They have gone as far as, these UPND people, to abuse my husband online. People like [Anthony] Bwalya and Hakainde should stop cyber bullying because if today, Hakainde can say on Facebook that ‘stop cyber bullying’, they would stop. He is the one who started saying I have a crush on him. Meaning that I want him to be my husband. Mwana wa mailo, he’s younger than me. Now if a male leader says a female leader is eyeing your bedroom, what is his mentality? What’s your mental disposition? Then the next thing, he posts something else ‘No, Legana is good with beans’. What exactly is he saying? These sexist rants should stop from Hakainde. They should stop! Chibaba, naine ndiye ve chibabila mukakamba ati surrogate of PF (it is painful for me. That is how I feel when they say I am a PF surrogate),” Nawakwi said.

She accused Hichilema of a confidence trickster.

“I have seen that Hakainde has posted on his page a memo from my office to the then IMF president that ‘this is the evidence for Edith Nawakwi to have privatized the mine.’ That is evidence that I was Minister of Finance and I was restarting the program of privatization. He should say ‘go to the archives and pick evidence and say this is the evidence that Edith Nawakwi went to the great wall and signed off Chambishi mines’, I signed off that one. So now this point I made that Hakainde was never minister, he was put at Grand Thornton by someone else for convenience. And with no experience and he is not an accountant, he is an economist like me,” Nawakwi said. “So when he was put as lead negotiator, he was depending on the accountants behind him who were professional accountants. Sometimes, people think he knows the numbers. He was responsible for advising the government, the Ministry of Finance on privatization of specifically Livingstone Intercontinental Hotel called Mosi O Tunya Hotel. He should have never ever been a shareholder. What he did was criminal. What he did is what we call confidence trickster.”

She said Hichilema should not have “put his fingers in the basket” when he was advising the government.

“Coming back to Intercontinental, what Hakainde did was equivalent to trickster. It doesn’t matter how much you bully me, it doesn’t matter. When he was transaction advisor to the government, at no point should he have put his fingers in the basket and collected shares for himself. He never declared interest. That is criminal. If you call others criminals, stand on the pedestal of cleanliness. He says that I was sleeping and most of his supporters are saying ‘why didn’t you realise he was cheating?’ If I go to an advisor and I ask them that ‘advise me on the value of this vehicle’, they will either undervalue it because they have an interest or they will advise me the correct price because they have the interest of the client at hand. If the government had the tools to advise itself, do you think we would have hired him to be our advisor?” Nawakwi asked. “We hired him because we fervently believed he was going to advise government with his whole heart and the Zambian spirit in his soul but then, he goes behind our back, incorporates a company and says that this is a foreign company. At no point did it occur to me that this young man was a confidence trickster. He was a consultant and for me to go to a consultant, it means that I don’t know what to do.”

She vowed to continue talking until Hichilema opened up about his shares.

“What he should have realised is that he has an interest, he wants to be part of the project. He should have said he was the chairperson of the advising board because I also want to participate as a bidder, that’s normal. So anyone who is insulting, it doesn’t matter. Either he owns up that I made a mistake, we move on and hands over those shares to the government. I want to say to my brothers Bwalya and Gary Nkombo who are defending Hakainde. He is alive, let him have three hours and talk. Prove to the people that what you did was noble. Hakainde must answer; as long as they continue to answer on his behalf, I will be on air until death,” Nawakwi vowed.

When asked if she was decampaigning Hichilema, she denied.

“No, far from it. You must know that the more you pull me down, you are not pulling yourselves up. They say that I am a surrogate for PF. This is cyber bullying which is going on. I am a leader of a political party. Hakainde’s team is on record saying that I was going to be Minister of Finance. Was I the Minister of Finance? What they do as UPND is to pull me down. I want to know how he acquired shares. It is theft of public assets. He says MMD were like monkeys in a maize field. For him, it was like he was a baboon, maybe a chimpanzee in a maize field. Most of the information that I now know, I have known now. I thought he was a non-executive chairperson and I found it odd,” Nawakwi said.

And the FDD leader said she could not form an alliance with Hichilema because it was doomed before it was born.

“We met in 2016 several times in an attempt to work together. No one called me a surrogate. I think you heard my brother say ‘she didn’t support me’. I was almost beaten at Sheki Sheki house for fighting for a seat for one of our sisters to stand for Ndola Central. We agreed for 50/50. There were 150 seats and even people who could win wanted to knock off, people like SC Chifumu Banda. Immediately, we said he was the president, I realized I was in trouble. But I can say it was doomed before it was birthed,” said Nawakwi.