PF Secretary General Davies Mwila has dragged NDC leader Chishimba Kambwili to court, demanding punitive and exemplary damages for saying that he paid someone to write his Grade 12 exams.

On October 27, Kambwili held a press briefing where he charged, among other things that, “…coming to the PF, how can reasonable people who think, the judge makes an order and gives leave for appeal and when you are given leave to appeal, people can take action after 14 days. If you don’t appeal within 14 days that is when the PF can write to the speaker to say ‘declare the seat vacant’. But because you are dealing with confused chaps who don’t know what they want to achieve in life, who don’t even understand that their President is a lawyer…I mean, President Lungu is a lawyer, he should have told his Secretary General that ‘come on, you cannot write to the Speaker so early, you can only write after 14 days.”

“Mwila lost an election to a nonentity, a small boy, an independent in Chipili. I have won elections in Roan, three times…And by the way, let Mwila not throw glasses because even that grade 12 certificate he has bamulembele kofye (they wrote for him). When we came to Parliament, he came as a form three. Get Mwila in a classroom today to rewrite his grade nga kuti akwata ko nangu nine points (if he can even get nine points). So that chap should not even start me because I know him very well.”

But in a statement of claim filed in the Lusaka High Court, Monday, Mwila stated that the parts of the press briefing relating to him, impute traits of dishonesty, bad faith, lack of respect for the education system, that he was not fit to be a leader and that, he was a fraudsters.

He further stated that the words complained of had lowered him in the estimation of right thinking members of the society and had generally brought him into public ridicule, scandal, odium, hatred and contempt.

Mwila stated that all efforts to have an apology rendered and the words and statement retracted, had proved futile.

He now claims damages for libel arising from Kambwili’s press briefing which was covered and published by various print and electronic media houses, punitive and exemplary damages, interest on the said damages at the current commercial bank lending rate, costs and any other relied the court may deem fit.