IRIS, you were found guilty of producing a pornographic video with your boyfriend at college, what is your advice to young people?
IRIS Kaingu: “I would say that they should not record themselves having sex? These things are meant to be private and even my own privacy has been taken away from me so much that I feel that’s not the way I intended it to happen. I would like to show myself as an example as to what could happen if something like that landed in the wrong hands.”
I thought you would be advising teenagers to totally abstain from illicit sex Iris, rather than educating them on which right or left hands it is supposed to land in. But I will not ask you to explain that. Just tell me, what’s next for you?
“In three years’ time, I will be 27 and I hope that by then, I would have finished my masters which I am doing right now and then I will fully plunge myself into politics.”
Wait a minute… you mean like Iris for president? Hell No! We don’t have enough noble, qualified members of Cabinet for you to appoint yet.
Okay, let’s say you will have Bobby East for vice-president, Vincent Palani for foreign affairs minister, Teddy Malekani for sports, Mainga Mwaanga at energy, Bwalya Chikwanda as gender minister, and then what? What about the Ministry of Information and the rest? And most importantly, who will be in charge of ZNBC to ensure that your Cabinet undertakings are well documented and televised?
And by the way, sorry ZNBC staff, I was mean last week when I condemned you for demanding the removal of your management.
If I knew that your management was so dead that it could not even notice that we are now in 2015 and the agriculture show theme has changed, I would have joined in your protest.
No wonder Gerald Shawa quit his job at ZNBC to start his own television station, and look, he is doing better than you guys. Shame on you ZNBC management!
Anyway, so that’s that my dear Iris, what I think you should do is to join a serious corporate company and try to build your Public Relations career from there. And a good starting point would be Lusaka Water, because the guy there called Topsy Sikalinda has failed.
TOPSY Sikalinda posted on Facebook: “I think people need to be serious with the journalists they send to my office. This journalist asks me: ‘What are you doing as Lusaka Water to ensure that enough water is pumped in the Kariba Dam to reduce the load-shedding by Zesco?”
Although Topsy was laughing at this intelligent question from a ZNBC journalist, I think he missed an opportunity to give a deserving explanation.
That’s why I say Henry Kapata is the best PR manager in this country. Yes, I said it! And I can give you examples of how a sharp PR officer answers questions.
Henry KAPATA as Lusaka City Council PR manager: “…That is a good question, but we can’t arrest the prostitutes around the city because there is no law that stops them from being out there at night. However, what we are doing as a council is to arrest them for vandalising Billboards and street light poles which they hold on to when conducting their business.”
“As for the second question, we are concerned and worried indeed as LCC about the lack of proper planning in the city. We see a lot of people jogging early in the morning around town and the first impression you get is that they are keeping fit when in fact they are looking for toilets. So we are moving in to build a number of public toilets to stop people from running around unnecessarily.”
That’s my man and that’s it for today.
Twitter: @jmwenda29