MMD president Nevers Mumba says no Zambian will believe the report given by ZAFFICO on the mukula trucks which were intercepted by PF youths because many questions surrounding the scandal have remained unanswered.

In an interview, Mumba observed that the statement by ZAFFICO explaining the ownership of the intercepted mukula was not adding up, because they failed to name the Chinese buyer of the contraband.

“Its very interesting that the people that have risen up to fight this are not MMD members, they are not UPND members, they are not NDC members, they are not opposition political party members, but these are PF members who feel that they have been short changed, a few top guys are eating. So they arranged an organisation that they were going to interrupt the convoy of trucks to make their point; and they successfully did it because they knew where it was coming from. They also knew where it was going and it was easy for them to tell that it was going to be at Shimabala at such a time. The PF youths knew what was going on,” Mumba said.

“The position we have is that Zambians have always known that there is something wrong that is going on. I think the effort by government to ask ZAFFICO to issue a statement to talk about the legality of that consignment falls far below the requirement of any government. And secondly, to ask the defence forces to make a statement on the mukula when Zambians and the PF know who the owners of mukula trees are; its really an insult to the integrity and the intelligence of the Zambian population.”

He said the President was walking on dangerous path by allowing theft with impunity in his government.

“Here is the point, the president is really walking on dangerous grounds.The president knows that there is no Zambian today who will believe the so-called report by quasi institutions of government like ZAFFICO or government institutions like the defence force to exculpate the culprits from the logs. Those reports are redundant, no body believes them because every government agency will be told what to write in the report. Am sure every Zambian knows that. I don’t want to get into a lot of details,” Mumba said.

“There are so many questions (I) where are the papers that deal with this transaction? (ii) who is the buyer in China? They cant take logs to China without a buyer, they are not going to put the logs in the streets of China and say these logs are illegally cut in Zambia and now ZAFFICO has brought them to China for sale. Lets look at the papers, which company? Is it ZAFFICO for sure which is exporting that mukula? There are many questions that are still unanswered.”

And Mumba observed that the MMD members which PF swallowed in oder to win elections had turned toxic.

“It is true that in the manner in which the MMD members imposed themselves as PF, they have really injured the Patriotic Front, the base of the patriotic front, the members who feel that they laboured for that political party, they feel that they have been injured by the coming of these people who are the former members of the MMD,” said Mumba.

“So I think Felix [Mutati] is not a dull guy, I think he is thinking of what are his best options, what is he going to do when they remove him from minister of finance. And Mr Lungu has to make a very serious decision, is he going to sacrifice the entire party for those three or four people? That is the decision the president has to make and this year is an interesting year to see our political development as they unfold.”