Suspected PF cadres on Monday night beat up, tased their UPND colleagues in Chilanga’s Chimanja Ward, leaving them unconscious.

And Mwaliteta says Chilanga residents despise the PF because the men have hands as hard as stone, which prevent them from ‘feeling their women’ due to insane workloads in order to survive.

UPND campaign manager, Obvious Mwaliteta, confirmed the incident in an interview, saying the two opposition party supporters had been rushed to the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) for medical attention.

Mwaliteta said one of those attacked was UPND candidate Charmaine Musonda’s driver.

“Around 21:00 hours, our youths were buying some talk-time in Chimanja Ward and a PF youth called Oga, their commander, was with about 50 youths armed with pangas found these youths who were identified to be UPND. They were abducted and beaten and also electrocuted with tasers and later on, they were dumped at the end of the compound,” Mwaliteta narrated.

“We have just rushed them to the hospital because they were found unconscious. One of them is actually the driver for our candidate. They have injuries and they are very weak because of the tasers. They are at UTH right now. One of them is Jackson Mbao and the other one is Charles Mangeni.”

He lamented that despite the PF youths being known, police had not arrested them.

“The PF youths are saying they don’t want to see any UPND in Chimanja Ward, they are ready to kill. We have opened a docket, by the way, this is the second docket; the first docket, it was the same person who attacked our candidate in the same area and he has not been arrested,” Mwaliteta lamented.

He charged that Home Affairs Minister, Stephen Kampyongo, was behind the attacks but appealed to his conscience to stop the violence.

“But I want to send a message to Honourable Kampyongo, he is a Minister of Home Affairs and he is a national youth chairman for the PF. I want him to sit down and introspect on how he wants this country to be. I want him to be very honest with himself, whether he sees himself 20 years from now being in power or at one point he won’t be in power. If he knows, truly, that at one point he won’t be in power, he has to put a stop to this nonsense! Otherwise, as UPND, we are not going to bring violence in Chilanga because the people have accepted our candidate. And imagine, they are doing this in the area where the candidate grew up and they are attacking all the family members in that compound,” he said.

“Oga has been terrorising people and saying that he has been sent by Honourable Kampyongo. Kampyongo should stop this, we won’t go back crying to him. This country belongs to all of us and we have the right to campaign, it is not only the PF which is supposed to be there. MMD behaved the same way towards the end, what happened? Even the same youths who were sent by MMD leaders are languishing in prison today. So, youths, do not be used by Kampyongo to beat people because at the end of the day, they will be answerable to whatever they are doing. These dockets, today police might not… but these dockets will be reviewed when they won’t be in power, and very soon, Zambians are annoyed with them.”

And Mwaliteta said the UPND was not the reason Chilanga residents despised the PF.

He said the men had hands as hard as stone from the kind of work they did to make ends-meet, and that prevented them from ‘feeling their women’.

“We understand their frustrations in Chilanga, but you see, it should not trickle down to the innocent people. It is not the UPND that is causing people not to like them. It is the poverty levels, they are just too high. People in Chimanja Ward, you will see that the men cannot even feel their women because their hands are thick like stones because of breaking stones with these Somalians and yet they are getting K400 in Kalundu. They don’t want to see PF because of what they are going through. It is not our fault, it is their policies, which have failed the Zambian people,” said Mwaliteta.

“We are asking the police to arrest Oga with immediate effect or else we will carry out a citizen arrest and if the police are scared of arresting this Oga, they should let us know so that we can help them and hand him over to the police.”