UPND vice-president Geoffrey Mwamba says the suffering that Zambians are experiencing is good for the next election because citizens would have learnt a lesson and paid a price for voting carelessly.
And Mwamba says the PF is running government through Facebook and other social media network postings from Cadres and ministers.
Meanwhile, Mwamba says he is still going strong as UPND vice-president but only went silent because he travelled abroad to supervise his businesses.
After months of Silence the vocal former defence minister returned and told Zambians to stop blaming President Edgar Lungu for the mess that the country has fallen into, but must instead blame themselves for experimenting with a self confessed visionless leader.
“Zambians you should not blame Edgar, blame yourselves because Edgar told you that he had no vision but you said ‘iyo ni uyu wine ba Sata batupele (he’s the one that Sata anointed)’. So now you will pay the price so that those who voted for him can see and learn. It’s not all Zambians but those of you that made the mistake and voted for Edgar, you are going to pay the price. Mind you, you re only in the second you, you have three more years, 36 more months to suffer. So blame yourselves and that will be good because then whenever there will be elections, people will vote wisely, not through tribal lines or what have you. We don’t want that,” he said.
“It has never happened in the history of this country where Zambians go completely without a meal a day. I was just passing through Cairo road and you could clearly see the misery on people’s faces. This is unprecedented. And yet, the government officials today are the only ones rejoicing. But the ordinary Zambians who actually voted for them are suffering and they are suffering more than us in the UPND who never voted for them. Us we prepared ourselves mentally and physically that if Edgar ruled us we were going to suffer.”
And commenting on the incident where the Public Service Management Division (PSMD) PS ordered his Northern Province counterpart to exculpate himself to State House officials Kaizer Zulu and Freedom Sikazwe as well as a PF cadre Munir Zulu, GBM said this was all proof that the country was being government PF cadres.
In a recorded phone conversation between PSMD PS Boniface Chimbwali and the Northern Province Permanent Secretary Elias Kamanga, the former was heard remonstrating the latter for suspending his deputy without permission from President Edgar Lungu’s advisors.
GBM told News Diggers! in an interview that anything was possible under President Lungu’s PF.
“There is no way a civil servant can go and get permission from a fellow civil servant to suspend someone who has committed an offence. It doesn’t happen that way. In any case, I am sure there are regulations that stipulate how a civil servant should conduct their affairs. But if you look at the whole puzzle of the [current] government, it seems they don’t even understand what civil service means. How can the PS for Northern Province suspend his deputy if he did not read the guidelines? If he read, he was in order. But why now should Mr Chimbwali breath fire on Mr Kamanga? And why was he asking him to ask him to get permission from Sikazwe? In the first place, who the hell is Freedom Sikazwe? In any case, he’s a misfit even where he is right now. It can only be Edgar Lungu who can actually have an advisor [in form of Presidential Affairs Minister] like Freedom Sikazwe, he is just a total clown,” Mwamba said.
“Those of us who know him, who made him actually to be what he is today, we cannot appoint him to that position. Even if the late Sata, May His Soul Rest in Peace, was alive, he wouldn’t appoint Freedom Sikazwe to the position of Presidential Affairs Minister. Anyway, it can only be Edgar Lungu, the President. So that’s why in the whole system of PF today, they have actually put people like Freedom Sikazwe, they have put Kaizer Zulu… and who is this Munir Zulu? I don’t think I know whoever the hell that he is, who is he? Isn’t he just that cadre doing all sorts of things on social media? My God! my God! How can we have a government that is run on Facebook?”
Meanwhile, Mwamba bemoaned the late delivery of farming inputs by the government, saying it would have a bad effect on next year’s harvest for the farmers.
“Look at the fertiliser situation. I was phoning Kasama to find out if the inputs have been delivered but up to now they haven’t started receiving the inputs. The way the farming pattern is is that come August – September, all inputs must be distributed to various depots across the country and they should have been distributed as at now. But up to now, farmers have not received fertiliser. And the history of the rain pattern that I know of, by 24th and 30th of October, we must have the first rainfall. But when it starts raining and you haven’t received your inputs, where does that leave the farmer? If you receive your inputs in November or December, that’s not good for cultivation,” Mwamba said.
“In fact, the maize that has been produced this year hasn’t been as expected, yet we had very good rainfall. But FRA has even failed to buy the proposed 500,000 tones of maize for reserve. All this is because most farmers didn’t have a good yield this year. But I really feel sorry for my fellow Zambians, however, they must brace themselves for harder times because we’ve got about 36 more months before the next election.”
Asked why he had been so quiet politically for a while now, Mwamba said he had been making sure that his private business continues to thrive in other countries.
“My dear, I am no longer a Zambian businessman. I am a South African and Zimbabwean businessman, so I have to go and look after my interests once in a while. So I always travel every month to go either to Zimbabwe or South Africa to go and look after my businesses. But there is nothing sinister about it, I am still with the party and I will continue speaking, especially on how much Zambians are suffering,” he explained.