UPND secretary general Stephen Katuka says 2021 will be a year the opposition party will finally form government and help redeem Zambia from the PF’s legacy of violence and economic stagnation.

And Katuka says the ruling PF will be responsible for kicking themselves out of power because they have taken Zambians for fools.

In an interview, Katuka said PF had destroyed the country in every sector and would be remembered as a party whose motto was annihilation.

“Well, the decade might be theirs, but they have no legacy to talk about. They have brought untold misery on the people, poverty has never reached the levels it has reached under the PF, and from the time we got independence, the levels of violence have never reached these alarming stages. Those days, you could move with a machete in the car, it was considered a farm tool. It was a farm implement, a tool used on the farm. Nowadays, it is even considered an offensive weapon because of the PF. The party itself is heavily-armed. When we talk about inflation, we used to hear about inflation rising, but we never got to feel its impact. And all we could hear was single-digit inflation. But under the PF, we have reached 17.4 per cent. And not only that, people in Zambia felt they had a government, which was answerable to them but under the PF, the PF feels they own the people; the people are theirs and they must dance to their tune,” Katuka said.

“What they decide is final. Any divergent voice is an enemy and must be sorted out physically and not even by word of mouth. This has only happened under the PF regime. For the first time, again, we have a compromised Parliament. For the first time, this Parliament is not independent. When we had the MMD in power, we knew that Parliament was the only institution that had independence. And the workers in Parliament were non-political, they never wanted to talk about the political activities. Now, it’s different. So, if there is any legacy to talk about, it’s the annihilation to this country, the destruction they have caused. That’s all they do, destroy, it’s like their motto. That’s the legacy they will talk about; the loss of the freedoms of the citizens, the breakdown in the rule of law, those are the bad legacies they will leave behind. So, while these years could have been theirs, there is no legacy, and 2021 is coming, that is our year.”

And Katuka said PF would be responsible for kicking themselves out of power because they took Zambians for fools.

“They should not think we are a bunch of fools who do not think. This is why they cannot win the next elections because of what they do. Those politics of the 1960s where you promise to do a road or a bridge where there is no river are long gone. Zambians can now see what you are doing. They look foolish themselves because even in government there is supposed to be decency. People must be decent. If something is wrong, it’s wrong. A wrong can never be right because you are standing on the other side of the fence. We have everything here in Zambia. The soil is incomparable in the entire southern Africa, the human resource is incomparable,” said Katuka.

“The intellectualism is incomparable, if only we had a caring government, we could have been a middle-income country by now. So, let not the PF boast that they have developed the country. You know that under the UNIP-era, the only mistake they made was to overstay in power. You cannot compare it to any other government. Because, now, if they talk of the roads, buildings and everything, you cannot compare with what the UNIP-era did. So, for the PF, it’s nothing to talk about because even the very development they talk about is full of corruption!”