UPND national chairperson Mutale Nalumango says Forum for Democratic and Development (FDD) president Edith Nawakwi is slowly losing credibility due to her continued attacks on UPND president Hakainde Hichilema.

During a briefing on Saturday Nawakwi said Hichilema was not fit to run this country because he was a fraudster.  

But in an interview Nalumnago argued that Nawakwi was no longer an opposition leader but a PF member.

“In this politics, there are so many relationships, but really for my sister, she is my sister, she is my little girl. She is somebody I have known, somebody I have admired all the time but she has taken a route that if every woman was thinking like me, then people will start doubting us women. It seems like the crusade is not a national crusade, it is a personal crusade against Hakainde. Her legacy was so wonderful, so good but now a former minister of finance is derailing the political thinking, trying to sway an individual who is aspiring for the office of President, instead of focusing on the wrong things that are happening in our country. [As] a former minister of finance, one wonders what she is seeing, is she really today declaring that the ills of our economy, the collapse of the economy, is she attributing this to Hakainde?” Nalumango wondered. 

“She should be above that, to mislead the Zambians that they are suffering because of Hakainde. We should be embarrassed to mislead poor Zambians that something happened because of another person. Being in the position that she is today, privileged you may call her opposition leader, I don’t think she is opposition leader, she is Edith the supporter of what is going on and therefore pro PF. She should come out very clear rather than mislead people that the ills of today are a result of 20 years ago. The economy started picking long after privatization. You can’t talk of the Zambian economy of 2011 as being the same as 2021.” 
 
Nalumango said Nawakwi had failed to dent Hichilema’s image.

“If Hakainde is her target, surely she has been proved wrong, now she will end up attacking the courts of law. She should come out very clear, I am challenging her to come out very clear that Hakainde privatised this mine, because she has failed on the house, she has failed on the farms. What is it that she is looking for? Nawakwi has been at it every [time] before elections, what kind of a mother would get angry with a child for forever? Because it has shown that probably there is anger somewhere looming against Hakainde Hichilema. As women, we are the peacemakers, is she saying incarceration for example of Hichilema will resolve the issues of Zambia, is that her position? That she is determined to see Hakainde finished politically, is that her solution? The record for Hakainde is clean! If it was not, I think he will not have survived up to this point. My appeal to my sister, calm down, show leadership. Now, she will end up losing credibility that she had built because now people will be saying ‘ what is this anger? Where is it coming from?'” said Nalumango. 

“You can’t at her level, go on fighting when people are now saying she is a hired gun of the PF. After you have built your name you want to be called a hired gun? You go down in history like that? It is my plea that these fights against Hakainde, she has fought enough if there was an issue by now Hakainde could have been finished. God fights on the side of the innocent; there was the house, it has been proved completed wrong, there was the farm completely wrong. Let them go to court if they want, but they will not stop Hakainde from being on the ballot. She is my sister, I love her but she has put herself into some bomb that will destroy herself.”