Can John Peter Sangwa, Dolika BANDA liberate Zambia?

…Zambia has been presented with a chance to start afresh, and all over again.

By Bwalya Ng’andu Nkula (BNN)

– Personal Reflections

Here is MY understanding of HOW the modelling of politics by John Peter Sangwa and Dolika BANDA should be, IF I HAD IT MY WAY.

°Politics that are culturally people-centric and issue based. It’s a good and novel model of funding our politics they are proposing. A great and wonderful start already.

°TRIBALISM
Let’s surrender and demise the task of employing for critical and essential positions to Employment Boards. I have in mind positions in the Judiciary, parastatals and all public/statutory positions. The Boards should be composed of Church representatives, trade unions, NGOs, and professional bodies etc. This model alone is capable of drastically reducing the vice of tribalism, NOT just rhetorical and hypocritical PREACHING AGAINST tribalism. There are PRACTICAL ACTIONS that can address this WITHOUT EVEN TALKING ABOUT IT.

°CORRUPTION
Let’s start by FULLY defining and AGREEING on what LEGALLY constitutes CORRUPTION, ESPECIALLY CORRUPTION regarding PUBLIC RESOURCES. We should further go on to make corruption involving public resources TREASONOUS. We should all be very scared of being implicated in any public corruption allegations the same way we are scared of being mentioned in anything concerning illegal/unconventional ways of deposing legitimate governments

°LAW & ORDER
We should consider bringing back death penalty. Give an amnesty of three months in which to surrender ILLEGAL FIRE-ARMS after which one is liable for imprisonment to a minimum jail sentence of up to 10 years. ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS should attract a sentence of five years pending deportation, or normalizing citizenship by pardon of the Citizenship board. Zambians, or indeed anyone aiding illegal immigrants to pay with the highest form of a jail sentence of a maximum of 10 years.

°OUR RESOURCES
Let’s tie most, if not all our resources ESPECIALLY Minerals to PRESCRIBED OWNERSHIP by citizens through a valued percentage held in trust by an investment arm like the IDC, for instance, while the remaining value can only be accessed by investors through the stock exchange. We will not only be stimulating the stock market but also lessening interface between government officials and potential investors, thereby eliminating corruption.

°HEALTH & EDUCATION
A healthy and educated population is a vibrant and assertive citizenry of the world. There is no way we can take up our place at the word table with a feeble and an uneducated mind. The so called “free education” is NOT enough. We should agitate for “Education fit for a purpose”.

°LAND
As Zambia, we should SERIOUSLY review the carelessness with which we handle land as the primary asset on which EVERYTHING HAPPENS. Just about every war on this earth traces its origin to conflicts involving land, and we have managed to be very careless and negligent in this regard. The only genuine investor that will ever invest in this land with a true conscious is a Zambian. The rest shall always be by-passers with self-serving interests.

°CONSTITUTION
The fact that just about every “new” government wants to change the constitution, especially towards the elections, for the sole purpose of tilting the game in their favor, is reason enough to pay particular and special attention to the Constitution. We NEED to have an appropriate and immediate sit down the very moment there’s change of government in order to come up with an honest and fair review of our Supreme laws of our land.

°PF/UPND CORRUPTION, TRIBALISM AND DEGENERATION IN THE RULE OF LAW
Zambia has seen the escalation of hate through tribalism, the rise in corruption, and unprecedented degeneration of the rule of law, ESPECIALLY under the watch of these two regimes. I think it would help this country a lot to give these two parties a rest and consider giving a chance to fresh ideas and new SYSTEMS. Continuing with UPND or re-engaging PF will not amount to changing anything at all. We will just be scaling time.

These are just discussion heads for issues that have solutions IF WE ARE WILLING TO ENGAGE, REASON TOGETHER AND COME UP WITH REAL CHANGE.

We know what to do, we know what is right, but somehow we want things to happen by themselves. We have an imaginary set of people who we think will show up to initiate the “ideal” kind of change we would want to have without our personal participation. Our very unreasonable emotional attachments to people and organizations we root for impeached our objectivity until we exchange places of “privilege” for us to see the injudiciousness of our minds.

IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT

Anyway, just my weekend rantings… #BwalyaNg’anduNkula #BNN