Why Bishop Alick Banda’s probe is a scam… Part 1

Why Bishop Alick Banda’s probe is a scam… Part 1

By K Chiwoyu Sinyangwe

Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Lusaka Alick Banda and President Hichilema have never pretended to be buddies, not now, not before!

And because the opposition is largely beleaguered, Bishop Banda’s critical voice is undoubtedly the harshest and loudest against President Hichilema’s rule.

Has President Hichilema or the UPND hidden their dislike of Banda’s criticism? Certainly not!

Whether it was Bishop Banda’s close relationship with the late president Edgar Lungu or kaya, one can only speculate, but the ‘truth of the matter’ is that the two leaders can never share a holy grail!

Alick Banda is being harangued for allegedly possessing a stolen vehicle from ZRA which he surrendered back in 2023, that’s the little I know.

The headlines have been quieter, but the real story, the real machinations and schemes can be accessed through scanning social media pages of the UPND surrogates and griots.

And why did DEC have to wait for an election period to probe the President’s harshest critic… where have they been? Bakali kuli?

You see, our political parties are absurdly predictable and watching what is happening to Alick Banda today is like watching a repeat of a boring soap opera, in slow motion!

Legitimacy decays. This repeated abuse of law enforcement agencies to fix political opponents has found its space in our political landscape.

Politicians have wantonly assumed control of our law enforcement agencies to fix their perceived enemies. As a result, our law enforcement agencies are leaking the integrity and respect of ordinary citizens.

President Hichilema is the Commander in General of the Drug Enforcement Commission and the Anti-Corruption Commission, and so it is not unreasonable to believe that he unleashed his ‘boys’ on his number one critic!

UPND griots performing their usual rituals are dressing this up in legal language of ‘no one is above the law’ gibberish, but this spectacular cold arithmetic of using law enforcement agencies to silence perceived enemies is not new.

The record of victims is in public domain. For now, I will cite two…

In 2023, when the UPND wanted to discard Dr. Dick Sichembe as Auditor General, they accused him of corruption and dragged him to ACC. They had arrested him! Today, where’s the Sichembe case?

Despite being ousted, labelled corrupt and humiliated, Dr Sichembe has never been prosecuted for the so-called theft of that K1 million because it was all lies and falsehoods meant to pave way for one of their own to take over.

Today, Zambia has no substantive Auditor General because the UPND is stuck with their ‘own man’ who they can’t confirm as Auditor General because of expired qualifications. Dr Ron Mwambwa has been acting Auditor General for the last three years – God knows why this bizarre incident has never been an audit query anywhere.

Not too long ago, when UPND wanted to hound Andrew Kamanga out of Football House to replace him with their kith, the first line weapon deployed was the DEC.

Kamanga was arraigned for money activities when both DEC and UPND knew good and well the guy never laundered a ngwee.

Kamanga was severely brutalized and abused; DEC confiscated his passport, severely restricting his movements all in an attempt to satisfy the UPND’s insatiable appetite to inflict pain on an innocent citizen they considered an encumbrance! Again I ask; where’s the Kamanga case?

To the UPND and its supporters, this unhinged laceration of our public institutions to punish perceived enemies may be satisfying, but these characters you’re assassinating willy-nilly were built over a long period of time and one day, just one day, some of you will be answerable!

Coming back to the issue of Bishop Banda…

I

f you want to understand the real situation around Alick Banda, stop reading press releases and start listening to what the UPND officials and their surrogates are saying!

Bishop Alick Banda is not infallible. Neither is he above the law. But his harassment is a typical UPND modus operandi of abusing law enforcement agencies to silence critical voices.

In fact, it is my genuine prayer that this case will end up in court so that for once we can know the truth. I hope the DEC will not just end at attempting to cow him into silence.

This case is also important as it will help to set a precedence on the Church-Political party relationship insofar as donations are concerned.

If there is one thing that has been bothering, it is the notoriously murky and brazenly blurred nature of political party donations to our churches. This is especially notorious among the ruling party elites.

Right now, Churches are receiving huge amounts of donations from the UPND leadership and this will continue until the election in August; I have yet to hear of any church leader who asked; “where is this money coming from?”

The Catholic Church leadership is not naïve and for an institution that has existed for this long, it fully understands the cost of being silent when one of its leaders is attacked. In any successful cohesion, loyalty becomes non-negotiable.

The Church understands exactly what is going on currently; the Church is also very alive to the fractious relationship between Bishop Banda and Hichilema.

Ask the blunt question, was Alick going to be harassed if he were preaching for HH? There is never anything new in Zambian politics.

Yesterday, it was Sichembe, it was Kamanga… today it is Alick Banda.

Like the wisdom of the Akan tribes of Ghana reminds us; “if you see your neighbour’s beard burning, fetch water for yours.”