Chipo Mwanawasa has not been appointed presidential aide for public policy
According to Statehouse sources Chipokota Mwanawasa has not been appointed presidential aide for public policy analysis as widely circulated on social media. But before we say more about this, here is a little bit about Mwanawasa.
Chipokota Mwanawasa is daughter to Zambia’s third republican president Levy Patrick Mwanawasa. A practicing lawyer, Mwanawasa also has an MBA in public policy. Mwanawasa first got publicly involved with the UPND in around 2015.
In the run-in to the 2016 general elections, Mwanawasa ran the ‘rock the vote’ UPND project targeted at the young vote. During this time she also worked for Dipak Patel who was Hakainde Hichilema’s campaign manager for the 2015 and 2016 elections. So clearly, Mwanawasa was involved and was working with the UPND way before Lillian Mutambo and the names Mutambo is throwing around. Simply put, Mwanawasa was UPND at a time when it was not very fashionable to be UPND.
After the 2016 election she got a job as a corporate lawyer as well as running her own entrepreneurship projects like ‘cattle bank’.
Fast forward to 2021, Mwanawasa found herself at Statehouse working on some project or other. Our sources suggest she is/was working on consultancy basis. A few days ago a story broke on a social media platform claiming that President Hakainde Hichilema had appointed Chipokota Mwanawasa as his aide for public policy analysis. Attached to the article were two pictures; one of Mwanawasa with President Hichilema and another of her with presidential aide for economics and development Jito Kaumba.
Before long the article had gone viral with congratulations pouring in. Some of Mwanawasa’s family and colleagues congratulated her in person which she received heartily. However, others were unhappy. Former Munali MP aspiring candidate Lilian Mutambo has led the charge of those not happy calling the alleged appointment as ‘utter rubbish’.
By the end of the day President Hichilema’s Facebook page and Twitter account announced the Chipo Mwanawasa ‘appointment’. But the following day the posts were deleted from both the President’s Facebook page and Twitter account without explanation. State media has not announced the ‘appointment’ thus far.
What is clear now is that there is no such appointment relating to Chipokota Mwanawasa at Statehouse. It is not clear who generated the initial story on social media. As to the ‘announcement’ on the HH pages, it is not clear if it’s mischief and misconduct on the part of Mwanawasa and her colleagues managing the pages or a mere cause of miscommunication.