By Sunday Chilufya Chanda

We take great exception to Mr. Hakainde Hichilema’s UPND appointee Mr. Mubita Nawa’s crass shenanigans on a video where he is clearly seen gleefully enjoying and encouraging a UPND cadre’s insults targeted at the President of the Republic of Zambia Dr Edgar Chagwa Lungu.

While it is bad enough to insult even a child, it is an abomination for Mr. Nawa to abet insults of a person old enough to be his biological father. It is even a greater abomination beyond words, when the target of the insults besides being old enough to be Nawa’s father, is the Head of State. Sheer abomination! Ala Mupamba! Ni maloza! (Abomination!).

What is even more sickening is that Mr. Hakainde Hichilema, in his defiant response in a terse social media statement, describes Mubita Nawa’s vulgarities and insults directed at the Head of State as that of a “model citizen”. Mr. Hichilema’s defiant defence of his “presidential aide” clearly demonstrates how Nawa’s crassness has Mr. Hichilema’s full blessing.

We wish to remind Messrs Hichilema and Nawa that the Presidency is a venerable institution enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Zambia.

Let me remind my brother Mr Nawa as follows: Section 69 of the Penal Code provides:

“any person who, with intent to bring the President into hatred, ridicule or contempt, publishes any defamatory or insulting matter, whether by writing, print, word of mouth or in any other manner, is guilty of an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a period not exceeding three years.”_

Rather than frantically trying to spin it or deflect it, Mr. Nawa must show remorse by apologising to the President and the people of the Republic of Zambia. The more he tries to cosmetically cover it up with misplaced banter, word play and semantics, the more his boil of insults festers and the more the pus of his indecency is exposed.
It is a tragedy how insults have defined the UPND culture and character both on-line and offline. It just goes to show how Mr. Hichilema and his party of “insultants” are so bankrupt on alternatives, that they can do nothing but hone their vulgarity on innocent others.

It is disturbing that Messrs Hichilema, Nawa and Co. think that they can insult their way into State House. The majority of voters in Zambia love the Head of State and are pro-PF. They have not forgotten how Mr. Hichilema insulted them just because they support the development agenda of His Excellency President Edgar Chagwa Lungu.
When will UPND ever learn? Their vulgarity and insults are anathema.

Mr. Hichilema and his ilk should learn to disagree without being personally disagreeable. We therefore challenge the Opposition UPND to meet us at the arena of development, the arena of alternative policies, not insults.

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