Sean Tembo
Sean Tembo

YOU HAVE CROSSED THE LINE – Open Letter to Sean Tembo.

Dear Mr. Sean Tembo

First, I want to let you know that my readers have been urging me to ignore you for a long time. However, I have learnt in life that it’s okay to sometimes ignore ignorance, but one should never ignore parasites. The only thing they do when ignored is multiply.

Second, I want you to know that I acknowledge in full your constitutional right to criticize the government of the day. Even when we know that your arguments are cheap, shallow, stunted, and patently ridiculous, you must be allowed to enjoy your free right to be heard. Even when your political ideas have a Soviet flavour and are generated from textbooks written in the 1950s, you have a right to express them. Every citizen enjoys that right. Those threatening violence on you for exercising your right must be caged.

I read all your recent criticisms of HH and watched one of your recent TV interviews. As I did so, I found it difficult to choose between laughing out loud and sympathizing with you deeply. No one with a brain half the size of a rice grain will struggle to see the childishness of what you write (by the way, you are worse when you speak. You send me to sleep). But I am not here to defend HH. I will leave that to Anthony Bwalya.

What has made me hot under the collar are the tribal slurs you keep lacing your so called checks and balances with. Your recent utterances about cows (in a country where this euphemism has been used to denigrate a population), your imaginary fears about a certain language being made national, your reference to you still belonging to Zambia despite HH being president (as if that was ever in question) – all these, among others, carried sinister tribal undertones. Enough already, sir! You need to stop it!

Mr Tembo, history is a good teacher. If we pay attention to her, she reminds us that populations don’t become monstrous overnight, that nations don’t abandon humanity in a single moment, that generational human rights atrocities don’t form in an instant or in a vacuum. National sickness is never sudden. There is always a slow, deliberate, almost imperceptible pattern. And right now, you are cunningly trying to usher us there.

The metamorphosis of a people begins with an opportunistic leader who understands the power of weaponized fear, who feeds them a steady diet of the things that terrify them: misinformation, tribal sentiments, and abject lies all designed to create anxiety in them and to make them feel unfairly assailed. Kambwili tried it. You are now trying to emulate him. That is a dangerous path. Stop it. The nation is trying to heal.

Inciting tribal feelings with thinly veiled toxic insinuations is appalling. Your alienating language is consistent with the zeroes the people of Zambia allocated to you. Do you want progress for Zambia as your party name suggests, Mr Tembo? Do you want economic success? Do you want social cohesion in Zambia? Do you understand that the vast majority of Zambians want all of these things? Do you want to get into power some day? It’s not actually that hard. Treat us all with respect. Equally. As citizens.

I want to believe in the goodness of all Zambian, but right now I’ll have to settle for the goodness of some. As for you, Mr Tembo, and the direction you are taking the PEP, you are digging deep into a pitiful hole of pathetic zeroes. Hopeless, hapless, helpless. And, apparently you’re not shy about advertising the fact.

I hope, though, that you now get the feeling of what it is like for someone to look down upon you with contempt. That is what we, the Tonga speaking people, have been feeling for a long time. Stop it. It is parasitic. No tribe in Zambia deserves that. But if you think that the tribal line is too far to cross, then I will have you know that some of us will be here to call you out for it. We know you are a PF proxy. Lick your wounds in peace. If you will sling mud, leave us out. And remember, you can always rule without dividing first.

Yours Truly

Patrick Sikana .

Dear Mr. Sean Tembo

First, I want to let you know that my readers have been urging me to ignore you for a long time. However, I have learnt in life that it’s okay to sometimes ignore ignorance, but one should never ignore parasites. The only thing they do when ignored is multiply.

Second, I want you to know that I acknowledge in full your constitutional right to criticize the government of the day. Even when we know that your arguments are cheap, shallow, stunted, and patently ridiculous, you must be allowed to enjoy your free right to be heard. Even when your political ideas have a Soviet flavour and are generated from textbooks written in the 1950s, you have a right to express them. Every citizen enjoys that right. Those threatening violence on you for exercising your right must be caged.

I read all your recent criticisms of HH and watched one of your recent TV interviews. As I did so, I found it difficult to choose between laughing out loud and sympathizing with you deeply. No one with a brain half the size of a rice grain will struggle to see the childishness of what you write (by the way, you are worse when you speak. You send me to sleep). But I am not here to defend HH. I will leave that to Anthony Bwalya.

What has made me hot under the collar are the tribal slurs you keep lacing your so called checks and balances with. Your recent utterances about cows (in a country where this euphemism has been used to denigrate a population), your imaginary fears about a certain language being made national, your reference to you still belonging to Zambia despite HH being president (as if that was ever in question) – all these, among others, carried sinister tribal undertones. Enough already, sir! You need to stop it!

Mr Tembo, history is a good teacher. If we pay attention to her, she reminds us that populations don’t become monstrous overnight, that nations don’t abandon humanity in a single moment, that generational human rights atrocities don’t form in an instant or in a vacuum. National sickness is never sudden. There is always a slow, deliberate, almost imperceptible pattern. And right now, you are cunningly trying to usher us there.

The metamorphosis of a people begins with an opportunistic leader who understands the power of weaponized fear, who feeds them a steady diet of the things that terrify them: misinformation, tribal sentiments, and abject lies all designed to create anxiety in them and to make them feel unfairly assailed. Kambwili tried it. You are now trying to emulate him. That is a dangerous path. Stop it. The nation is trying to heal.

Inciting tribal feelings with thinly veiled toxic insinuations is appalling. Your alienating language is consistent with the zeroes the people of Zambia allocated to you. Do you want progress for Zambia as your party name suggests, Mr Tembo? Do you want economic success? Do you want social cohesion in Zambia? Do you understand that the vast majority of Zambians want all of these things? Do you want to get into power some day? It’s not actually that hard. Treat us all with respect. Equally. As citizens.

I want to believe in the goodness of all Zambian, but right now I’ll have to settle for the goodness of some. As for you, Mr Tembo, and the direction you are taking the PEP, you are digging deep into a pitiful hole of pathetic zeroes. Hopeless, hapless, helpless. And, apparently you’re not shy about advertising the fact.

I hope, though, that you now get the feeling of what it is like for someone to look down upon you with contempt. That is what we, the Tonga speaking people, have been feeling for a long time. Stop it. It is parasitic. No tribe in Zambia deserves that. But if you think that the tribal line is too far to cross, then I will have you know that some of us will be here to call you out for it. We know you are a PF proxy. Lick your wounds in peace. If you will sling mud, leave us out. And remember, you can always rule without dividing first.

Yours Truly

Patrick Sikana

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