Nevers Sekwila Mumba :MY YOUNG BROTHER NEVERS — UKULYA BUCUSHI ICINE CINE

Nevers Sekwila Mumba :MY YOUNG BROTHER NEVERS — UKULYA BUCUSHI ICINE CINE My young brother Pastor Nevers Mumba — your writing language kwena, wankolomonafye. Of all the people who could have responded to my video, you apparently felt an irresistible impulse to speak with great certainty about matters you neither understood nor knew I was […]

Nevers Sekwila Mumba :MY YOUNG BROTHER NEVERS — UKULYA BUCUSHI ICINE CINE

My young brother Pastor Nevers Mumba — your writing language kwena, wankolomonafye.

Of all the people who could have responded to my video, you apparently felt an irresistible impulse to speak with great certainty about matters you neither understood nor knew I was addressing — or, perhaps, matters you knew very well but chose conveniently to pretend I had not addressed.

Let me ask you something, Nevers: do you know the political and family relationship that exists between His Excellency President Hakainde Hichilema and me, including the relationships created through cross-tribal marriages between my auntie a Bwile and a Tonga family for which we are proud to have a traditional senior leader amongst us?

You probably do not.

But you certainly know something about the political relationship between you and me during the Mwanawasa years.

You know that relationship very well.

You know what happened when President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa, after your brief tenure as Vice President, removed you from the MMD and from government. You know the circumstances surrounding your departure. You also know that I was then serving as one of the principal executives of that government.

And you know that, despite everything, I accepted you back at considerable political cost.

Rupiah Banda was never impressed by that.

You also know that when the question of Mwanawasa’s succession arose following his tragic illness and eventual death — the injury triggered during his trip to Egypt and subsequently confirmed and treated in France — the politics became extraordinarily complicated.

You know where I stood.

You know why I ultimately agreed that you come back and contest Rupiah Banda.

It was not because I was blind to the political arithmetic. It was precisely because I understood it. As MMD, National CEO, I wanted to help establish that Rupiah was genuinely MMD and not merely the beneficiary of a succession arrangement — MMD, not “Blue.”

He hated me for it.

And he made me pay for it.

You know that.

And before all of that, do you remember my young brother Nevers, together with General Shikapwasha, coming to my residence in Kamwala?

Do you remember why you came?

You came to persuade me to stop speaking publicly about what I regarded as the compromised nature of the LPM presidency and to seek reconciliation with Mwanawasa.

You know this history.

So please do not now approach me as though you have just discovered me, my political memory, my intellectual capacity or my relationship with the people about whom I speak.

You know better.

You also know that I am not some political amateur who wakes up one morning and “concocts” stories about another human creature created by the God of our ancestors.

And then there was your extraordinary reference to the so-called “yesteryear laptop witchcraft devices.”

Really, Nevers?

Was a Compact laptop supposed to have become a mystical object?

Was that your theological understanding of technology?

Have you actually read the Bible with your embodied sovereignty, or have you merely read it through the political spectacles that become fashionable whenever opposition politics needs a convenient explanation?

Because if a laptop can be transformed in your imagination into a mystical instrument of witchcraft, then perhaps the problem is not the laptop.

Perhaps it is the imagination of the person looking at it.

And that is where I find your intervention particularly disappointing.

Ukulya bucushi icine cine.

Suffering teaches lessons that political comfort often conceals.

I have eaten that bitter food.

I have lived through political victories and political defeats. I have watched friends become enemies, enemies become allies, and allies become strangers. I have served governments, opposed governments, defended governments and paid the price for refusing to defend what I believed was indefensible.

So I do not need a crash course in Zambian political morality from someone who has himself travelled through almost every station of our political pilgrimage.

You have been Vice President.

You have been removed from government.

You have been outside government.

You have led  political parties which collapsed…a leader?

You have watched political alliances form and collapse.

You therefore know that Zambian politics is considerably more complicated than the convenient moral narratives politicians construct when addressing an audience.

And that is why your attempt to lecture me from the safety of hindsight is, frankly, amusing.

You know me, Nevers.

You know my history.

You seem to know my weaknesses.

You know my political mistakes. Really?

But you also know that I have never needed to manufacture political history in order to have one.

So before you rush to interpret my words again, perhaps listen first.

Before you attribute motives to me, understand the history.

And before you invoke God, witchcraft, morality or political righteousness against me, remember that God is not the property of any political party — not MMD, not UPND, not PF, not any of them.

You have done this dance with other parties before.

Now you are doing it with UPND.

Political parties change.

Presidents change.

Governments change.

But history remains.

And unfortunately for all of us who have lived it, history has a very long memory.

#Zambians#🇿🇲