No one has outshone Levy Mwanawasa yet
Hicks Sikazwe
LAST week as Zambia eulogised in memory of the country’s third president Levy Mwanawasa, images of how I knew him vividly came to the fore.
Many knew him as a good Ndola based lawyer. He tackled some of the most complex of cases from foreigners involved in what President Kenneth Kaunda called economic sabotage to the treason accused.
He was initially a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Most members of my family belong to the same religious group. So whenever I was dragged to go and attend some of the circuit gatherings I would spot him there.
In the early 1980s when I joined the Times of Zambia, though I was not a court reporter whenever there was what bosses took as a big hearing, I was asked to help out.
Covering Mwanawasa making legal arguments was a marvel of an experience. Later when I moved to Kitwe around 1987 Dr Kaunda cracked down on business people, both local and foreign, who were accused of fraudulent deals involving mines.
Mostly those arrested in the clampdown found themselves as clients of Mwanawasa. Second national president Frederick Chiluba, while he was head of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), Kaunda detained him. He was rescued by Mwanawasa.
Even when Kaunda appointed him Solicitor General his law firm continued to defend the most sensitive and difficult cases. Kaunda had no option but to relieve him of his duties and he went back to serve the people.
When the surge for multiparty politics struck he was elected in absentia as legal chairman if the new Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) at the first ever national symposium in Lusaka called to spearhead the lobby for the return to plural politics in Zambia.
Mwanawasa popularised court injunctions which were interdicts to stop action especially by the State against hapless and poor citizens accused of breaking the law. Mwanawasa one time messed up the United National Independence Party UNIP) when Kaunda attempted to grab the Times of Zambia declaring it a UNIP asset.
Mwanawasa first filed an injunction. When the case went for hearing it was discovered that the major shareholder of the firm was the government through the Ministry of Finance and UNIP was nowhere near the ownership. During campaigns for the return to multiparty politics when he rose to speak the crowd would roar in Bemba, icibumba, meaning concrete wall.
After the October 31, 1991 general elections that gave the MMD massive victory, he was appointed vice president to Chiluba. But in 1994 he resigned charging that he could not serve in an administration riddled with rampant corruption.
After leaving political office he returned to his law firm to do what he knew best. But rather strangely he never left the party he continued to serve as a back bencher from Chifubu Constituency of Ndola.
At the law firm we met again. He handled most of the cases against the Times of Zambia especially arising from complaints of rigging after elections. When he resigned I had just been promoted to Deputy News Editor. So I had to go to court representing the paper when Mwanawasa was defence counsel. It was another marvel to work with the former vice president. To date I can not recall losing a case where Mwanawasa represented the newspaper.
In 2001 I was a witness in a petition against the general elections where Mwanawasa beat founder of the United Party foundational Development (UPND) Anderson Mazoka. The opposition complained that the Times had published two editions including one with headline that Mwanawasa was leading.
Among other complaints the opposition felt that the second edition with the Mwanawasa victory projection influenced late voters who might have even changed their minds after noticing that Mwanawasa had won. In defence among my submissions was that it was not the first time the paper had run two versions. In 1969 when American astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the moon for the first time the paper published two editions the late one showing Armstrong on the moon. The other argument was that in 1990 the Times published evening editions. So a precedent had been set.
The paper, I continued, always updated its publications whenever there was a striking national or global event. I made the court appearance while I was serving as a commissioner on the Mung’omba Constitution Review Commission (CRC).
While he was president I became Deputy Editor in Chief, second to Anold Kapelembi who I had found as Chief Reporter when I joined the paper in 1983. Only a few months in the chair someone told Mwanawasa that I was a member of Micheal Sata’s Patriotic Front (PF). The claim came from some one I was close to on the paper working with other boys.
Mwanawasa called me about the allegation and I gave my side of the story and gave him three names on the paper where that claim could have emanated from. Two were correct and I later confronted the chaps.
When the now President Hakainde Hichilema became head of the UPND Mwanawasa was told that I was Hichilema’s speech writer. This time he called me to State House. When I got there I found a copy of the Times of Zambia carrying a picture of me and Hichilema. He had come to the paper to hand over computers donated by the Media Trust Fund (MTF).
Hichilema, who was not even in politics that time, had just taken over as MTF chairperson. I told Mwanawasa that he would be surprised that I had met Mr Hichilema twice, once when he was taking over as chair for the MTF and second when he was presenting computers to the paper. I served on the board of MTF then chaired by late author and former permanent secretary Dominic Mulaisho.
“Mr President you would be surprised that he does not even know me, if you asked him, who I am,” I told the president.
“But what is wrong with you people in the media?” he asked. For me Levy Patrick Mwanawasa was a good human being, a good lawyer and a good president. Under him the economy thrived, agriculture boomed the kwacha for a long time held strong to the mighty United States dollar. After him no one has performed any better yet.
Hicks Sikazwe is author of Zambia’s Fall back Presidents, Wasted Years and Voters in Shadows. A former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Times of Zambia and now Communication and Media Affairs Advocate based in Ndola. Comments 0955/0966929611 or hpsikazwe@gmail.com
