UPND HAS SCORED A FIRST
…Cadres are celebrating the death of an ex-president – Sinkamba
By Mast Reporter
IT’S the first time in our country’s history to see people celebrating the death of a former head of state, Green Party of Zambia (GPZ) president Peter Sinkamba has said.
Sinkamba said Zambia had become a laughing stock not only in Southern Africa but the entire world because of its embarrassing mishandling of the death of former president Edgar Lungu.
In an interview with The Mast, Sinkamba questioned President Hakainde Hichilema’s leadership skills for allowing his cadres to publicly ridicule and insult late Lungu in death as well as celebrating the recent court decision against his family in South Africa.
“What is there to celebrate? We have never had a situation like this. Today you have people that are celebrating. They are dancing. We are using all sorts of obscenities, ridiculing the dead, and its part of the new culture under this government,” Sinkamba said.
“You look at the way they are managing things. Where is Ubuntu? How do you really treat your friends like that? How do you treat the bereaved family like that?”
Since Lungu’s death he and his family have been the targets of daily mockery and attacks by UPND leaders and cadres.
Muchinga Province Minister and UPND Mbala Member of Parliament Njavwa Simutowe was recently seen in a video joining other ruling party members and sympathisers in celebrating the order by a South African court that the former president’s body be surrendered to the Zambian government for repatriation and state funeral in Zambia.
While dancing alongside comedian Bikiloni, Simutowe was captured demeaning Lungu’s corpse and his family, behaviour which has attracted a fierce public backlash.
Since Lungu died in South Africa on June 5 social media has been awash with constant mockery, outright insults and threats directed at him in death and his family by rogue Facebook pages associated with State House and others run by the ruling party’s media team and its affiliates.
Sinkamba said Hichilema and the UPND had shown the whole world that they did not care about other people’s views on the impasse between the government and the family over Lungu’s burial.
“You don’t care about what everyone else is saying, what the Church is saying. We have become a laughing stock. I was in South Africa, for the burial, for the initial space when they said they were going to pass. We were being laughed at, how can you do this to people?” Sinkamba said.
He said the decision by Hichilema and the UPND to sue the Lungu family would forever stand as the worst decision of the country.
“How do you go to court over a body of a person? Where is Ubuntu? It has never happened in Africa, to have a government going to court and wanting to take possession of a dead person,” Sinkamba said.
He said Hichilema and the UPND had destroyed the true African culture through their actions.
“That has never happened. Again, it’s the will of the family. We have destroyed the African etiquette when it comes to funerals. Our culture is completely devastated,” Sinkamba said.
He said the death of a former head of state in any country was a sombre moment and should be respected.
Sinkamba said the celebration that was seen and witnessed from UPND carders and tolerated by their leader, Hichilema, spoke volumes.
