Innocent Mujeri
Zambia’s United Party for National Development’s (UPND) national youth secretary for information and publicity, Joseph Kalimbwe, is a tormented soul.
He is a man who is always livid and furious whenever he tweets. His social media interactions expose a man who is suffering from internal bitterness. Kalimbwe has done little to conceal his hatred and despise of the liberation movements. He made it bare that he has strong hatred for ZANU PF, South Africa’s ANC and other liberation movements in Africa. One might wonder why an educated youngman like Kalimbwe can spend much of his time spewing vulgarities and obscenities against liberation movements.
Last month, Kalimbwe insinuated that the liberation movements and ruling parties in South Africa and Zimbabwe are on life support. The boy from Lusaka further claimed that the dethronement of Zambia’s UNIP from power are tale tell signs that other liberation movements can also be dethroned.
“In Zambia, the liberation movement (UNIP) was voted out peacefully in 1991. In South Africa, the liberation movement (ANC) is in a critical condition. In Zimbabwe, the liberation movement (ZANU PF) is on life support. Life is hard,” tweeted Kalimbwe last month.
One might wonder what has the liberation movements done to court the wrath of Kalimbwe? Why Kalimbwe is so desperate that he uses the little energy he has to work towards the weakening of the liberation movements? To understand Kalimbwe’s anger against liberation movements, it is imperative to revisit Kalimbwe’s upbringing.
Rumour has it that Kalimbwe’s childhood was not that rosy. In fact, Kalimbwe is a product of an unprotected sexual intercourse between his mother and a certain supporter of a liberation movement in Angola or Namibia. It is said that Kalimbwe’s father was very careless with his male seed and he would deposit it on everyone wearing a dress. Kalimbwe’s mother was a victim of this carelessness and she was impregnated and birthed Joseph. Instead of being a man enough to wait and take responsibility for his sexual actions, Kalimbwe’s father ran away and left the mother to fend for the little boy alone. The boy grew up being told that his father was a liberation fighter for a certain liberation movement and that he was too busy with his tasks that he abandoned the mother and the little boy alone. Because of this history, Kalimbwe grew up with much hatred of his father and he extended this hatred to all liberation movements as he blames them for the actions of his father.
To Kalimbwe, liberation movements robbed him of the love of a father. They robbed him of a chance to grow up in a proper family set up. To him, the liberation movements made him a hustler at a tender age. Because of this, Kalimbwe painted all liberation movements with the same brush of unlimited hatred and he might have vowed that he would devout much of his time fighting these movements to revenge the miserable life he experienced because of the disappearance of his father.
Because of his unquenched hatred for liberation movements and ruling parties, Kalimbwe morphed into a radical young boy who would oppose anything to do with liberation movements or ruling parties. He opposed ruling parties in Zambia and he has since directed his anger towards Zimbabwe. Since the triumph of the UPND during Zambia’s polls this year, Kalimbwe has been a propaganda megaphone for the MDC Alliance and its leader Nelson Chamisa. He hardly spent a day with demonizing the ruling ZANU PF and sanitizing the image of the MDC Alliance and its leader. In MDC Alliance, he has found a willing partner to fight his selfish battles against liberation movements. He has recently attacked ZANU PF more than the local opposition members did.
Another thing that might be driving Kalimbwe to despise liberation movements might be the political propaganda he encountered during his stint with an organisation called National Empowerment Forum (NEF). NEF was formed by the UPND at a time when it was still the opposition party in Zambia. Its number one task was to mobilize support and financial resources for the UPND. Interesting to note is that NEF was a platform through which all donor agencies sponsoring regime change in Zambia could channel funds for the UPND to dethrone the ruling party in that country. The major funders of NEF were USAID and UK Aid.
It can be concluded that during Kalimbwe’s stint with NEF, he was brainwashed by the West to hate all liberation movements. He might have been told that the hardships being faced by citizens in some countries were because of the misgovernment by these liberation movements that were still in power. Kalimbwe might have consumed unlimited volumes of propaganda that he ended up believing that liberation movements were indeed evils that should be exorcised from the people. In his narrow and dwarfed thinking, he might be foolishly thinking that by attacking liberation movements and ruling parties in Africa, he was doing a humanitarian work.
Kalimbwe should be reminded that liberation movements have survived several wars and machinations of the enemy and cannot be defeated easily. He should know that liberation movements are the ones that brought independence and freedom in countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe. He should also be made aware that a liberation movement like ZANU PF that is smarting from the evil machinations of the G40 cannot be wished away. To save himself from further bitterness, he should just accept the hard reality that liberation movements are here to stay and hatred for them can only make his health to further deteriorate as said by philosopher Matshona Dhliwayo that ‘bitterness is venom that consumes its host’.
