By Chimwemwe Mwanza

Yindaba ushaya inyoka ifile kudala? Loosely translated, this powerful Zulu idiom questioning one’s wisdom in beating a dead snake best describes President Hakainde Hichilema’s (HH) predicament. The President is in a pickle – a mild verdict in retrospect but one that aptly captures the lay of his political fortunes. Had he heed this warning; he probably wouldn’t be facing this conundrum.

Government’s spirited attempts to repatriate Edgar Lungu’s mortal remains to Zambia is an embarrassing fiasco. At play is the political implications of burying Zambia’s sixth Republican President in a foreign land. Whichever way one looks at this, the Lungu family’s decision to inter his remains in South Africa is a political masterstroke. On the flipside, is this how low we have stooped as a country that bickering over a corpse now almost seems to be an obsession or preoccupation of a sitting government?

Put more succinctly, this debacle is an indictment on HH’s political legacy. More worrying perhaps for the incumbent is that Zambia goes to the Presidential polls in a year’s time and the likelihood of Lungu’s ghost looming over HH’s quest for a second term is haunting the UPND. Curiously, how Lungu has suddenly become a political martyr baffles the mind. How we got here is perhaps a more appropriate question?

Truth be told, Lungu was by no means a serpent, but neither was he a saint. Humiliated at the polls in 2021, he was left for dead. Politically, he was interred at Heroes stadium when thousands of Zambians jeered him out of the stadium shortly after handing power to his successor. To be precise, he had no snowball chance in hell to mount a political comeback. So, what has stirred this nostalgia and outpouring grief that a leader who was resoundingly defeated at the polls is now being immortalised? Off course, death has a way of cleansing the departed.

To his credit, he presided over the country’s biggest infrastructure development programmes – albeit using borrowed monies. Under his reign, schools, hospitals and tarred road networks, mushroomed across the country. Yet it was under his reign that Zambia became the first country in the world to default on its debt servicing obligations during the Covid era – a factor that effectively consigned the country’s economy to junk status.

In contrast to this public persona, his opponents held a different view. Lungu, they argue was ruthless. His humble façade masked a vindictive veneer that was intolerant to criticism. Under his watch, Zambia became a cadre state. That the late President had authoritarian leanings is evident in the fact that he on more than a dozen occasions deposited then opposition leader HH into the gallows on trumped up charges – the gravest of which saw HH spend more than 100 days in solitary confinement in a local prison.

Just like the late Lungu, President Hichilema is autocratic but not totalitarian, which isn’t just a difference of degree. He is affable and able to articulate himself in public. In addition to his charm, HH has an ingrained affinity for making aurally pleasing political statements – which is how he became a darling of the media. But try as he might to spin the metrics, the economic hardships facing Zambians are palpable. The cost of living has skyrocketed under his watch. Households are taking strain from irrational power supply.

Liquidity is in short supply and small businesses are choking to inflation. The local bond market – which is a key determinant to measuring a country’s investment credibility is in a state of flux. These factors have effectively conspired against the hopes of a weary electorate that bet their fortunes on his Presidency. For much of his four-year reign, this government has seemed in denial about the economic hardships facing Zambians.

In addition, the UPND’s fixation on retribution against the PF leadership including Lungu as opposed to addressing the hardships facing the general populace largely contributed to the former President’s political resurrection. And with Lungu’s ill-treatment at the hands of the UPND government, hopes of HH breaking the country’s vindictive cycle of political retribution dissipated with speed. Don’t forget, memories of former President Frederick Chiluba harassing Dr Kenneth Kaunda – Zambia’s founding President, and Levy Mwanawasa haranguing his political benefactor Chiluba or Micheal Sata’s PF, ill-treating Rupiah Banda are firmly etched in our collective psyche.

Just why such vindictiveness and blatant abuse of power seems to gratify incumbents is hard to fathom. In the absence of reason, one might well speculate that this show of brutality is all about a naked flexing of political immaturity. Whatever the reason, the difficulty is that this vicious cycle continues to erode the very democratic tenets and political maturity that Zambia is renowned for in the rest of Africa and the world over.

Those in the know will agree that Lungu’s flailing health is well documented which is why it would be unfair to completely apportion Lungu’s death on the HH led government. Yet we can still argue and rightly so that the incumbent government ought to have treated the former head of state better. That said, there was no need to keep beating a politically dead man, you should have let him be. May your soul rest in peace, son of the soil.

Mwanza is keen reader of philosophy.