HOW THE LUNGU FAMILY AND MAKEBI ZULU DUPED THE GOVT NEGOTIATORS IN SA BECAUSE THEIR CASES WERE NOT DROPPED

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I will be discussing this issue at 20:00hrs tonight, but for now read a story that was published in News Diggers yesterday.

Former President Vice Kavindele Enock has revealed that some regional presidents suggested the Zambian government drop cases against former President Edgar Lungu’s family in exchange for the repatriation of his remains.

Kavindele says the Zambian delegation achieved its mission in South Africa but was left in the dark as to why the other party pulled out at the last minute.

Commenting on remarks by former second deputy speaker of the National Assembly Mwiimba Malama, who claimed the government failed to repatriate Lungu’s remains because it sent the wrong people to negotiate with the Lungu family.

Kavindele said he was approached by regional leaders with proposals he could not act on. “These talks in South Africa were so delicate that we would be phoned by presidents around the region.

Some of them said ‘Could we drop cases against the family’. And I said, ‘Look, I don’t have those powers; in Zambia, those powers are vested in the Director of Public Prosecutions.’

My role was to facilitate the return of the remains of the former president so that he could be given a befitting send-off.

What happened between my hotel and the airport after I had succeeded, we will never know because after seven days all parties agreed.

We even agreed that President Hichilema was to be at the airport to receive the remains of President Lungu. How these things changed within 30 minutes, I don’t know,” Kavindele said.

We had gone into these very delicate discussions that took that long and we agreed that Wednesday the 18th the remains will be repatriated. And on that day we were already on our way to the airport, when we were told that the trip had to be aborted because the other party had pulled out of the plans to come back to Zambia,” he said.

As much as the discussions were delicate, we agreed with the other party who we know were under pressure because each time we agreed on anything, the family would say they need to consult, we don’t know who they were consulting and would change their position.

The fact that midway to the airport when everybody was ready the other party changed their position is beyond us. So we were a successful team of negotiators.” Kavindele dismissed Malama’s remarks, saying he and others criticising the delegation were not involved when it truly mattered.

“Mr Malama and others should not trivialise these discussions. They were very delicate, involved a lot of people. I’ve been in very many negotiations, but this one was very delicate.

With Mr Vernon Mwaanga, I negotiated the success of the Lusaka peace accord of Angola where President Savimbi came to Lusaka. The Americans and the Kenyans failed. I’ve been involved in other delicate negotiations such as DRC elections and many other elections in the region. You know elections always cause war in the country but we managed to negotiate.