MWANAWASA HAD A LOUD MOUTH THAT IS THE WEAKNESS SATA CAPITALIZED ON TO HAVE HIM RESIGN AS VICE PRESIDENT- GUY SCOTT
MWANAWASA HAD A LOUD MOUTH. THAT IS THE WEAKNESS SATA CAPITALIZED ON TO HAVE HIM RESIGN AS VICE PRESIDENT. – GUY SCOTT
As we took our oaths in November 1991 to uphold the constitution and observe the State Secrets Act, the way ahead looked pretty clear for Michael, if a bit steep and strenuous in patches. To get the Presidency in 2001 it would be necessary to ensure that Chiluba quit after his constitutional ten years.
It would be necessary to ensure that competing parties did not steal the baton from the MMD, and it would be necessary to ensure that all of about six people in the party who were more senior than him were compromised. And all along it would be necessary to maintain the support the voters countrywide and particularly the party officials who voted at the five yearly national convention. To maintain this he had to remain well known – which in Michael’s case was an objective best acquired by picking quarrels with his potential opponents, winning those quarrels, and making the wins famous.
It was a tall order but Michael embarked upon his ten year odyssey with him and vigor. One evening I thought to give Michael’s expertise a little boast by making him a gift of Machiavelli’s political handbook The Prince. He flipped through it in silence for ten minutes and then enquired: ‘Who is this amateur?” He left the book with me.
On the principle of big things, Michael first took on Levy Mwanawasa, Chiluba’s lawyer from Ndola on the Copperbelt who had won the post of vice president, and Michael engineered a confrontation quite early in the ten year campaign for his presidency.
First Michael paid in full and in advance the rental bill on his downtown office (from where he ran a private advertising business). He then summoned the head of one of the companies run by the Ministry of Health (to which Sata had been reshuffled) and ordered him to pay the rent on the same private office. He then had the instruction leaked to Mwanawasa, who had an extremely loud mouth on the subject of corruption and a deep loathing of Michael.
Mwanawasa ran to Chiluba, showed the instruction and declared that the two men could not exist in the same government. Michael was called; he marched in to Fred’s office and showed the original reciept for the rent that he had prepaid, asking, ‘Why would I get the rent paid corruptly if it is already paid from my pocket? My accusers are tribally prejudiced.’ Thus, collapse of the stout party, who had no choice but to resign and return to his law firm.
This is somewhat a convoluted tale but I have presented it to give a flavor of the trickiness that characterises the deep end of the political swimming pool in an African country.You dont even need sharks to keep the adrenalin flowing. Next please.( The story recounted here is the version he personally told me ‘ there are others the reader may have heard.)
An extract from Adventures in Zambian Politics: A story in black and white by Guy Scott. Pages 99 to 100.
Follow: Robbinson Mazyombwe Jr
Economy with the whole truth is on display. The naked truth is that unlike Chiluba, Sata openly said and believed that the presidency was or should be a monopoly of what he called ‘big tribes’. This was said so repeatedly by Sata that anyone who followed the news in those days should be aware.
Sata equally had a loud mouth…..infact his was louder in my opinion.
Sata strongly believed that there was a political underclass in Zambia from where no president should emerge and that Mwanawasa belonged to it. This was something he believed in so strongly that not even of a lifetime of membership of the Catholic Church could not change him. But as we all know, he was to change in the end when the object of his hatred’s intervention saved him from certain death when he authorised his medical evacuation. So touched was Sata that when he was elected president, he made sure Mwanawasa’s name was remembered by naming a number of public institutions after him. The lesson from this is that surprises or the unexpected do happen but as humans we are not programmed to make an allowance for them. We continue to think we know better.
