Maravi

We have no right to be ungrateful

We have no right to be ungrateful
Written by Editor

Friendship and support from friends is something which is a source of tremendous inspiration always and to everyone. It is said that those who are ready to join hands can overcome the greatest challenges. Chansa Kabwela and The Post have no right to be ungrateful for the support of Tamala Kambikambi and the Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group.

The stand taken by Tamala and the Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group establishes the understanding in us that in them we have friends, we have honest fighters against injustice who feel hurt because other people are hurt, who seek our success because they too seek the victory of justice over injustice. Let us keep our arms locked together so that we form a solid phalanx against injustice. By joining hands, we can overcome problems others think would forever haunt us.

We are conscious of our obligations to do whatever we can to contribute to the advancement of justice, fairness and humanness in our country. Tamala and her colleagues in the Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group have felt and recognised that our work advances the very principles on which their organisation is founded. It is truly a demonstration of the spirit of ubuntu, that profound African sense that we are human only through the humanity of other human beings – is not a parochial phenomenon, but has added something very valuable to our common search for a more just, fair and humane society.

The lies of Rupiah Banda about those pictures – we mean the pictures of that woman in labour who was left to give birth in the open and in the process lost her baby – and the half-truths cannot hide and should not hide the treachery of NGOCC and Women for Change in their complicity with Rupiah in his persecution of The Post.

We only hope NGOCC and Women for Change will learn that taking positions that do not strengthen an organisation can lead to a blind alley.

As Mahatma Gandhi has taught us, it is necessary to brave arrests or indeed imprisonment if truth and justice were to triumph over evil. We must never lose sight of the fact that the Gandhian philosophy may be a key to human survival in the 21st century. For us, a willingness to make sacrifices for a loftier purpose can be said to be the unwritten code of our journalism.

We welcome and highly appreciate the support of the Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group because no struggle can be waged effectively in isolation.

We don’t know what those treacherous women at NGOCC and Women for Change can now say in the light of Tamala and Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group’s gesture towards Chansa and The Post. Our communication with Tamala and the Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group has been much lower than that with NGOCC and Women for Change. But why has it been much easier for Tamala and the Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group to understand the goals Chansa and The Post were seeking in not publishing those pictures and in sending them to the Vice-President, the Minister of Health, the Secretary to the Cabinet , the Archbishop of Lusaka and to NGOCC and Women for Change themselves? The answer is there is no honest person who can fail to see the goals that Chansa and The Post were seeking because it was clearly stated in the letter that accompanied those pictures. It is easy to understand why Tamala and her colleagues joined in criticising us. It is simply because that letter and those pictures were not sent to them. And they were honest enough to admit that they were misled by the lies and half-truths that accompanied our being harangued by Rupiah, NGOCC and Women for Change. But later on, on their own, they discovered the truth. And because they were honest people, they changed their earlier position and apologised to Chansa and The Post. This is how honest and honourable people behave. NGOCC and Women for Change know the truth. But they are not able to publicly acknowledge it and apologise because their initial position was not driven by ignorance or by someone misleading them. It was not a product of oversight. They had taken a conscious decision to go for The Post by using lies and half-truths accompanied by a deliberate misrepresentation of facts. They tried to hide under the banner of defending the human rights of that woman whose pictures we had sent them. They accused us of violating her human rights. They totally ignored her life. Or rather they subordinated her life and that of her baby to that of her body. Which human rights activist doesn’t know that the highest human right is one’s right to life, that life is the most sacred thing? Chansa and The Post were much more concerned about the life of that woman and that baby who died whose story is yet to be fully told. We could have made a gigantic story out of it but we chose not to. We decided to deal with the matter quietly and we limited the issue to a few people who we thought were better placed to deal with the problem that was going on in the country. That woman is not the only one who gave birth in the open during that period. They were many around the country. But she was the only one whose pictures were brought to us.

Clearly, if there is any issue that has exposed the complicity, the vacillations and opportunism of the elements who control NGOCC and Women for Change, it is this issue. Now the nation fully knows who they are and what they stand for. Those who don’t understand who these elements truly are, we will help them to do so. In this way they will not be able to deceive any one anymore apart from those who want themselves deceived. Their bare faced malice against Chansa and The Post will be fully exposed when the trial of this matter starts. And after that, they will not be able to deceive anyone with their crowing about human rights. They have made their noise and in the end, the cries of the infant who dies because of lack of healthcare will penetrate the noises of our towns and its sealed windows to say: am I not human too!

As we have stated before, and confirmed by the Archbishop of Lusaka and Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group, among others, Chansa and The Post’s intention was not to humiliate that woman, to violate any of her human rights and of that baby who died in birth. We think Tamala articulated Chansa and The Post’s intentions very well when she said: “This issue the way we have seen it from the National Women’s Lobby Group is that Chansa Kabwela when she received those pictures, she felt for the women because that was at the height of the strike by the medical personnel. She did not publish them but sent them to a few selected eminent individuals and decision makers in this country. Chansa took those photographs to people who she believed would help to deal with the impasse and hence deal with the striking workers to come back and curb that problem that was seriously affecting women. So to us, we felt she was doing a noble job…So we just want to tell you that we will support the young lady because she felt for the women who were suffering and she felt that was a way in which she could agitate those who could make certain decisions. We know that there are colleagues who felt the means did not justify the end.”

As we have stated before, Chansa will always stand her ground, no one can move her to do wrong things. Chansa is a young lady of considerable ability destined to occupy a very important position in Zambian and world journalism. She is a woman of exceptional quality, dignity, very respectful, very warm, very kind to others. Chansa is a very gracious lady, highly intelligent and committed to worthy causes. It is ridiculous for anyone to accuse her of engaging in pornography or indecent things. Chansa was pursuing no other goal with those pictures other than the noblest of human sentiments, of solidarity with those in pain, in suffering. And no honest person can fail to recognise that. Rupiah and his friends at NGOCC and Women for Change have failed to see this because they are not being honest with themselves and others. But in this battle against injustice, there will be no quarter given anyone. We are going to call a spade a spade, and we are going to appeal to the honour of all our people. In the end, those who refuse to repudiate their lies and half-truths are going to self-correct, but in another way; yes, they are going to be smeared with their own offal. One thing we are sure of: in every human being, there is a high sense of shame. Those who try to humiliate and scandalise us with lies are not going to be allowed to get away with it. Throughout history, one sees men and women get arrested and go to jail, or die for honour, values they can hold dear. At The Post, we don’t teach our staff to disrespect the human rights and dignity of others. We teach them to respect the rights and dignity of others and to go beyond and defend them with everything they have when they are attacked; we inculcate in our staff, in our editors the best values from the human point of view, from the point of view of justice, fairness and humanness. We consider ourselves fortunate to have been aware that hatred and prejudice are not political weapons. They are political weapons and in addition, we have the experience to know that principles are the best possible political weapon.

What Chansa and The Post did can’t be done except on the basis of principles, on the basis of ideas, on the basis of ethics. It’s the only way. We believe in the human being, in his ability to acquire an ethics, a conscience, in his ability to make great sacrifices.

There is no great merit in having accumulated the experience that we have accumulated. If there is any merit, it is in the fact of being constant in our loyalty to ideas and principles, of not letting ourselves become all puffed up which is quite frequent among human beings. And of course vengeance – like the one we see from Rupiah – can find no place in our hearts. We can fight with all the determination and strength of will in the world, but we won’t do it out of hate for anyone.

Labels: CHANSA KABWELA, TAMALA KAMBIKAMBI, THE POST, ZNWLG

posted by MrK @ 6:44 PM