GUNTILA MULEYA’S DEATH COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED

Morning reflection: July 29, 2024

ONE of the reasons the fight against corruption is seemingly an academic exercise in futility while general service delivery is embroiled in endless hiccups is leaving people with questionable characters and loyalty to continue running sensitive institutions.

It is therefore not surprising that while President Hakainde Hichilema has continued to preach about mindset change towards work especially in the civil service, very little has been achieved and that is why from time to time, he has personally policed ministries and Government departments to get things done.

All this is because of allowing Patriotic Front (PF) affiliates to run the show and the result is either physical harm to HH’s lieutenants who want to see a better Zambia as the case was with Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) Director General, Guntila Muleya who was murdered in cold blood or general frustrations in their discharge of duty because most of the people holding most sensitive institutions are those “ubomba mwibala alya mwibala” schooled elements and this is why we are seeing a general degeneration in service delivery in this country.

Take the case of Guntila for example; the police officers alleged to have carried out this heinous offence are all products of the ruthless PF regime. For them, maintaining law and order and protecting lives and property seem to be secondary. Theirs is to kill for their own benefit and this is explained by the police brutality we witnessed under PF.

We all know that under the PF, most of the recruitments were only known when police officers passed out and tribalism and nepotism was the order of the day. Even if you were qualified for training, as long as there was no one to put in a word for you, it would take the intervention of the heavens for you to be considered.

Also, appointments to any position in the civil service or quasi Government institutions were on party lines. This was religiously done in accordance with Article 3 the PF Constitution on public institutions which clearly states:

“The party shall ensure that all the public institutions, state-owned enterprises and popular mass and similar organizations are led by persons who are members of the party and who are uncompromisingly committed to the achievements of the party.”

These are the people that have created a huge problem in the UPND Government today because while they have been left to continue presiding over the affairs of the country using their positions, most of them have not changed from their “uncompromising commitment to the achievements of the PF” and these are the ones with the luxury of frustrating the UPND Government.

We are not in any way championing the purge in the civil service because we understand that institutional memory is paramount to the overall achievement of any system but why are the people who have refused to change and have continued being partisan given the leeway to continue messing up things?

At least by now we know that one of the accused cops, if not all of them, was trained under the PF regime and is closely associated with the PF and if you asked all the senior police officers he worked under or those who know him, they will tell you that the chap was uncontrollable. He had no respect for anyone; junior or senior; and all this arrogance stemmed from his deep-rooted links to the PF.

As a matter of fact, from training, he went straight to CID, ahead of those senior to him. At Chelstone police, they could not contain him. He was then moved to Emmasdale police where he continued with his truant behavior before he was promoted to PIO.

For the sake of those who do not know, officers under the PIO are among the most feared within their ranks and files. Even their superiors fear them because their role is to document and give reports on the conduct of police officers. Surely, how would you leave such a disaster in such a critical office, with all this background?

Unfortunately, these are the thugs running the show and because of this, today, Guntila is no more. The biggest crime he committed was to heed the President’s call to weed out corruption but he was alone. Most of the people at IBA were inherited from the PF.

These were the people whose hearts and souls are corrupt to the core and seeing a newcomer trying to mess up their plans, they ganged up against him and today, Guntila’s children are fatherless; his wife, a widow. The entire family has lost a pillar and this is because of inertia to act by the current Government; entertaining serpents thinking they would change into doves.

No wonder the PF even have the luxury of saying they have their people in the system. It is these same overzealous individuals who can kill for anything which they always boast about and this is why those opposed to Guntila found it easy to eliminate him using the very people that should have protected him under normal circumstances. 

To those who hatched the idea, it was easy to gang up because Guntila was not part of them in their eyes. He was a stumbling block to their thievery and so, they needed to get rid of him quickly if they were to continue looting national coffers with impunity and because they are all coming from the get-rich-by-all-means regime, they easily executed their plan using the same thugs PF left in the system and these are the same thugs the PF will use in their quest to have Edgar Lungu return to power.

Crime is on the increase in Zambia and we do not need to look further than the rotten PF cadres of cops which the UPND Government has decided to keep in high offices. Today, it is Guntila, tomorrow it may be someone else. It may not be physical harm as the case was with Guntila. It may be a denial of service or a political portrayal that the UPND has failed and all this will be orchestrated by the same serpents the UPND thinks can turn into doves overnight.

Guntila’s death has pained all well-meaning Zambians but truth remains that it could have been prevented had the PF not been allowed to run the show and like Martin Luther King Jr. once said, in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.