President Lungu President Lungu

DURING this year’s commemoration of Africa Freedom Day, Zambian President Edgar Lungu made an important revelation, on which every patriotic Zambian should reflect seriously.

The President said during the investiture ceremony at State House on Thursday he is aware that some former colonial masters want to regroup and take over the leadership of Africa.

It is no longer a secret that powerful neo-colonial interests are after Africa’s largely untapped natural resources.

The former colonisers are aware that if they come directly, the patriotic citizens of the African countries they want to take over will fight them with everything at their disposal.

They are therefore using unpatriotic and weak-minded citizens and groupings as fronts under the guise of promoting democracy.

Anyone who has closely watched African politics must have observed what is now becoming a pattern; from the north down to the southernmost part of the resource-rich continent.

The former colonial masters have ramped up their quest to install puppet governments in countries that have demonstrated some level of resistance to foreign manipulation and have independently-minded leaders.

Zambia has not escaped the attention of these negative forces because of her investor-friendly economic policies and political stability.

There have been thinly veiled attempts by some former colonial masters to pressure the government to violate and forego the country’s own legal and administrative processes and procedures for the benefit of their surrogates.

Fortunately, like many other African peers, the Zambian government is aware of the scheme and is ready to fend off the assault on its sovereignty.

President Lungu said on Thursday as long as he remains President, he will not allow Zambia to fall back into the hands of colonialists through their local puppets.

We warn citizens and organisations who have teamed up with foreigners in the most undignified and unpatriotic fashion to tarnish Zambia’s image that their scheme will not work.

Each country has its own way of governing itself and how to regulate the conduct of its citizens.

That is why the colonialists who have teamed up with powerful capitalist interests to influence the political direction of their former colonies are just wasting their time and resources.

Africa is a wiser continent today than it was during the years it groaned under the yoke of colonialism.

We warn the former colonial masters that Zambia and other African countries are not ready to give away their sovereignty under the guise of democracy.

Their citizens are not the same as the freedom fighters who drove the colonisers out and forced them to relinquish stolen power.

They are more sophisticated because of the advancement in technology and improved communication systems.

We urge citizens of African countries to be vigilant and remain united against the attempts to introduce and subject them to a new, subtle form of colonialism hiding behind the mask of democracy.

We agree with the quotes of two of Africa’s departed heroes.

Former President of Tanzania Julius Nyerere had this to say:

“Unity will not make us rich, but it can make it difficult for Africa and the African peoples to be disregarded and humiliated. My generation led Africa to political freedom.

“The current generation of leaders and peoples of Africa must pick up the flickering torch of African freedom…”

President Nyerere was echoing another hero of Africa’s independence and unity, Kwame Nkrumah, who led his people to freedom in 1957 and ruled that great country, Ghana, for 10 years.

“It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems, and that this can only be found in African unity.’’

It is with this spirit President Lungu took aim at those former colonial masters who want to take over leadership using their proxies.

This editorial was published in the Zambia Daily Mail after the deportation of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane on Africa Day as he attempted to galvanise opposition parties in Zambia to press for the release of opposition United Party for National Development leader Hakainde Hichilema who was arrested on treason charges.