UPND Media Team; Where are you?

President Hakainde Hichilema inherited a government that was clearly fraught with problems and challenges: a stagnant and suffocating economy; uncertainty in the mining sector, with some investors considering exiting the industry; a large number of retirees being owed wages; parliamentary employees being severely delayed in their salaries; increasing pressure from deserving young people; restless university students being deprived of scholarships and meal allowances; police brutality; party cadres being accustomed to violence against so-called opponents and illegally collecting taxes from markets and bus stations; a make-or-break proposition for the former businessman and rancher-turned-politician.

Just a few months into office, President Hichilema changed the narrative and set the country on a different path!

Under normal circumstances, the United Party would have been the first to reach the top of the mountain, like its predecessors, boasting about these milestones while doing its best to explain how the United Party government intends to deal with other challenges such as the high cost of living and the energy crisis. But it is shocking that the United Party remains in a “coma”.

Politics is all about perception; the more silent you are, the more the public will think the ruling party is not doing its job. The more you speak, the more people will start to believe you and be patient with you!

At least the Minister of Information and Media, Cornelius Mweetwa, and his able permanent secretary, Thabo Kawana, are doing their best to defend the government and explain its policies.

But where is the UPND media team? This of course has left many people, including this writer, gnashing their teeth and scratching their heads, wondering if the UPND media team still exists when the New Dawn government is under siege and being fiercely attacked from all sides by a desperate opposition eager to oust it from power!

Back in 2022, Laura Miti, executive director of the Alliance for Community Action (ACA) and a commissioner of the Human Rights Commission, told Newsdiggers newspaper: “The UPND government has done a terrible job of explaining to Zambians what is really going on. They are also not good at talking to the public. So if you look at the last government and this one, they are way behind.”

Influential British blogger Barrah Musamba Chama, also known as the “Iron Lady,” recently took to social media to vent her frustrations.

“How do we raise resources to run an efficient parallel media team? Any good ideas? Inbox… We need to take it seriously… The other camp has invested a lot of money,” she wondered.

Elderly Hamwiinde Munamunungu, a retired army colonel who also served as a regional governor in the United Independence Party (UNIP) regime, perhaps expressed it more succinctly when he shared the following insight on his Facebook page: “Political struggles need strong media teams to be won, and these teams need to be professional and sometimes well paid. When you study many successful cases of political institutions around the world in the past, you will find that the media teams were professional, efficient, well coordinated and paid full time. This is a must because volunteers are no longer needed. In the struggle for national independence, volunteers were useful.”

He went on to explain that in the early 1960s, the United National Independence Party ran the Zambia News newspaper in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, spreading the good news of our independence struggle. The editors included a professionally trained journalist, Sikota Wina, and several other journalists.

“The RPF has a strong propaganda campaign and publicity machinery and in most cases its staff are well paid. Remember the aggressive attitude of the Honourable Sunday Chanda and his deputy Antonio Mwanza,” he continued.

He found that there were too many time lags between messaging or most of the time responses were not received in time unless Mark Simuwe or Trevor Mwiinde and his boss Gilbert Liswaniso stepped in promptly to fend off the attack or rectify the problem.

The media corps may be exhausted after years of hard work. As is usually the case after a successful liberation struggle, now may be a good time to look for other government positions in the media corps and replace them with fresh blood.

Prince Bill M. Kapinga
Politics/Society