Most people who followed media debates involving the 11 presidential candidates ahead of the January 20, 2015 by-election must have been impressed by youthful aspirant Elias Chipimo’s depth of understanding of complex issues and ability to offer credible alternative ways and means of resolving some of them if voted into office.
The youngest among the group, the National Restoration Party (NAREP) leader showed beyond reasonable doubt that he has truly inherited his father’s brilliance and pragmatic approach to tackling sophisticated domestic and global issues.
To demonstrate the seriousness he attaches to issues of national importance, young Chipimo announced that although his father had died in South Africa from cancer that had metastasized into most parts of the body, he would not withdraw from the presidential race, which had been arranged to find a suitable candidate to replace former President Michael Sata who died in October last year.
He explained that contrary to rumours by his detractors, he would not back off but run on because that is what his father would have wanted him to do: complete the race – and, if possible, win so he could help ‘restore’ Zambia’s lost glory.
A former Zambian High commissioner to London, Standard Bank chairman, educationist and permanent secretary, Mr Chipimo Snr was among the country’s best educated and articulate civil servants who included luminaries like former Bank of Zambia (BoZ) governor Valentine Musakanya, John Mwanakatwe (minister of education)  Mark Chona and James Mapoma (both presidential advisors).
In the mid-1960s he and former Evelyn Hone College British lecturer,  Timothy Holmes, co-authored an O’ Level English Language textbook titled, Zambia, the Land and the People, a Ministry of Education- recommended book for use in secondary schools and other institutions of higher learning.
But I believe Mr Chipimo, a frank and gifted orator, too, will probably be remembered mostly for the controversial speeches he gave, first at a UNIP party conference at Mulungushi Rock of Authority in Kabwe in 1976; and secondly at a special Law Society of Zambia function held at Ndola’s Savoy Hotel in 1980.
When asked to address UNIP delegates at the Mulungushi conference, Mr Chipimo, as Standard Bank of Zambia top boss, sent shockwaves when he said: “Money does not grow on trees like some human beings, at least some of you do, anyway.”
President Kaunda had anchored his socialist policies on the philosophy of Humanism, but without mentioning him by name, Mr Chipimo had another shock coming for his listeners who had converged on the Mulungushi Rock of Authority – the place from where KK had announced his famous 1968 Mulungushi Economic Reforms – when he declared: “Some of you claim to have brought Humanism in this country. (But) Humanism was here even before you came.”
And admonishing presidents and the ruling elite in emerging democracies, not only in Africa but across the globe against the folly of overstaying their welcome (by clinging on to power), the former diplomat seemed to have angered President Kaunda and UNIP central committee big wigs back in Lusaka.
He told a hushed audience of lawyers and judges at the Savoy event what anybody would have said at a time when Africa was in a state of flux:
“It is a numbing experience that successive presidents all over the Third World tend to end with a bullet in their head. Isn’t there something wrong somewhere if beneath apparent calm and submission, a sergeant rises and bumps off the head of a president to an immediate popular acclaim?
“Where is there going to be order if only change in leadership is to be by death in the saddle; and especially by death by an assassin’s bullet? It does behove us all citizens of the Third World, and of Africa in particular, to review our policy of single-party constitutions in order to re-introduce flexible mechanisms in politics that may allow change back-and-forth more peacefully than experience has shown so far. Military regimes come largely only because more regular modes of changing the situation have ceased up.”
Although Mr Chipimo was not the first Zambian to speak out on the introduction of a one-party constitution in Zambia and the banning of other parties like Simon Kapwepwe’s United Peoples Progressive Party (UPP) and Nalumino Mundia’s United Party (UP), President Kaunda was furious.  It was quite obvious the Zambian leader had gotten the wrong end of the stick – he had completely misinterpreted Mr Chipimo’s analysis of political events worldwide.
Why did he react that way?
Military coups had been the order of the day in the early days of independence in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in West Africa. In Nigerian, for instance, there were a series of coups and counter coups that ultimately led to the creation of a breakaway state called Biafra led by Ibo secessionist leader, General Odumegwu Ojukwu.
In neighbouring Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, who had led the former Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957, was over thrown by the military and had to flee into exile.
Nearer home in East Africa, Uganda’s Milton Obote, for example, was similarly deposed by General Idi Amin Dada, the worst despot ever, and was forced to seek refuge in Zambia. Former Emperor Haille Salasie of Ethiopia was ousted from power and killed while military strongman Mengistu, who took over, was also forced to flee Addis Ababa to seek sanctuary in President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
The chaos and traumatizing events that had ensued in the former Belgian Congo (Zaire now Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1960 after independence hero Patrice Lumumba was killed in cold blood by Moise Tshombe’s Katangese rebels, were still fresh in most people’s minds both in Africa and elsewhere. Rebel Rhodesian and apartheid South African troops had also stepped up their military incursions and sorties into Zambian territory, destroying the infrastructure and killing innocent civilians.
Against this backdrop, KK, who had been at the helm since independence in 1964 and had declared Zambia a one-party state in 1973 (as one way of taming dissenting comrades within his own ruling UNIP) found Mr Chipimo’s wise counsel, unpalatable.
Reacting to Mr Chipimo’s sentiments in a story published in the National Mirror, a religious publication which was later proscribed, Dr Kaunda roared:
“I would like to tell Chipimo to go back to his old self. Why have you changed? Why are you using the little Mirror? The Mirror won’t save you. It is just a small church newspaper.”
According to Chisala (The Downfall of President Kaunda), by challenging the Standard Bank headquarters in the London to “dissociate itself from Chipimo’s statement”, the President put Chipimo in a position where he was obliged to resign.
On November 20, 1989 former Minister of Home Affairs and Commander of the Zambia National Defence Force (ZNDF) General Kingsley Chinkuli summoned the editor of Icengelo (glow), the sister paper of the Mirror, Father Umberto Davoli to his office to explain the contents of articles which had been published. The paper was accused by the State of ‘inciting Zambians to overthrow the government’.
In its deliberate move to control the media, a few years later, UNIP took over the Times of Zambia, Sunday Times of Zambia and the Zambia Daily Mail newspapers. Because government had run out of money its provincial vernacular newspapers died a natural death. Regrettably too, the two popular and private newspaper groups – Times/Printpack and Zambia Printing Company are now a pale shadow of their former selves, financially.
After the UNIP takeover, the former Lonrho-owned Times Newspapers Zambia Limited, with Mr Tom Mtine as chairman, is now in a sorry state. Why did they take over? Workers still go unpaid for months and there are no signs that it will ever return to profitability without a massive bailout by some private investor.
Former employees, including yours truly, have never been paid their terminal benefits for the past 25 years. But for how long can they wait? Many have in the process died without receiving their entitlements.
These are some of the injustices the late Elias Chipimo Senior condemned and sought to rectify and for which he, like Nelson Mandela, was prepared to die. He was a democrat per excellence who hated autocracy and unfair scales. He certainly helped trigger Zambia’s second revolution that led to the re-introduction of multiparty democracy in 1991.
Mr Chipimo’s body was repatriated from Johannesburg on Thursday and will be buried with military honour in Lusaka on Monday. MHSRIP.
As for his son, Elias Chipimo Jnr, the NAREP president may not have performed well in the January 20, 2015 presidential by-election, but he has demonstrated that he possesses much potential that the in-coming President cannot afford to ignore.  He must find a way of tapping into his brilliant ideas to add value to Zambia’s fledging democracy and enhance economic performance as the nation embarks on the next 50-year odyssey.
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Zambia would remain one of the few countries in the region without exchange
controls, thus making Zambia a “very attractive investment destination” with
foreign direct investment of US$5 billion pledged in the first nine months of the year.
I have deliberately quoted Mr Chikwanda’s Budget speech verbatim to show the reader and the nation at large the enormity of the task that lies ahead for the incoming President.
The common man, the voter, wants to elect a president who will tackle bread and butter issues that concern the people from all corners of Zambia – not his or her district or province only. Zambians are not interested in political rhetoric, which says too much conveys nothing. Zambians are looking for a trusted service-deliverer and unifier.
So who will become Zambia’s sixth Republican president after  Kenneth Kaunda (1964-1991), Dr Frederick Titus Jacob Chiluba (1991-2001),  Levy Mwanawasa (2001-2008), Rupiah Banda (2008-2011) and Mr Sata (2011-2014)?
Comments: Please send email to: alfredmulenga777@gmail.com