By Staff Reporter<\/p>\n
Minister of lands Jean Kapata and chiefs affairs minister Vincent Mwale today rolled on the ground and knelt down respectively, as they apologized to Chieftaincy \u00a0Nkomesha Mukamambo II of the Soli people\u00a0 for\u00a0 invading her traditional land in headman Chitumbo\u2019s area in Chongwe.<\/p>\n
Kapata who appeared subdued by the chieftaincy\u2019s emotional narration of the turn of events, said she was sorry that her Surveyor General Joseph Minango did not consult her before moving into her area for the surveying activities.<\/p>\n
Speaking during a meeting at the chieftaincy\u2019s \u00a0palace in Chongwe \u00a0today, the Minister, who was accompanied by \u00a0Mwale and the Lusaka Province Minister Bowman Lusambo said the intention of the surveyor \u00a0was not to alienate her subjects but rather serve their interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to determine Chiefdom boundaries by carrying out the survey so that we can know where traditional land begins and ends. I am sorry I didn\u2019t inform you in advance of what our mission was in your area. I am equally sorry that I couldn\u2019t write to you directly to intervene in sorting out this issue but through your Ministry of Local government and Chief\u2019s affairs. We are not giving title on traditional land but state land so that people can be empowered to acquire loans and other benefits through the same document,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Minister promised the traditional leaders that the government was not going to \u2018touch\u2019 traditional land country wide in its quest to put idle state land on title.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are aware as government that 90% of the land in Zambia belongs to traditional leaders and only 10% belongs to the state. Therefore, when we are carrying out the national survey we are concentrating on state land so that Zambians\u2019 are empowered and government can earn some money through the issuance of title deeds.<\/p>\n
And Mwale said the government was encouraged by the response of the chieftaincy to accommodate them despite the mistake they made through the surveying exercise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are so grateful your royal highness for hearing our plea and allowing us to collect the confiscated equipment after we made a mistake by moving into the area without informing the chiefdom. I\u2019am so grateful \u00a0for giving us this chance. You are a parent indeed and we are inspired,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And chieftaincy\u2019s Nkomesyha said she was humbled by the Minister\u2019s gesture in exhibiting remorse \u00a0after their colleague Lusaka Minister Bowman Lusambo showed\u00a0 lack of respect by earlier challenging her concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am catholic and so are you (Kapata). Mumbi Phiri is also Catholic and we get along very well so you are forgiven. I am not against government but against wrong actions. For me I work with the government of the day. I kept the equipment from May this year because I was not being given satisfactory answers of why surveyors where found in the area illegally and carrying firearms. My chiefdom decided to keep the equipment until you people came to iron out this case. \u201dshe said.<\/p>\n
chieftaincy\u2019s Nkomesha said she refused to have the meeting held in Lusaka when the Lusaka province Minister asked her to go to Lusaka with eight of her headmen because this was not going to be representative of the 355 headmen \u00a0that she serves.<\/p>\n
The chieftaincy confiscated G.P.S survey equipment in May when she found \u2018intruders\u2019 surveying her chiefdom \u00a0without consent. The equipment is one of the three worth US$60,000 each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Staff Reporter Minister of lands Jean Kapata and chiefs affairs minister Vincent Mwale today rolled on the ground and knelt down respectively, as they apologized to Chieftaincy \u00a0Nkomesha Mukamambo II of the Soli people\u00a0 for\u00a0 invading her traditional land in headman Chitumbo\u2019s area in Chongwe. Kapata who appeared subdued by the chieftaincy\u2019s emotional narration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7316,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314\/revisions\/7316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}