KBF threatens to join active politics
By Staff Reporter
Lusaka lawyer Kelvin Bwalya Fube has threatened to hang up his legal boots and join active politics.
Addressing journalists in Lusaka on Thursday, Fube who is popularly known as KBF, declared that he had graduated from what he called the Michael Sata university of politics.
Fube was also announcing that he would launch his new book titled: Zambia Must Prosper – Actualising Zambia’s prayer for prosperity.
“Some of us walked and we were educated in a university called Sata. Now we are ready, we have graduated. We are going to push the agenda of development first because when you feed a person, you can talk to him. We have nurses [but] you can’t even post them. We have teachers waiting for two years to be posted, you have infrastructure in the rural areas standing for three years unfinished. There is something wrong with this narrative!” he lamented.
“In politics, you start and you finish. That’s how you will be judged. I’m now going to start being a full back – I’m not striking because there are no goals to score. I will be defending the Zambian people and that will be my voice until I see progress in this country. I will remain a voice for the voiceless.”
Fube who said he had been on the side lines for too long, vowed to speak for the voiceless.
He likened good leadership to beauty which could always be seen from afar.
“The good Book, the Bible, tells us in Proverbs 18 verse 21 that the power of life and death is in the tongue. The psychology of the mindset can never change or be changed with silence. Allegiance must never be without principle! I will state that it is a very sad state of affairs for a man to die too well known by his friends and his peers but not knowing himself,” Fube said.
“The difference between appeasement and surrender is a matter of time…. I cannot change myself unless I begin to affect the environment within which I live. It [leadership] is hard to define but you know it when you see. Leadership is like a beautiful song – you only hear the voice and you will know it. Leadership is like love; when you feel it, you know it. Each one of us have heard of the word Gethsemane, the garden of Gethsemane, but how many of us have bothered to inquire what Gethsemane means? Gethsemane simply means a place of pressing or a place of crushing. I have been through my Gethsemane.”
Fube said he and many other citizens had been crushed in various ways, a situation that was not good for the country.
“Each one of us has been pressed economically, financially, politically and otherwise. But the truth is this, this book, Zambia Must Prosper, is about Zambia as a country. [It] is about asking questions and interrogating that it is going to be business as usual in the political sphere, in the economic sphere, in the social sphere and in our spiritual lives,” he said.
He encouraged people to participate in the politics of their country.
Fube said when citizens discussed their country’s affairs openly it was a mark of democracy.
“We are a democratic State and must be seen to be a democratic State and behave as such. My book, Zambia Must Prosper, will be handed to organisations of the press so that you can read and thereafter, you can ask questions. In Zambia we should avoid backward mistake repeating methods that do not work in our politics and in our economic dispensation,” Fube said. “You should ensure unity of purpose every time as a nation. We must not fight against each other and we must not expose fake, artificial differences that make no meaning and do not help the common man. We must hold dear and true our similarities; as black people we belong to tribes [but] this should not divide us but bring us together to learn and enjoy each other’s differences.”
And Fube has lamented the poor state of the economy, saying it was not giving hope to any citizen.
He has since vowed to criticise the government whenever it goes wrong on certain decisions.
“I’m not going to be afraid to speak up and criticise where I think things have gone wrong and where they have gone right, I will praise. I’m a very pragmatic person and I want to be pragmatic when I enter into my politics. We should stop being a begging nation,” he prodded.
“If you read the statistics at the IMF, read the statistics being reported about us in Africa Confidential and other economic magazines, you will be frightened! Let’s give hope to the next generation. As we stand here, this nation is bleeding, this nation is economically sick. It requires us to unite and be patriots and say ‘we need answers in this nation’.”
About his book, Fube said: “This book is about patriotism or the lack of it, it is about challenging the family, the Church, our traditional leaders, our business leaders and our politicians to look into themselves and take answers and suggestions that I have made in the book so that we all live in a fruitful Zambia. This book discusses patriotism, this book is about asking who is a patriot, who is a good leader is, who a real businessman is. For example, in Parliament, I ask you; when was the last time you heard our House agree on something other than the [national] budget? When? When motions are placed on the floor of Parliament, they affect the nation – not the Patriotic Front, not UPND, not FDD, not NAREP but the Zambians. When motions are placed in Parliament, they are of a national character. Our leaders in Parliament must learn that we must begin to agree on Zambia. Politically, not everything that comes from PF, not everything that comes from UPND is wrong, not everything that comes from FDD or NAREP is wrong.”
