Kalaba opposes Biti’s deportation
By Staff Reporter
FORMER foreign affairs minister Harry Kalaba says the decision to deny Zimbabwean opposition leader Tendai Biti asylum was with impunity and a disregard for international protocols.
On Thursday, the government extradited Zimbabwe’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader, Biti who has been accused of inciting post-election violence to authorities in that country.
Sensing danger on his life, Biti came to Zambia on Wednesday to seek asylum but the Zambian government, in total disregard of a court order administered by the Lusaka High Court, handed over the former finance minister to Zimbabwean authorities on Thursday morning.
He has since been charged by a Zimbabwean court with inciting violence there.
On Wednesday, foreign affairs minister Joe Malanji, in an interview, said: “When you look at the grounds under which he (Biti) would want to look for asylum, they are not meritorious. So, basically we are just keeping him in safe custody and handing him over to the Zimbabwean authorities because he is going to answer charges in legitimate courts of law.”
But Kalaba, who is PF member of parliament, observed that the impunity and arrogance shown by the Zambian government on Biti’s issue was not right.
“We must know that Tendai Biti today might be in the opposition [but] tomorrow he might be in government. Let us know how to handle things – we don’t want a situation like it happened between president Sata and the Malawian government. The Malawian government, later on, had to come and apologise for the manner in which they treated a Zambian citizen. If Tendai Biti had come here to ask for political asylum, we should have looked at the merits and demerits of him coming here. But for us to aid the process to extradite Tendai Biti into Zimbabwe….,” Kalaba said in an interview.
On Malanji’s remarks that Biti’s reasons for seeking asylum were not meritorious, Kalaba, who resigned as foreign affairs minister in January, noted that one could not “rubbish political asylum like that at face value!”
“Tendai Biti has not gone mad to just come and seek political asylum here [and] for him to have come, there should have been a reason. We have seen him having challenges before; we saw him working with the late Morgan Tsvangirai and he never came to Zambia to ask for asylum. So, for him to come now means there is a substantive reason and to bundle him out is not…. What the Zambian government should have done was not to hand him over but to tell him that ‘we can’t keep you here, go to Angola or to the DRC or any neighbouring SADC member,’” he explained.
Kalaba emphasised that the manner the government had handled Biti was “extremely unfortunate.”
“I know that Tendai Biti has not gone mad for him to [aimlessly] come to Zambia today when he never came here in the past. So, the Zambian authorities should have taken time to study the merits and demerits. Sometimes there can be pressure from a fellow country to have a citizen extradited. But it is important to resist that temptation because Zambia is guided by various SADC protocols which we can’t abandon because one’s friend in another country wants somebody to be extradited. We shouldn’t be doing that, especially that we are taking up the peace and security [chairmanship] within the framework of the SADC organ Troika,” he said.
“We should be careful in the way we handle these issues because the SADC region will lose confidence in us. They will think that Zambia is one-sided. Never should we ever be seen to be one-sided. We shouldn’t do that!”
Earlier in the day, Kalaba lamented, on Choma’s Byta FM radio programme, Hot Potato, lack of industries in the area.
He reiterated that those in the government were “in front with the Chinese enjoying while poor citizens are following.”
“I can’t see any industry in Choma which can make even a T-shirt! Where does the cotton which our farmers grow go? It is sad! It’s all politics and our people have remained in perpetual poverty. So, when all is said and done, ordinary Zambians are escorting politicians to riches. In this country, every day the politician is winning and the ordinary person is everyday losing,” Kalaba complained.
He pointed out that the 2021 general elections would not be about individuals but that they would be about the past versus the future.
Meanwhile, Kalaba who was accompanied by Zambia’s former Ambassador to Egypt, Cecil Holmes, underscored that Zambia had been destroyed by politics of tribalism.
