Hakainde Hichilema - Zambian Opposition Leader HARDtalk

Half past for in the morning here in

London. Is time for hard to talk. --

time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk. Over the past

25 years, Zambia has been a positive

example of stable, relatively free

and democratic governance in Africa.

But that cherished status has been

jeopardised of late. The country has

seen a disputed election, political

violence, a state of emergency and

the imprisonment of my guest today

um the opposition leader at two. He

was freed last August but still

refuses to accept village in a sea

of last year's election. If -- is he

destabilising Zambia?

Hakainde Hichilema, welcome to

HARDtalk. Thank you for having me.

It is a pleasure. Not least because

you are now a free man. This summer

you spend over three months in

prison but you were released and you

are out. Is it now time to build

fences with your political enemies,

in particular, the president, Edgar

Lungu?

First, I am glad to be out.

Nobody should be in prison,

especially when you are not

imprisoned for committing a crime.

So it is nice to be out of prison. I

am grateful to all those who did

something. Now all of branch? I

think it is time to fix the broken

pieces of democracy in my country.

That is how I define it.

Let's talk

about the incident that got you into

prison. Many people around the world

will find it quite bizarre. You were

in the west of your country on the

road with your team. A convoy when

the presidential convoy, motorcade,

came through on the same road. You

and your team refused to pull over

and got out of the way. Which, of

course, is expected when a president

passes through. Why? Actually, that

is not what it was. His motorcade

was behind us. We were ahead of him.

He overtook not just my vehicles but

100 other vehicles. It is a little

bit of said she said she said

Storey. There are two versions.

Let's stick with what the police

chief said. He said that it has been

established that the opposition

leader disobeyed police orders and

thereby put the life of the head of

state in danger.

Absolutely not

true. If that was the case, how is

it that other road users were not

arrested for treason? Exactly the

same conditions when his motorcade

passed several hundreds of other

vehicles.

A couple of days later

there was a raid on your home and

you are grabbed, your family, it

seems, was quite upset by what they

saw. You were hauled off to prison

and a few days you are held in

solitary confinement. This is not

pleasant. No-one could say this was

a pleasant experience. The bottom

line is you were treated with

respect, you ultimately freed after

just over three months in captivity.

Four months.

And a charge of treason

that was originally put against you

was dropped. Why have you made such

a fuss about what happened?

First,

Stephen, I should never have been

arrested. I and five others should

never have been arrested because we

did not commit any treason.

We have

gone into that. Can we now discuss

what this overall incident tells us

about Zambia today? As I say, in

some countries you may still be

languishing in prison. The is after

a degree of intervention from the

outside including from the Secretary

General of the Commonwealth and a

degree of compromise, let's put it

that way, you emerged from prison

and now you are free man who has

travelled to London to conduct

political work. What is the message

of all of this, do you think?

The

message is that we need to clean up

our democratic credentials. The

situation in Zambia should never

allow the citizens to be brutally

arrested and detained eight days in

solitary confinement, 120 days in

total, in prison under the grading

and inhuman conditions.

Be specific.

What are you accusing the prison

authorities doing?

Firstly, the

manner in which I was arrested was

unacceptable to begin the place I

have been arrested over ten times

since 2011 and all of these ten

times, all I received was a police

callout and I presented myself to

the police. They should have done

the same here. That should not be

allowed to happen to anyone,

including to those who treated us in

that manner.

The serious allegation

of yours of brutal treatment in

prison. What is your evidence of

that?

First this house was swamped

by over 300 heavily armed policeman.

They broke the entrance to the yard,

they broke the house down. Then in

eight days in solitary confinement I

could not see anybody. I was in a

room with no electricity nor water

Nora toilet. Literally how can you

put someone in a dark room for eight

days? For what? On the eighth day I

was taken from that location and

moved to an ordinary prison. There

is a court ruling. That is what

took. There is evidence.

Given your

treatment, would you say that you

emerged from your detention fearful,

or intimidated in a sense in a way

that you were not before?

I am not

intimidated, Stephen. May be the

intention was to break me down. That

I am not broken because we

understood and we expected that the

government like the one we have

could do things like this. The

writing was on the wall. But we made

stronger and I said before and I say

it again.

Interestingly you say you

emerged stronger but you also

emerged making noises about

conciliation. As I said, you saw the

Secretary General of the

Commonwealth who was instrumental in

your relief and after your release

you said, and I quote you directly,

it is our collective duty to bring

unity to our country. We cannot run

a country like this. We are

currently so divided. So you saw the

wisdom thereof collective action,

presumably dialogue, to unify the

country. You still feel that way

today?

Absolutely. And my message

was in reference to specific things

that need to be fixed, that need to

be corrected, so that we do not

continue with a negative situation.

We can talk about that.

We will. But

I would like to go through this

forensically. Is it not time for you

to drop your insistence that the

President is illegitimate and the

election fraud if you wish to unite

the country?

You could see that. The

constitutional rank of disputing

elections, which is via an electoral

petition must be respected. So the

rule of law with regard to the

remedies that are viable to

anybody...

As I understand it, the

Constitutional Court looked at your

argument and threw it out.

Not at

all. That is the irony. Petition has

still not yet been turned -- heard.

I know it has been before a court.

So you have had your day in court

and the court chose not to take up

your petition.

No, no. The basic

constitutional provision under the

Bill of Rights is that every citizen

in a group of citizens who feel

aggrieved about anything have a

right to go to court and the court

has an obligation to hear their

matter, not to just admit the

concerned to hear it.

The court took

the decision to throw out your

petition. The bottom line is,

surely, under most circumstances the

international norm is that

governments around the world take a

view as to whether an election is

deemed to be fair and reasonable and

legitimate or not. The clear

collective view in the case of

Zambia is that the election of 2016

was regarded as acceptable. The

United States of America

congratulated Edgar Lungu on his

re-election saying it was a clear

manifesto of the will of the UK

people. The UK High Commissioner

sent a message this year on the

Queen's Birthday, calling on respect

for the head of state. A clear

signal that the UK respects the

position of Edgar Lungu. The

president of South Africa

accordingly invited him to South

Africa in a sign of his belief in

the credibility of that election.

You could say so and maybe you could

be heard and heard loudly. If what

you say was not challenged by the

Kenyan institutional court ruling

over the last election. At the

current issues going on but just

before. It included and discredited

comments from the international

community. What matters is to follow

the rule of law to ensure that the

petitioners had, not just submitted.

That is important. And, remember the

former Secretary of State, John

Kerry, needed an apology because

similar issues where it our issue

should be heard by the

Constitutional Court. And then all

issues would have been resolved

squarely.

You accuse Edgar Lungu and

his ruling party of a series of

fraudulent actions concerning the

election. The truth is, your own

party has a record that is highly

questionable. For example,

inflammatory rhetoric. This is

before the election of last year

when Geoffrey Wamba told a crowd of

people that he would go for the

throat of the President. What kind

of language is that?

If you followed

the campaign and looked at people

flowing from one side to the

other,...

You, for example, you said

that Edgar Lungu wanted to kill you.

Of course. The way the man -- the

manner in which I was arrested and

detained...

With respect, if he

wanted to kill you he could have.

But he did not. There is absolutely

no evidence that his intent was to

kill you. My point is this. You came

out of prison saying you wanted to

work for national unity. National

unity means getting away from this

inflammatory rhetoric.

National

unity means restoring the rule of

law. In all respects, whether the

law in question, you know, favours a

particular group, it does not

matter. In a case like our petition,

Article 104, our petition in the

case once a petition is submitted,

just submitted, it then needs to be

transferred to the Speaker.

As the

leader of the United party for

national development have a duty to

follow the law just as the President

does. Explain to me how the

discovery of 21 of your young party

workers training in a gym with the

weapons including machetes and live

ammunition, how does that represent

you following the law?

Steven, that matter is in court. I

think the ruling will be absolute,

and I can assure you, you may

swallow back those words after the

ruling in court. Accusations and

trumped-up charges is how things are

in Zambia. It kind of negativity is

not what we need for this country.

Did you tell your supporters to burn

down the city marketing Lusaka?

Absolutely not. That is why today

there is nobody convicted on our

side of earning the market.

The

president said it was a clear side

-- clear act of sabotage designed to

hurt him and his government.

It was

framing a strong opposition, like

us, tuque justify the invocation of

article 31 in our constitution,

which is the threat of emergency.

Stephen, you cannot have a fire at

5:30am, and by 6am, you go to the

scene and say it was UPN members who

burned the market. Where is the

investigation? It was never done,

which is why nobody was convicted

for it.

Do you feel yourself to be a

true democrat?

Absolutely,

absolutely.

Do you think Zambian

democracy is in grave danger today?

It is in grave danger.

Would you say

you are partly responsible for that?

I think many players are partially

responsible. That is why would be

looked -- we would like to be part

of the resolution of this

negativity. We are very much

committed to that. As a keep saying,

human rights must be respected. We

have lost that at the moment. The

rule of law must be respected. We

have lost that at the moment. We

need to stop the political violence,

which is becoming the order of the

day in our country.

OK, but I feel

that in a sense, we are skirting

around the same issue again and

again. If you are serious in what

you say, wanting to save Zambian

democracy, if you want to sit down

with your opponents and find a way

through this crisis, then surely the

first thing you have to do is accept

the legitimacy of the President.

Vicars before you do that, how can

he possibly sit down with you? --

because the fore. -- before.

Any

dialogue must be aimed it with

preconditions.

Surely that is the

most basic precondition of all?

I

have already answered the

question...

You have just said it,

but it doesn't make much sense.

Why

not?

Here is a president who is

accepted by the international

community as the legitimate leader

of your country. If you, as the

Leader of the Opposition, want to

sit down and have a dialogue with

him to work through some of the

political problems that are so

manifesting your country today,

surely you have to accept his

legitimacy?

Stephen, I have already

said before, there is no legal

obligation in our statutes,

anywhere, for what you are asking me

to do. Secondly, we have a petition

still in the course of law, alive

and active before the courts, so how

could anybody make a comment like

that?

Remind me. Is it a four-year

or a five-year term?

Five years.

So

you are telling me that these -- vat

for the foreseeable future, possibly

for a five-year term, you are going

to refuse to accept your country has

a legitimate president?

That is not

what I'm saying. I am saying that if

our presidential petition, which is

before the courts of law, and you

can verify that yourself, is dealt

with, there in lies the issue of

recognition. It is a no-brainer.

Why

do you think you have lost five

elections?

One, you can say that,

but...

Answer the question. Why do

you think so? Zambia is held up by

Africans as an example of a state

that has embraced democracy.

Relative freedom, it isn't perfect,

we know that you have problems with

the media and other elements of

repression. But mentally it has been

fairly free and fairly democratic

for a generation. -- Bhatt

ultimately. -- but. You have had a

chance to run for the top office of

your country and you have repeatedly

lost. Why?

That is what we are

challenging in the courts.

Every

time you have run for office, you

are in fairly beaten? Every vote was

rigged, was it?

This is the first

time I have gone to the courts. Why?

Because of the manner in which the

election was managed, the electoral

process, which lacks transparency.

It lacks, if you like, integrity.

That is why we are asking for a

replacement of the Electoral

Commission, to be replaced with a

truly independent Electoral

Commission, as is the case in

neighbouring countries, like South

Africa. The issue here, Stephen, is

really, to turn your question

around, why didn't we petition

before? Why did we petition this

time? It is because there were

issues on the ground. And we tested

our argument by petitioning

parliamentary seats in an area which

we thought was flawed, Lusaka. Two

of them, the elections have been

nullified. Two Parliamentary seats

in Lusaka. That is a fact.

Let me

put this to you. You are somewhat

more preoccupied with self-interest

than the national interest. If you

were serious about working with the

government to try to solve some of

Zambia's problems, you might be more

focused on some of the stunning and

alarming statistics in your country.

Life expectancy for men, 49 years,

for women, 50 years. Endemic

poverty. Poverty rates which are

truly stunning, and which are going

to get worse because the population

of 13 million or 14 million could be

50 million x 2050, and as we have

heard most recently, on the former

Nigerian President, population

explosion in Africa is perhaps the

biggest problem Africa faces of all

of them. And yet you are obsessed

with your own fight with President

Lungu over the last election. Can't

you focus on what really matters?

I

really think it is not a question of

this or that. It is a question of

all of the things you are seeing are

important. -- saving. Because in

order to basically support the

country's population, take it out of

poverty, provide education, health

and clean water, all of those issues

are connected to the quality of

leadership. Quality of leadership in

a democracy comes through in

actions. And that is where the

competition for office, in order to

do the things you are saying, which

I totally agree with, that is where

it lies. It is not this or that.

A

recent Economist article looked at

your economic policies and the

government's and concluded both of

them are not addressing Zambia's

real issues, which is the

overreliance on mining, the copper

industry in particular, the massive

amounts of money spent every year on

subsidies for fuel and basic

staples. Your economy is broken. You

have, let me check, you have the

third hungriest population in the

world, according to the Global Under

Index. -- Hunger. These are problems

which neither your party nor the

President's are capable of

addressing.

Now you are getting to

the real issues, which affect the

people daily. This is one of the

issues at the top of our agenda.

Governance. Governance that will

ensure we reduce the endemic

corruption that we see today in the

country, which basically sits in

many areas, procurement of loans,

today you have a country, Zambia,

which is procuring expensive loans

at 9.5% Eurobonds, instead of

procuring loans from multilateral

organisations. 0% interest. That is

the question. Why would a leadership

which is riddled with poverty

amongst its population go and

procure loans which are more

expensive than cheaper loans? It is

because of corruption.

And you think

you can fix the problems of Zambia?

A zero tolerance of corruption.

Will

you run again in the next scheduled

residential election in 2021? --

presidential election?

The question

is, are we going to have free and

fair and credible elections in 2021?

Is it your intention to run?

We can

do that if we reform the electoral

process. Everybody is free to run,

including myself.

Finally, much of

this interview has been about your

relationship with President Lungu.

According to one technical

interpretation of the constitution,

he cannot run again in 2021, because

he has all ready run twice. He says

that he can run again, it is he says

his first election was a result of

the death of the sitting president

and he was in the power for one year

before the next election came along.

So he thinks he can run. Do you

agree?

It is not a question of

whether I agree not. It is another

example of the importance of

respecting the rule of law. The

constitution shows clearly what

constitutes two terms. It is very

clear.

So can he run again, or not?

If we follow the Constitutional

provisions, and that is the way it

should be...

So what is the answer?

In your view...

It is not my view.

It is a legal provision, and the

matter is in the Constitutional

Court at the moment, as we speak. I

think that decision will be made if

the judges follow the Constitutional

provisions, which is what we want

them to do. They will make a

determination as to whether he can

run or not and that determination

must be respected. That's it.

Hakainde Hichilema, we must end its

there. Thank you for being on

HARDtalk.

Thank you.