Some Patriotic Front (PF) cadres in Katuba constituency say they are boycotting upcoming election campaign programmes for the party’s candidate Moses Chilando because they are not benefiting from the cash handouts being lavished on voters by the ruling party.
The foot soldiers, who had been assigned to conduct door to door campaigns in the villages, said they were not motivated because the usual campaign funds were being diverted.
During a group interview, the cadres said the party had released enough resources to cater for the voters and cadres doing door to door work, but the money was disappearing mysteriously.
Some cadres interviewed said that ward and constituency officials should instead go and campaign for the PF candidate Moses Chilando who is fondly called ‘Big Moze’ because they were benefitting alone.
The cadres said they had been cheated enough and it was time to put their feet down.
It has become a normal practice among PF officials to recruit and use people and later dump them without any reasonable reward, they said.
“It is unfair from PF ward and constituency officials to deny us party funds which were released in order to fund the campaign workers like us,” said one cadre.
Bitwell Chanshinsha, one of the campaigners, said all PF operatives were aware that huge sums of cash were flowing into Katuba from party secretariat for party campaign programmes.
“We know there is money and a lot of it for party mobilisation here and there is also a lot of it for the people who are conducting the campaigns. Where are they taking this money and who is benefitting? We the foot soldiers feel betrayed and cheated that we cannot benefit from the cash. We are saying this because we see this money is bags and boxes when it comes,” he said.
Chanshinsha said the culture of cheating others must stop in the PF because it was not encouraging new members to join the party. He said the ‘donchi kubeba’ syndrome would consume the PF because every member who got into possession of resources would want to betray others.
“The donchi kubeba symbol is killing us here. Everyone wants to eat and run away from others. Here in Katuba, ward officials are sharing land and all the resources that come in their possession,” he said.
Another dissatisfied cadre, Chris Mwampatisha, said the foot soldiers who were conducting door to door campaigns were in some cases only given small amounts of money because their ward and constituency leaders pocketed all the normal salaries paid for this type of work.
“We are pretending to be campaigning. We go to the campaign regions and pretend to be doing work because we don’t want to be labelled as rebels and get disciplined for that. Deep down our hearts we know that we are not doing our work because it is someone else who is benefitting when we work. It is difficult to work for nothing nowadays, especially when we know money is there and it is not coming to us,” he said.
Mwampatisha said all PF members involved in the campaigns must benefit equally from the money being pumped into the bye-election.
He said it was the foot soldiers at the grass roots who conducted effective campaigns and not the party officials whose major pre-occupation was amassing wealth and looting resources.
“We want to show them that there are consequences when you cheat others,” he said.
Efforts to get a reaction from senior PF officials in Katuba failed by press time.
The Katuba parliamentary bye-election will be held on February 25, 2014. The bye-election was caused by the death of MMD Member of Parliament Dr Patrick Chikusu in 2013.
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