Post editor Fred M’membe should have long learnt by now that sometimes it is better to go easy on hatred. What has he not called UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema in his crusade to discredit him?
Has he not called him a tribalist at every opportunity? Has he not always insisted that Hichilema is not a wealthy man but has overvalued himself?
Notwithstanding that his puppet in State House President Michael Sata has posed before cameras to the whole nation questioning where Hichilema had amassed the wealth attached to his name. Did not President Sata release all the bank details of Hichilema?
Now even his facebook page is a subject of a full editorial in the formerly independent Post Newspaper. You can imagine M’membe ordered Sata to create a facebook page to compare with how many likes Hichilema had. Is that not childish?
Not only did he end at that but also in his feel good mode opened a Post Newspapers facebook account just to soothe his ego and say they have more likes than long established and more popular online publications.
So in his adult brain everything is about a contest, about who has many likes. Has anyone ever seen any comment beneath any Post Newspaper story on their website even when the comment thread is not locked?
It could seem that M’membe chokes with envy that the online media has emerged as the media of choice for the majority of Zambians while the few that still buy his paper have better use of it in the lavatory.
Does M’membe ever listen to himself as he churns out the chaff he does these days. In any case what does he know about online journalism when after borrowing billions of dollars to feed his fantasy of running an Internet Service Provider the egoistic PF cadre embarrassingly failed that even his own newsroom had to outsource internet.
If he were humble enough to learn the doctrines of successful businesses he may not have built that white elephant that stands tall in the Post Newspapers premises.
Did not he not run down a seemingly viable airline due to his wishy washy attitude with his friend Mutembo Nchito? Did not the idea of running a haulage company christened the Post Courier emanate from the success shown by pioneers like Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba?
So rather than vilify Hichilema sir you are better off learning from his sharp business acumen and maybe you will regain bits of your lost respectability. Maybe dear brethren you can like his page and make him feel better!
We shudder to imagine the litany of articles that would have been published by M’membe if Hichilema had a history of divorces or a series of failed marriages like the self-styled moralists at the Post.
We shudder to imagine what sort of coverage Hichilema’s children would have received if they rebelled against him or smoked chamba (dagga) like those of the Post editor.
We shudder to imagine what sort of coverage Hichilema would have received if he had an affair with any of his employees like the Post editor. We indeed shudder to imagine what sort of coverage if Hichilema had impregnated a teenage UNZA girl and abandoned her like The Post editor.
But Hichilema in so many respects is above board and even as human as he maybe has lived a relatively blameless life of a role model. He is in public to a larger extent what he is in private. By any measure, he is not M’membe’s match in several aspects of life. Yet this is what M’membe fails to admit that is why his menu in those editorials is based on trash below.
Note M’membe’s newspaper sales are around or less than 50, 000 copies countrywide and compared that to the hundreds of likes and the number of visitors online publications receive.
Here is another of his useless editorials:
HH and facts
By Editor
Tue 04 Mar. 2014, 14:00 CAT [526 Reads, 0 Comment(s)]
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In the war between falsehood and truth, falsehood may win the first battle, but truth wins the war.
If we live truly, we shall truly live. Liars are never free. Honesty always lasts longest. A lie never lives to be old. It makes all the difference in the world whether we put truth in the first place or in the second place. As scarce as the truth is, the supply has always been in excess of demand. The truth is always the strongest argument. Truth exists; only lies are created.
We are saying all this in the light of some of the claims Hakainde Hichilema makes. In the run-up to the 2011 elections, Hakainde made a claim that no opposition political party, including his own UPND, could defeat the MMD on its own, alone. We challenged that as being wrong, as a lie. Hakainde used to accuse this newspaper and its editors of cheating Michael Sata that he was popular and could win on his own. Yes, we are on record stating that Michael and the Patriotic Front were better off on their own, without an alliance with Hakainde and his UPND. We are also on record saying that desirable and appealing to the general population as it may be, a pact between UPND and the Patriotic Front was not workable and was not beneficial to the Patriotic Front. Hakainde called us all sorts of names over this. But the elections of 2011 proved us right. Michael and the Patriotic Front won and Hakainde and UPND came out a distant third. They used to claim that they were in control of the Copperbelt and Lusaka. And they used to be very excited about Kanyama, where they used to hold their rallies. They thought they were in control of Kanyama. But they lost in Kanyama in 2011. These are people who seem not to know how to value themselves at their right worth, politically and otherwise. As we have stated before, everything about them is exaggerated. They try to make themselves bigger than they are. Politically, they have been doing that since 2006 and they are still not in government.
Even with the social media, when one listens to Hakainde bragging about social media, if one doesn’t know the truth, one would think they dominate the social media. This is not true.
Hakainde has been on Facebook since 2010. Initially, he was using a personal account and on July 10, 2011, Hakainde created a page. And to date, Hakainde has only a cumulative likes of 42,656. Compare this to Miles Sampa, the commerce deputy minister and Matero Patriotic Front member of parliament, who created a Facebook page on October 15, 2012 and has a cumulative likes of 44,161, beating Hakainde by 1,405 likes in a very short period of time. And Miles is just a deputy minister and a member of parliament while Hakainde is a president of a party, a Bantustan leader. Michael created a Facebook page on January 9, 2014 and today has a cumulative likes of 93,669 – that is 51,013 likes over that of Hakainde in such a very short time.
These are figures speaking. When Hakainde speaks about the social media, one would think he dominates it. But look at the figures! They say something totally different. But this is also what happens with election results. Before elections, when one listens to Hakainde’s noise, one would think he is winning, but when the results come, it is a different story. Again, the figures for election results are there to speak for themselves. You can look at Hakainde’s performance in the 2006, 2008 and 2011 elections and see how the figures speak for themselves.
Even Hakainde’s main Facebook agent, the Watchdog, isn’t doing as well as we are being made to believe. The Watchdog has been using a Facebook account since 2010 and they created a page in July 2013. The Watchdog’s cumulative likes amount to 136,210. Compare this with the Facebook page created by The Post on January 26 this year, just over a month ago and has 16,600 likes. During this period, the Watchdog has only increased its likes by close to 11,000. On the day The Post created its page, the Watchdog had 125,211 cumulative likes and today, it has 136,210 – a growth of 10,899 likes.
Where is the strategic advantage Hakainde is trying to claim from the social media?
Even platforms like Twitter, where Michael is not active, there isn’t much conversation put up by Hakainde and his Watchdog friends.
In 2011, there was no page for Michael, but the Patriotic Front supporting youth group organised under the banner of Zambian People’s Pact, had about 12,000 members. At that time, there were also UPND supporting groups like Change is Inevitable, which got 4,000 members. Again, where does the domination of the social media Hakainde is claiming lie? Again, truth exists; only lies and illusions are created. Truth needs no crutches. If it limps, it’s a lie. And Hakainde’s claims are limping. They say life is an uphill battle for a person who is not on the level.
Hakainde talks about the social media as though he owns it. Hakainde was on the social media in 2011 and lost the elections badly. And people who have just created their pages on Facebook are overtaking him so quickly. What does this mean to him, who seems to be so dependent on the social media?
When Hakainde makes a claim about anything, weigh it carefully before you rush to a conclusion or before you take it. He talks confidently but without facts. Hakainde assumes so many things and sometimes mistakes desires for reality. The only thing he is clear about is his tribe. There, he makes no mistake. But sometimes he mistakes the tribes of others. He also thinks that everyone is glued to tribe as he is. For Hakainde, everything starts with tribe and ends with tribe. Your tribe defines your relationship with him.
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