Former UPND member and NDC mayoral candidate in the just ended elections Saboi Imboela has given a chilling account of some members of her former party.
Imboela’s sister found herself on the end of verbal and violent attacks by some UPND supporters.
Below is her full posting:
UPND SHOULD CONTROL ITS VIOLENT CADRES
The United Party for National Development, UPND, should control its violent cadres and discipline them when they attack other members of the party especially women. I was horrified yesterday at the behaviour of about 8 cadres in the company of Chitanga and Brian Mulenga who followed my young sister home and verbally assaulted her in all ways possible. They threatened to beat her up and told her never to go to the UPND Secretariat and that if she did they would beat her up and strip her naked. The insults they hurled at her were very demeaning and scary.
The Gender Based Violence my young sister experienced yesterday is a very common thing in the UPND and I urge the party to discipline the 8 cadres who attacked my sister yesterday or we shall take the matter up as a family and let the law take its course. Contain your violence within the party if that is your accepted behaviour and do not follow people to their homes otherwise we shall not accept that lying down. There is now a school at the former family house where my sister was attacked from and they exposed this violence to the children who were nearby and all the neighbours and passers-by who watched the incident in horror.
Remmy was jailed for 9 months just a few weeks ago for physically assaulting Mbozi and while Mbozi sought to solve this matter internally you supported a man who assaulted her instead of supporting the woman that was physically attacked. The law now took its course and no one should blame the woman for protecting herself when you the party failed to protect her. I know how cadres like Brian Mulenga verbally attack anyone who fails to give them money on a particular day regardless of how many times you give them money in a particular week. And sadly, it is women that he normally targets for that abuse. I was a victim of that abuse when I was a member of the UPND and as usual you failed to protect me and the answer was ‘that is how he is’. Women should be protected from these violent cadres in the party and not turning your usual blind eye to the violence that your own members are facing from such hooligans. Moving forward, I would like to give the party only this week to discipline the violent cadres who attacked my sister yesterday failure to which we shall do so as a family. My sister is not NDC as the cadres are alleging and she has to be respected for her opinions and contributions within the party of her choice UPND. Politics, like religion, is not something that everyone follows just because the next person has done so.
Personal conviction is what leads people to make decisions and not just because a family member has taken a certain stance. What information can my sister be getting from UPND to give me- ‘how to lose elections several times?’ Besides, my work and roles in the UPND exposed me to sensitive information that my sister does not even know. I know more about the UPND than my sister does and my belonging to another party should not make my family members be labelled as suspicious characters in the party.
I still have a lot of friends and family members in UPND and those that joined NDC have done so openly and proudly, so respect them for their choice to be with the party of their choice. I am very disappointed and appalled by what happened yesterday and it is my sincere hope that the party takes this up urgently and deals with it accordingly. To me, violence is not a private but public matter, especially that it was done in a very public manner like that. So let all the perpetrators of this violence be brought to book in your party disciplinary systems, if at all any, failure to which we shall rely on the laws of the land to protect us.
*Saboi Imboela*
*Gender Activist and sister to the victim
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