Mwamba Penn II wrote
Dr Christine Kaseba played a vital role in funding PF through her consultancy business yet in PF she was just known as a wife to Mr Sata who had happened to be a medical doctor at UTH.
She at times spent sleepless nights working with Anthony Kasolo and Winter Kabimba to curtail MMD’s legal attempts to stop Mr Sata from standing.
She rarely seeks publicity and even when she is misunderstood, you won’t see her defend herself.
Dr Pius Kasolo was also critical in mobilizing resources from his companies in South Africa.
The late Kennedy Sakeni and Mark Mushili were very instrumental in their respective areas of domain. But if there is a person I saw give to the party so much money at once, it was Charles Chimumbwa. There was a time he spent about K1.5 billion of his own money in a single week.
Be that as it may, we were on a campaign trail for a long time. The resources from GBM, Willy Nsanda and Fred M’membe were reserved for critical program. We needed money for adverts. After making a lot of inquiries, we were told by some entities that MMD had bought airtime without giving them enough content. So they gave us some space and MMD didn’t even notice. MMD actually paid for some of PF’s adverts in 2011.
For me, the 2011 elections were won on the basis of personal sacrifice coupled with great ideas. For instance, PS Elias Kamanga was sent to establish structures in North Western Province with no funding at all. The same was demanded of Hon Chabi, the one who beat Davies Mwila in 2016.
Once Sata recognized your grassroots political skills, he called you and gave you an assignment without a cheque. If he gave you money then he never had confidence in you and your ability to work things out on your own. I don’t know how many miles Wallace Kalungu did throughout the country. He is one of those people PF has failed to recognize or honor for his efforts.
All in all, the initial PF never attracted people who were just there to eat. The original cadres believed in Mr Sata’s ideas and his ability to transform the country. After seeing MMD’s spend so much money in 2011, George M. Chellah was concerned and asked Sata if PF had a chance and his response was “ba George, I have been in this game longer than all of you here.
When you see a Government in power spend so much money in a by election let alone in a general election, that is an indication that they are on their way out. All I need now is a simple message to the people and be consistent with it.
When I go off tune, give me an indication on the stage.” That is how we sat and coined a message from the 2011 to 2016 manifesto that we thought was applicable to every Zambian. If you listened to his rallies throughout the country, he spoke about the same things.
His greatest gift was his ability to connect with the people and since Zambia’s geography was at his finger tips, all he did was to contextualize his message that is why many people didn’t realise that he actually spoke about the same issues everywhere.
