Zambia’s Chiluba’
Anthony Kunda in Lusaka
THE Zambian government is portraying a meeting between former president Kenneth Kaunda and South Africa’s Minister of Defence Joe Modise as a plot for armed insurrection.
President Frederick Chiluba’s deputies told Zambian journalists this week that the meeting – at Johannesburg’s FNB stadium earlier this month when Zambia’s national football team played Bafana Bafana – also involved South African arms manufacturer Armscor.
Security forces were now investigating, Zambia’s second vice-president Michael Sata said.
The findings of the probe would lead to the arrest of Kaunda, who leads the opposition United National Independence Party (Unip), and fellow opposition politicians Liberal Progressive Front chair Rodger Chongwe, as well as Zambia Democratic Congress president Dean Mung’omba.
All would face treason charges, Sata said.
“We are aware Kaunda is training mercenaries to destabilise Zambia,” Sata added. “Kaunda and Unip have dangerous plans of plunging the country into turmoil and conflict.”
Kaunda’s aides and the South African high commission in Lusaka confirmed the meeting, but denied Armscor was involved.
The high commission said there was “nothing sinister … because the two were old friends during the struggle against apartheid. Modise used to stay in Lusaka.” Modise’s office dismissed the allegations of arms-supplying as “complete rubbish”.
The claims come amid an increasingly over- the-top battle between Chiluba and those who want him out – one that includes an often farcical court hearing into Chiluba’s nationality.
Kaunda remained unfazed this week, though high treason does carry a death penality.
“The police can come and arrest me anytime they want,” he said. “I have always been a peaceful man and I will die a peaceful man,” Kaunda said.