By AUSTIN KALUBA –

THE American saying that states that when the going gets tough, the tough get going should apply now since the disorderliness in Zambia calls for harsh measures.
Let’s face it – things are not the way they used to be in the country, something that calls for stringent measures to ensure law and order prevails.
Politically and socially, there are some elements that want to take the law into their own hands.
Thus, the deployment of soldiers on the streets of Lusaka to enhance policing is welcome.
Xenophobic sentiments that have birthed banditry and the penchant for some politicians to incite riotous behaviour all call for stiffening of that good legislation – the Public Order Act to ensure the enviable image of Zambia being a haven of peace is upheld.
Our democracy is clearly under siege since some politicians are allergic to the much-mouthed and much-written-about word.
As the Bible in 2 Peter 2:22 says, some of our politicians are not different from a dog that returns to its vomit or a washed pig that returns to the mud.
We wonder if the politicians who want to come to power would tolerate a Zambia where lawlessness and the law of the jungle reign.
Didn’t our own founding father Dr Kenneth Kaunda, who with his acolytes noisily condemned the Public Order Act, then call the Public Order Ordinance during the struggle for independence?
However, when the nationalists came to power, they realised that the Act was good, changing it to the Public Order Act in 1967 with massive surgery of clauses to enable leaders govern with minimal dissent.
The confusion pertaining in our country calls for deploying of our uniformed friends from the barracks who should help the Lilayi Boys and Girls to maintain order.
According to the Macmillan English Dictionary, if a place or an organisation is going to the dogs, it is not as good as it used to be in the past.
The origin of this expression is believed to be in ancient China where dogs, by tradition, were not permitted within the walls of cities.
Consequently, stray dogs roamed the areas outside the city walls and lived off the rubbish thrown out of the city by its inhabitants.
Criminals and social outcasts were often expelled from cities and were sent to live among the rubbish – and the dogs.
Such people were said to have “gone to the dogs”, both literally in that that was where they were now to be found, and metaphorically in the sense that their lives had taken a distinct turn for the worse.
We won’t allow our beautiful country to “go to the dogs” or stray dogs to bark freely without risking being shot.