IT is very embarrassing to learn that Zambia is slowly sinking into ignorance since even the so-called learned and professional legal experts have failed to interpret a simple thing like the Referendum, but instead opted to mislead the public that the people voted NO to the Referendum.
Worse still, it is a pity that partisan civil society leaders, legal practitioners and even burnt-out politicians have chosen to pretend that there has been nothing happening in Namwala.
Instead, they have chosen to attack the Government media for exposing the wrongs in our peaceful and co-existent Mother Zambia. Unless one is saying that the public media made up the pictures of displaced people at Namwala Secondary School or that those at the school do not belong to other tribes not found in the area, we challenge anybody disputing our report to come clean.
If nothing happened, why did the UPND leadership led by Hakainde Hichilema’s elder brother  Oberty Malomba  decide to take food to the
secondary school where these displaced people are, who even scampered for safety, fearing that they would be attacked again? Was the food taken by the UNPD delegation meant for pupils at Namwala Secondary School since schools are on holiday? Let us not pretend to be ignorant by trivialising the matter which is real.
We must condemn wrong doings irrespective of who is involved and our affiliations. A wrong is a wrong. Zambians are peaceful people and that is what we should propagate.
It is also a pity that the so-called learned colleagues do not understand  the term ‘ethnic cleansing’  as defined by the United Nations, but try to hide under the pretext of being the good guys and partisanly shield those committing the crime.
We do not want to waste time on a straight forward issue, as doing so will just bring fresh memories. We are for ‘One Zambia One Nation’.
They say where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.
But to confirm what we have always pointed out, the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) is now too polarised to be called an association since it is more of a political body.
The association has wrongly accused us of being used by the Patriotic Front (PF) and of fueling ethnic violence since it can’t define a simple term like ‘ethnic cleansing’ which simply means the systematic
forced removal of ethnic or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous.
The forces applied may be various forms of forced migration (deportation, population transfer) intimidation, as well as mass murder and genocidal rape.
To the misinformed critics of our use of this term, we say they should not confine the term to mass murder or genocidal rape for ‘ethnic cleansing’ to apply.
As a media that has chronicled events happening in Southern Province, we earlier covered hate speeches and intimidation of non-UPND members long before the election results were announced.
To remind our legal friends, journalism, just like law, is governed by ethics and obligations since our job is to inform, educate and entertain.
Since we can’t speak for other media houses like the ZAMBIA DAILY MAil and the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) which, like us, carried the same story of ethnic cleansing, we did not mention the Tonga people in our story though we mentioned the UPND.
According to Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) president Lee Habasonda, the Government is “playing with fire”.
We feel it is people who are displacing others and media houses who are keeping silent who are ‘playing with fire.’
The Times of Zambia story came out as ‘Ethnic cleansing alert!’ to remind citizens of the displacement in Southern Province since we don’t want to be accused of not alerting the nation if the situation becomes more volatile since it is already serious.
We are also questioning Mutembo Nchito’s sister Sashi, who was speaking on behalf of LAZ using her marital name of Kateka instead of her surname.
There are issues here that Zambians need probing.
Our advice to our proud judicial Pharisees in Zambia is to re-examine their profession instead of treating other professionals like dunces.
Coming back to the Referendum, there has been a lot of conflicting statements regarding the failure of the Referendum with the so-called professionals confusing the masses.
Why is this so? As non-legal mortals, we have held our friends in gowns and wigs in high esteem.
Not anymore, since the current crop of legal professionals in Zambia is so politicised that they have abandoned their important role of interpreting the law to a common man in the street in preference to championing political party causes.
No wonder most of our lawyers are just money hunters and chancers who have confused Zambians on simple things like the Constitution.
For their information, many Zambians hold them in low esteem and it is time the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) cleaned up the profession, which has become the most immoral career.
It is embarrassing that the learned lawyers can fail to interpret the new Constitution and have, instead, opted to mislead the nation by deliberately giving conflicting interpretations of the law.
We could have brought out serious anomalies concerning the Constitution, but the matter is in court and we do not want to prejudice the proceedings. What we are saying, however, is that stop misleading
the public for personal reasons.
If anything, Zambian lawyers must be indicted to the International Criminal Court of Justice in The  Hague for misleading Zambians and causing political violence.
Coming to the referendum, again legal experts have grossly misled the public, including short-sighted politicians, into believing that the referendum failed because people rejected it, hence there were more No votes than Yes votes.
We have professors of law who still say Zambians made a good decision to reject the referendum.
The question is: DID ZAMBIANS REJECT THE REFERENDUM? Again we challenge lawyers to explain to the people their interpretation of ‘reject.’
The truth is the referendum was not rejected, since it actually achieved overwhelming support from those who cast votes.
The YES votes were 71.1 per cent out of the valid votes cast and 55.35 per cent out of the total votes casts.
Is this rejecting the referendum?  May we please go back to school and learn simple mathematics!
The truth of the matter is that the Referendum could not reach the threshold of eligible voters, which is 50 per cent of the total eligible of 7.7 million.
However, the number of people who voted was less than 50 per cent of the required number of about 3.7 million.
So the referendum was not rejected but it did not reach the threshold, attributable to misinformation received by people in Western, Southern and North-Western provinces where the UPND campaigned against it as shown by the low votes experienced in these provinces.
Remember BREXIT.