My husband is now more resolved – Mutinta Hichilema
From left, GBM’s wife with Mutinta Hichilema the wife of UPND preaident
Hichilema in red waves at supporters
Mutinta Hichilema the wife of UPND preaident Hakainde Hichilema who is in prison facing treason charge has charged that her husband is now more resolved in his career to serve the country than ever before.
In a statement below to thank the Church for organising national prayers for the freedom and good health of her husband, Mutinta says Hichilema will not be broken by being imprisoned.
Mutinta says Hichilema is hard, is a shepard boy by nature able to stand difficulties in order to serve humanity. She says the jailers will not kill her husband.
Below is the statement in full:
On behalf of my husband my family, and indeed on my own behalf, I wish to sincerely thank the Church for organising the prayer meeting to intercede for the peace and reconciliation of this Nation,where I had the privilege of being invited to attend.
I equally wish to thank all those that found time from their busy schedule, to take part in these intercessory prayers for our great Nation.
It’s now more than a month since the day my husband, I and my family were awakened in the middle of the night,by the noises of what sounded like earth moving equipment, breaking through the security gates and the doors of our residence.
As typical of my husband, his immediate priority amidst so much horrifying noises and confusion, was to seek for the safety of myself, my children and other occupants of the house.
As we huddled together in the safe room that had been fire bombed with foul smelling gases, my husband comforted us with prayer of gratitude and praise to God, and assured us that we were under the protection of the Almighty and that “it is well”.
As the night was wearing out and the raid intensifying, our faith in God was also getting stronger and our conviction of His word was becoming more and more profound and deeper.
Fellow Zambians, after that brutal military raid of my family and the detention of my husband, I have ironically sensed so much sympathy for those masked men armed to the teeth, that assaulted our dignity as a family and as human beings.
As a mother and a woman, I sympathised with those men that took breaks from their raid to help themselves with food and drink in our house.This kind of behaviour and action by those that sought to humiliate us, reminded me of how much work as a woman and a mother we have, in shaping this Nation.
The brutality and hate my husband has been subjected to has made him more resolved and more convinced of how urgent it is to love, to unify, to forgive and to offer one to service and obedience to God and to our Country.
It has also made him realise how love can conquer hate and that injustice can be overcome by the will to be free and to speak freely.
My husband’s jailers may have succeeded in restricting him physically, but they will never succeed in killing and restricting his spirit and his will to live and be of service to his family and to humanity.
They may have succeeded in making him lie on cold floors with dog and human excreta, but whilst he physically lies in that filthy cell, his spirit to fight habitates in his heart, and not in a jail cell. It also lives in millions of other Zambians that cherish and value justice, love freedom and hunger for dignity.
They may have succeeded in teargassing him a dozen times, but his will to seek for justice is a flame that cannot be extinguished by teargas or water cannons, because it burns eternally in his being, and in his soul.
By nature my husband is a shepherd boy. His spirit is that of a wonderer in valleys, rolling hills and forests, seeking pasture and water for his flock. It’s a spirit you cannot jail in a prison cell, it’s a spirit you cannot dock in court, neither can it be soiled in human excreta, because it’s a free spirit to live freely and to be of service to fellow men and to the Almighty God.
Finally, I once again wish to thank all of you that came to be with us in solidarity and prayer. I further extend my sincere gratitude to all Zambians at home and in the diaspora for their messages of support and their actions to lobby for the freeing of my husband.
I thank the Church for their demand for justice and fair play in the treatment of my husband and thank also our traditional leaders from all across the Republic.
I also thank the ordinary people in our townships and in far flung areas of our Nation that continue to flood us with messages of love and solidarity.
I wish also to thank foreign organisations and the International community and individuals that continue to demand for justice and immediate release of my husband and all political prisoners in various jails across the Country, some of who have been in jail without trial for a long time.
I wish to state that the recent death of a matriarch like mama Salome Kapwepwe, only goes to remind all of us women, that our founding fathers and mothers are thinning out in numbers. It’s a signal for all of us to take the baton and run the race. If we don’t do that with urgency, we will lose the freedoms their husbands and compatriots fought for, from colonial bondage. And we will have ourselves to blame. May she rest in peace.
Deutronomy 31:8-9 reads and I quote:
“The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged”.
I wish to once more extend my sincere gratitude to the Church for having organised the prayer meeting and to all those that attended.
May God bless you and may He bless the people of Zambia, and indeed, the Republic.
MRS MUTINTA HICHILEMA
Wife to UPND President Hakainde Hichilema