SUING MORGAN NG’ONA

By Nkula Kaoma

POLITICS like many other professions is a noble profession, like many other callings, it is at the centre of serving humanity. If all politicians practiced politics with integrity, honesty and decency our world would be far much a better place for all of us.

Sadly enough, politics mainly in Africa has become a lucrative business for those who are doing well and for those struggling to make ends meet.
It has become attractive for characters of all sorts. In our country today, criminality and thuggery is promoted, defended and tolerated in the name of politics.
Politics is no longer at the service of humanity; it has become a means of survival for many and a means to accumulate quick wealth. Part of the reasons there are civil wars in Congo DR and Sudan is the control of precious minerals found in abundance in these countries.

The Darfur region in western Sudan has rich gold deposits; military – politicians in government and in the opposition are fighting among other objectives to have control over this region.
In Eastern Congo DR, the raging civil war there is over the control of rare minerals and the war is being perpetrated by politicians.
It makes very interesting reading that renegade Patriotic Front MP Robert Chabinga’s secretary general Morgan N’gona has been sued over the nonpayment of K2 million in legal fees by Messrs Joseph Chirwa & Co. a legal firm that has been representing him and Chabinga over their fraudulent ascendancy to the PF leadership.
What is even more disturbing is N’gona’s boasting openly that he and his renegade colleagues have been enjoying State House support and that of President Hakainde Hichilema in particular for them to cause confusion in the country’s largest opposition political party, the PF.

N’gona’s assertions have been collaborated by Messrs Chirwa and Co. statement of claim that in July 2024, a Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security as well as a Special Assistant at State House had assured N’gona that the legal fees would be settled by government and that N’gona and his colleagues enjoy the support of State House and the President.
It is over a week now; there is no rebuttal from the government over these serious revelations – the same reaction when Chabinga’s infamous audio to bribe a South African Judge who was handling the President Edgar Lungu burial impasse was leaked.
On August, 9, 1974, then USA President Richard Nixon, a Republican, resigned amidst a Watergate scandal that occurred between 1972 and 1974. In this scandal, President Nixon secretly authorised the tapping of communications and conversations via a break-in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington DC.
The idea was for Nixon to have access to the strategies that the Democrats were working on to prepare for the primaries and Presidential campaigns leading to the 1976 general elections.
Through a tip from a mysterious source known as “Deep Throat” who was later revealed as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Associate Director, Mark Felt, two investigative journalists who worked for the Washington Post newspaper Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein carried out detailed investigations in the matter which culminated into Senate investigations as well.
Both the journalists’ and Senate’s investigations pointed to the involvement of President Nixon in the scandal and his attempts to cover it up known as the “smoking gun” was laid bare. In June 1972, President Nixon ordered his aide, the White House Chief of Staff Harry Halderman to stop the FBI’s investigations into the Democratic Party break-in citing national security concerns.
Unaware this conversation was on tape, President Nixon was shocked when Congress (Parliament) demanded that it be submitted as part of evidence and this tape provided crucial evidence that President Nixon was deeply involved in the scandal and was directly obstructing the ends of justice.

Both Republican and Democrat members of Congress resolved to impeach President Nixon over this scandal and to save face, he opted to resign.
The Watergate scandal provides us with valuable lessons as it relates to the N’gonagate one. It teaches us how institutions of governance are supposed to operate in a democracy and the sanctity of the oath to defend, protect and preserve the Constitution.
The FBI is a domestic crime investigative arm of government which falls under the Attorney General’s office (Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security) .It didn’t turn its probing eyes away and looked elsewhere when President Nixon hatched this criminal act of stealing his political opponents’ strategies aimed at winning the 1976 elections.
Bound by the oath to defend the Constitution, the FBI Associate Director (Deep Throat) leaked the scandal to the press; he didn’t keep quiet because the President was involved. After the Washington Post published stories on this scandal, the FBI and Congress (Parliament) started investigating the matter and evidence that President Nixon was deeply involved in this covert operation was collected.
In both the Water- and N’gona gate scandals, the crime committed by the two Presidents border on moral/integrity failure.
In the N’gonagate scandal, the President has stolen the whole of the largest opposition political party in broad day light and our law enforcement agencies are protecting the people that Government has used to stage this robbery. Not only are these people being protected by government security agencies, government promised to use tax payers’ money to settle legal fees and neutralise a personal political challenge for President Hichilema.
In the Watergate scandal, law enforcement agencies joined hands with the legislature (Congress) to fight moral deficiencies committed by a sitting President.
Here, the UPND legislators and the Judiciary applaud this criminality and there is nothing wrong, it is business as usual. The revelations by N’gona has officially ended denials by government and speculations by the general public that government has hijacked the Patriotic Front with the ultimate aim of wiping it off the face of the earth.

Miraculously, the party has refused to die; rather it is getting stronger and posing the greatest political challenge to the UPND party and government. This doesn’t in any way imply that we are PF sympathisers, nay. We are simply democrats who will stand by UPND or any other political party if any attempt will be made by the party that will form government next year to abduct any opposition political party in the manner the UPND has done to PF.
We fought for plural politics which thrives on the formation of numerous political parties as such; political parties should be left to die naturally like the late UNIP and MMD.
It is the failure by the duo (Chabinga and N’gona) to extinct the PF that has now attracted a backlash from State House and President Hichilema.
The promise to settle legal fees for the duo cannot be honoured for they have not delivered the corpse of PF; consequently, N’gona will have to bear and suffer the consequences.
In the feature after Chabinga’s audio went viral, we warned Chabinga to pause and reflect on the political games he was playing with State House and President Hichilema.
Gratitude is a very important virtue in life. In 2021, the leadership of PF chose Robert Chabinga from amongst several able applicants to be its Parliamentary candidate in Mafinga constituency.
Riding on the goodwill and resources of the PF, Chabinga was elected MP and raised from obscurity to prominence.
Today he calls himself PF president and leader of the opposition in Parliament but cannot explain how he got both positions. Is this how you show gratitude to a party that did so much for you? Early this year, the court ruled that Morgan N’gona is not PF secretary general, he nevertheless ignored this ruling and went for forum-shopping in Kabwe to procure an illegal injunction against the mainstream PF membership. Ngona now faces two major legal challenges, he needs to look for K2 million to settle legal fees and face the consequences of impersonation and contempt of court in the Kabwe High Court.

This is what happens to anyone whose only motivation in life is to make money regardless of how it is earned. This is what happens when greed and unbridled ambition takes centre-stage in one’s life.
Those MPs who were induced to vote for bill 7, should remember that they are under an oath before God to defend the Constitution, failing to uphold that oath has consequences.
Ownership of a stolen vehicle cannot be legitimised by changing its colour. This is what the UPND government has done with Bill 7. Removing some authoritarian amendments from Bill 7 doesn’t cure it from being a nullity. By the Constitutional Court ruling of June 27, 2025, bill 7 and its subsequent amendments remain null and void. We are however consoled that if the Constitutional Court fails to declare the amendments null and void, the first solemn duty of the in-coming government in August 2026 should be to restore the amended Articles to their original form through a judicial review or the Parliamentary reprocesses and thereafter start a constitutional process of amending the Constitution.
We cannot allow a situation where Bill 7 which is a nullity is enacted into law and maintain a Constitution which has fraudulent articles no matter how good they are for our country.
It will set an extremely bad precedent for constitutionalism, democracy, rule of law and separation of powers.
Several Standing Orders of Parliament were suspended so that Bill 7 could be rushed through and only 10 MPs (five from the opposition and five from the government bench) debated this controversial bill under the watchful eye of the partisan Speaker; anti-submissions by Prof. Cephas Lumina to the Select Committee were left out in the committee’s report; unprecedented in the Constitution making process in Zambia.
What of the Speaker dancing in celebration on the floor of the house still dressed in the Speaker’s robes? How can one celebrate their team’s victory if the referee is also celebrating each goal that their team scores? Our Parliament has been defiled, it needs cleansing.

In last Friday’s feature, we had warned President Hichilema that he shouldn’t celebrate national issues that have been settled his way rather he should be worried; worried because national reaction could be disastrous for him. In as far as bill 7 has gone through, did the President carry with him majority of the citizens/registered voters?
Tyranny doesn’t always come with armoured vehicles and AK 47 rifles; sometimes it comes with celebrations, hugs, applauses and silence in the face of injustices. To our dear MPs and all those who worked tirelessly to ensure that the 2/3 majority is attained in Parliament they should know that the law never forgets who abused it.