‘STOP BEING USED AS TOOLS OF VIOLENCE’

DO not trade your lives with the ambitions of selfish politicians who care less even when you die championing their causes, the Youth in Action for Sustainable Development (YASD) has said. Speaking to the Daily Nation yesterday, YASD executive director, Zebedy Lukwesa, said the bloodbath that characterised the Kaoma by-election in which one person was killed and other injured, must be a lesson to the youths that violence did not pay. Mr. Lukwesa said while youths from political parties were dying like rats due to political violence, those sending them to the battle fields never stepped out to face the opponents with missiles and that their children were never victims of the violence they were prescribing. He said young people must desist from being used by politicians to propagate political violence in 2021. He said the youth should learn from past elections where politicians used them to maim each other during and dump later them soon as they were elected. He said the only people who could stop the scourge were the youth themselves by rejecting politicians who were agitating for violence at the expense of spelling out what they would do for Zambians once elected. “Instead of being used as tools for violence, youths must demand for empowerment in the country’s political arena by contesting at various levels so that they fully participated in the country’s democracy as opposed to being used as ladders for older politicians to win elections,” Mr Lukwesa said. “As we move closer to 2021, it is prudent to preach peace and not violence among political party members. The country has seen enough tension and political brutality hence the need to protect the peace that the country is known for. The Kaoma bloodbath must be a turning point,” he said. He said his organisation understood that stakes were already high as political parties were gearing up for the 2021 elections and that some political party leaders were already scheming on how they will intimidate and annihilate their opponents using violence. “Our appeal to youths is that they should never fall prey to such politicians,” he said.