ARE CHIPIMO'S SHOES TOO BIG FOR STEVE?

PROMINENT Zambian businessman and proprietor of MUVI Television Stephen Nyirenda successfully inherited leadership of the National Restoration Party (NAREP) last week.

NAREP was established in March 2010 by Elias Chipimo Jr.  Chipimo was the party's presidential candidate in the 2011 general elections, finishing fifth in a field of ten candidates with 0.4% of the vote. In the National Assembly elections the party received 0.2% of the vote and failed to win a seat.

Chipimo proved to be a formidable, eloquent and youthful politician coming on the scene with a western style issue based politics with a clear manifesto proposing radical socio-political and economic reforms with innovative ideas around environmental management and energy.

In his short political career, Chipimo was heavily criticized for not actively engaging with the masses particularly the youth in high density areas and those in rural areas thus denying the critical voting masses a chance to interrogate his ideas and give him support. This is believed to have constrained the growth of NAREP as it was viewed as an elitist party for the educated and privileged.

NAREP aimed to encourage every Zambian to take more of a measure of responsibility and better manage the five important areas that underpin personal responsibility: managing time; living up to our commitments; vision and planning; fact-based rather than emotional driven decision-making; greater independence in thought and action. Chipimo has published a book based on his opinion of the leadership in Zambia and the current state of the nation. The book, titled “Unequal to the Task?, is available in bookstores around Zambia and also available online at www.newzambia.org.

Chipimo, a Rhodes Scholar, graduated from Oxford with the Bachelor of Civil Law in 1990. Before going into politics, Chipimo was Managing Partner and Senior partner, responsible for corporate advisory work, mergers, acquisitions, investments and privatisations. His main area of work is corporate law, principally advisory work on mergers and acquisitions, privatisation and capital markets related work in Zambia as well as within the Southern African region

Chipimo ran again in the 2015 presidential by-election, finishing seventh out of the eleven candidates with 0.4% of the vote.  However he opted to not stand in the 2016 edition amidst rumors earlier that he would instead ran for member of the national assembly. The violence, regionalism, hate speech and other vices that had crept into Zambian politics seemed to be choking and frustrating Chipimo and he continued to disengage from politics.

 On 2^nd September, 2019, Elias stepped down as NAREP President and from active politics to pursue interests in the private sector.  Mr Chipimo acknowledged that he was too rigid with his principals which denied the party the boost that was required to grow the party.

He felt he would have allowed new ideas and managed the defections better which during his time weakened the party structures as many left to join other parties.

He left the party in the hands of his Vice President Charles Maboshe who guided it to an elective convention in November, 2019 in which Muvi Television owner Stephen Nyirenda went through unopposed for the party presidency. This was after the other candidate Maybin Kabwe withdrew his candidature for the role of Presidency at the NAREP extraordinary convention.

In delivering his maiden acceptance speech Nyirenda promised to uphold the core values of NAREP of no violence, no insults and a heart for the people.

But who is Stephen Nyirenda?

Stephen Nyirenda was born in October 1959 in Matero, Lusaka. He went to Chibelo Primary School in Lusaka and later Chasefu Primary School in Lundazi. He did his secondary school at Nyimba.  His father the late Samson Mutamakwenda Nyirenda was a driver and his mother the late Jelita Tembo was a housewife.

In his childhood, he lived in Kalingalinga, Chawama and George compounds. At the age of 18 he went to Germany where he did mechanical engineering and graduated in 1987. He joined an engineering firm in Cologne, Germany where he worked up to 1998.

In 1991 Steve started his investments in Zambia and founded a few companies. Today there are over 500 employees in these organisations.

Stephen has no know political affiliation and has never held any political party position in his lifetime, coming into politics in similar fashion as Hakainde Hichilema of UPND from private sector to leading a political party.

Given his humble social and political profile, Nyirenda is no march for Chipimo in terms of political experience and arguably Chipimo’s shoes maybe too big for him. This means he should prepare for many years of hard work to find his feet in politics, he would do well to date HH for some guidance on how to survive opposition politics without your businesses suffering harm.

Maybe a man like Nyirenda is what NAREP needed, one who though soft spoken promises to be closer to the realities of Zambians and speak to their needs in a les sophisticated fashion. For instance he said the following in his inaugural speech:

“It is very clear that Zambian wealth is not in Zambian hands. What is in Zambian hands is poverty, slavery, loss of dignity. Our leadership will make sure that the owner of the land (the landlord) who is an indigenous Zambian takes over the land and the economy through deliberately creating hundreds of thousands of indigenous Zambian millionaires who will create jobs and funding for productive technologies that will be key to entrepreneur development and success.”

He makes important though contradictory pronouncements on his approach to the question of land distribution in Zambia.

“The land of Zambia is for indigenous Zambians and anyone who is not an indigenous Zambian is not entitled to it. The government of the Republic of Zambia through the respective councils have been giving land for free always. The government has never sold land, therefore, selling land is illegal. How do you sell something you never bought?

Our leadership team will give land to all indigenous Zambians for free. if you are buying land today, stop and wait for 2021, land will be given for free to all indigenous Zambians

We shall wait and see what the future of NAREP will be under Stephen and can only wish him well.