14 DAY TRIAL // A politician named Frank Bwalya risks spending several years behind bars after making one very dreadful mistake: calling Zambia's current president a “potato.”
People have been known to call their countries' leaders names before, yet, more often than not, nothing bad comes from it. Apparently, this is not the case in said African country.
The name-calling occurred on radio, Mirror tells us. Due to the fact that the show was a live broadcast, the producers were unable to cut out this part, and quite a lot of people got to hear what Frank Bwalya thinks about Zambian leader Michael Sata.
The exact words that the politician, who also happens to be the head of the Alliance for a Better Zambia, used to describe Zambia's president were “Chumbu Mushololwa.”
For those who have no idea what “Chumbu Mushololwa” means (and odds are few of the people reading this article do), it must be said that this term is used to refer to a type of sweet potato that breaks very easily when somebody tries to bend it.
“On that radio program, I strongly criticized the bad leadership of the president. I called him a crooked sweet potato that cannot be straightened.”
“It is a commonly used phrase which is not insulting. It is to explain the attitude of a person who doesn’t want to be advised who doesn’t want to be counseled,” Frank Bwalya explains his decision to use the term “Chumbu Mushololwa” to refer to Zambia's President, Michael Sata.
Eric Chanda, the secretary general of the Alliance for a Better Zambia, says that, in the aftermath of this incident, Frank Bwalya was accused of defamation. He was also arrested, but was eventually released on bail.
“The police decided to arrest and charge him with defamation of the president,” Eric Chanda reportedly told the press.
Although he is no longer imprisoned, Frank Bwalya will have to return to court and defend himself against the charges filed against him. If found guilty, he risks being sentenced to spending up to five years in prison.