Former Zambian minister launches opposition party

Zambia’s former environment minister Ben Mwila launched an opposition Republican Party on Saturday, vowing to end the reign of President Frederick Chiluba’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), news reports said. Mwila told a crowd of about 10,000 people in the small copper mining town of Luanshya, 400 km from Lusaka, that he was “dedicated to uprooting dictatorship and launching a movement for accountable and inclusive democracy”. “This is Zambia’s finest moment. It is time for us to make a clean break from the present system of bigotry, persecutions, fear and mass hopelessness brought about by the MMD government,” he said. “The time has come for the Zambian people to take concerted and determined action to end widespread poverty, corruption and mediocrity in government.”