Former UPND vice-president for politics Dr Canicias Banda has charged that former Archbishop of Lusaka Telesphore Mpundu is preventing his successor from being in charge of the Archdiocese because he still has a hold on power.

But the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops (ZCCB) says Dr Banda’s allegations are a joke of the century.

Speaking when he featured on Pan African Radio’s The Peoples’ debate, Wednesday, Dr Banda charged that there were some administrative challenges in the Catholic Church as Archbishop Mpundu was still holding on to power, instead of paving way for Archbishop Alick Banda.

“The Ambassador of the Vatican to Zambia has been spoken to that he must put the Catholic Church in order in Zambia. There is a degree of dysfunctionality in it at the moment administratively. There is a new Archbishop in Lusaka Archdiocese, Archbishop Alick Banda, he is from Ndola. I have met the man; he is a fine man. But functionally he is not operational. The one before him, Archbishop Teresphore Mpundu still wields power,” Dr Banda said.

“This is what people don’t know. So the Vatican must act to ensure that Archbishop Mpundu vacates where the new Archbishop must occupy. Go to Kalingalinga, you will find Archbishop Alick Banda renting a house there. Observe the functioning of the office of the Archbishop of Lusaka and you find that the current Archbishop is not as functional as he ought to be. So it is important to address these concerns because the impact on dialogue, because the Church is involved.”

And Dr Banda said it was not the church’s mandate to lead the dialogue process.

“And by the way, the Church must know that the dialogue can go ahead without them and we should learn to conduct dialogue without them. President Edgar Lungu has been given authority by the people of Zambia to ensure that this country remains unitary and peaceful, and that there is dialogue and there are institutions for that. And President Lungu is the chief superintendent and it is his mandate to ensure that there is dialogue. It is not the mandate of the Church. The Church’s mandate is to pray for people and tell them, hey, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that, because we are going to heaven someday. Politics is a different field all together,” he said.

He accused the Church of creating an impression that there was a crisis in the country when in fact not

“The Church is guilty of being divisive. The Church brokered the dialogue process in 1990 when we needed to transition from one party state to multi party state and it happened. There was a crisis then, but there is no crisis in Zambia now. The country is peaceful and united despite a few challenges that the PF is frank about and they are addressing them. So the church must not give the impression that this country is in a crisis, it is collapsing. Even in Congo, the church was admonished for conduct unbecoming of the church, these are the sins of the church. The trust and confidence that people have in the church as an important part of their lives leads to abuse. The Church should stay out of politics. The church is a partisan entity that belong to one idea of winning souls for the Lord,” said Dr Banda who also said he could only return to the UPND if he was invited to be president.