Dear editor,
What is this fuss about a Grade 12 certificate being an unfair qualification for political candidacy?
It would have been an issue if Zambia had a serious shortage of citizens with this level of qualification, but we don’t.
On Tuesday, Government announced that over 70,000 people obtained grade 12 certificates.  Obviously a great majority of these are Zambians.  So these meet the basic qualification to contest political office.
Just this intake of Grade 12 scholars means that there are about 460 eligible candidates for each of the 150 parliamentary seats.
Of course not everyone has such political ambitions and others would prefer to go for local government polls.  So if we took even just 10 percent of these as potential candidates, we would still have good competition for the positions.
Add those who attained their grade 12 qualification earlier and you have millions of citizens with this requirement.  Can’t Zambia find quality leaders among these?
Let’s not fuss about a non-issue.
CHARITY C