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The Lusaka City Council (LCC) has denied reports that it has issued a strip club licence to a Lusaka businessman to be operated at Lewanika Mall.
LCC Public Relations Manager, Chola Mwamba, said no application had been recieved by the local authority from the said businessman.
Mwamba said this at a media briefing in response to social media reports that a Lusaka businessmen had been granted a licence to open a strip club at the Mall.
“The public may wish to know that the local authority is guided by the laws of this country in the performance of it’s mandate to regulate any form of business within the city,” she said.
Mwamba said health inspectors visited the mall to inspect the existence of a strip club but did not find any shop operating as a strip club.
She said the social media speculations on the opening of the strip club should be ignored and that the local authority would reject such an application if it was made.
“We have no such activities about to open at the said Mall unless there are under hand methods which are being used to run such a business,” Mwamba said.
Social media was set ablaze by news that a Lusaka businessman had reportedly been awarded a “Str!p club” license, to open at the Mall next month.
Comments from social media followers expressing different opinions had flooded the Facebook platform with some in support of the idea while others were against it.
“We will support them. Ine am looking for a job, that has always been my dream career” from one follower.
Another one commented, “We shall support him, he needs our support to create jobs they promised and feed his family too.”
Those against posted, “This is an absurdity! Stop it! Leave such to open culture countries like South Africa.
“I remember years back between 2008 and 2019 a business man from Congo wanted to open one but he was denied by government Zambia being a Christian nation.”
Reacting to the social media reports, National Democratic Congress (NDC) leader, Saboi Imboela, expressed shock that the government had allowed and facilitated the opening of a str!p club in Lusaka and had called on the Christian community to strongly condemn the business because it ecclesiastically immoral and against the Christian values.
She noted in an interview with journalists on Sunday that the Lusaka City Council (LCC) should reconsider and cancel the licence for str!p club expected to be opened at Lewanika Mall in Lusaka.
“It is shocking that government could move and offer a licence for a business that had the potential to erode the moral values and norms upon which Zambia had anchored its governance system,” she said.
She observed that in the last few years, the country had seen a rise in moral degradation such as the emergence of the notorious groups called Junkies, youths abusing alcohol and drugs, and that having a strip club would worsen the situation.
“I hope that the information about a highly politically exposed businessman being granted a licence to open a strip club at Lewanika Mall in Lusaka is not true. Zambia is a Christian nation that upholds Christian values and having a strip club would send a bad signal to the people,” Ms Imboela said.
She was worried that there had been an increase in events that promoted homosexuality and other abominations in Zambians with little condemnation from those in authority.
Imboela feared that people, especially school-going children would be making fake identification cards just to find themselves at the str!p club.
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