Supporters of Frank Bwalya, in red, say he is fearless 
 
 An opposition politician in Zambia has been arrested and charged with defamation after he compared the president to a potato. 
 
 Frank Bwalya allegedly described President Michael Sata as "chumbu mushololwa" on radio on Monday. 
 
 The Bemba language phrase refers to a sweet potato that breaks when it is bent and is used to describe someone who does not listen to advice. 
 
 Mr Bwalya faces a maximum jail term of five years if he is convicted. 
 
 He is a former pastor and supporter of Mr Sata. He now heads the opposition Alliance for a Better Zambia (ABZ) party. 
 
 Deputy Home Affairs Minister Steven Kampyongo said Mr Bwalya had been arrested for making defamatory remarks against the president. 
 
 'King is naked' 
 
 "President Sata is the same old man who was on all radio stations defaming former Presidents Banda and Mwanawasa and nobody arrested him," said ABZ secretary-general Eric Chanda, the AFP news agency reports. 
 
 Opposition National Restoration Party (NRP) leader Elias Chipimo demanded Mr Bwalya's release, saying he was a fearless politician. 
 
 Michael Sata won elections in 2011 
 
 "Zambia desperately needs leaders that will openly declare - when necessary - that 'the King is naked'," Mr Chipimo added in a statement. 
 
 The phrase "chumbu mushololwa" was not an insult, he added. 
 
 "It describes a person who lacks flexibility and who like a potato [icumbu] will only break when you try to change their fixed ideas," he said. 
 
 In September, Nevers Mumba of the opposition Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) was questioned by police after allegedly calling Mr Sata a liar. 
 
 In 2005, a Zambian man, Edward Longe, was sentenced to nine months in prison for insulting then-President Mwanawasa in a bar. 
 
 In 2002, a newspaper editor was arrested for calling Mr Mwanawasa, who died in 2008, a "cabbage". 
 
 The charges were subsequently dropped. 

 JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – In Zambia, call the president a “potato” at your peril. 
 
 Yes, a potato. 
 
 This seemingly innocuous word, used to describe Zambian President Michael Sata during a radio show Monday, got an opposition leader thrown in jail and charged with defamation. If convicted, Frank Bwalya faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. 
 
 Points for calling your leader a spud. 
 
 But this is hardly the most colorful insult one finds in the region. 
 
 As a public service, GlobalPost here decodes "potato" and other headline-grabbing insults from around southern Africa. 
 
 Use with caution. 
 
 "Potato" 
 
 In comparing Zambia's president to a potato, the actual phrase used was “chumbu mushololwa,” a Bemba term that literally means a sweet potato that breaks easily when bent. It refers to someone who is stubborn and inflexible, and who won’t listen to the opinions of others. 
 
 Bwalya’s supporters argue that this is not an insult, but rather “a perfectly legitimate way for one politician to describe a fellow politician, if indeed that person is stubborn by nature.” 
 
 Either way, it seems an apt description for President Sata, who is known for his sharp tongue and increasingly autocratic behavior since being elected president in 2011. 
 
 "Limping donkey" 
 
 In Zimbabwe, dozens of cases have been filed in recent years under a law that makes it a crime to insult the president — and which is often used to harass and intimidate critics of President Robert Mugabe, who turns 90 next month. 
 
 Opposition activist Solomon Madzore was arrested last May after allegedly calling Mugabe a “limping donkey.” 
 
 In the Shona language, the phrase “dhongi rinokamina” refers to a lame draft animal that is no longer of any use and must be put out to pasture. 
 
 A Zimbabwe court ruled in November that the “insult law” is unconstitutional, and said prosecutors should not be overzealous about charging people who make comments about Mugabe “in drinking halls and other social places.” 
 
 But reports from Zimbabwe suggest that despite the court ruling, the law is still being used. 
 
 So maybe hold off on calling Mugabe a “limping donkey” just yet. 
 
 "Bushman" 
 
 This one wasn’t intended as an insult. But when a South African tourist spotted a framed portrait of Botswana's president at a border post and remarked that he “looks like a Bushman,” she quickly found herself in a world of trouble. 
 
 The woman was interrogated, kept in jail overnight and forced to pay a fine before being freed. 
 
 The Bushmen — also known as the San, or the Khoi — are the original people of Southern Africa, some of whom still follow a traditional lifestyle as hunter-gatherers. 
 
 In Botswana they have faced discrimination and persecution by government officials. Ian Khama, the president of Botswana, once described their way of life as “an archaic fantasy.” 
 
 "A South African person thought resembling a Bushman was complimentary, but Botswana officials took it as an insult,” the director of Survival International, a group that campaigns for the rights of indigenous people, said after the tourist's arrest in 2009. 
 
 “You couldn't have clearer evidence of the racism towards Bushmen in Botswana than this incident.” 
 
 “Tjajarag” 
 
 In South Africa, insults won’t get you locked up. 
 
 President Jacob Zuma has been called a “monster,” a “tyrant” and “illiterate,” among many other things. The abaThembu king called him “a liar who doesn’t use condoms.” 
 
 Zuma too has been known to take mean swipes, for example calling the opposition party's parliamentary leader “ntombazana,” the Zulu word for a “young girl." 
 
 But one of South Africa's more colorful taunts made headlines a few years ago thanks to Julius Malema, the loudmouthed former African National Congress youth leader, who called a BBC journalist "tjatjarag." 
 
 Not the easiest of words, but a useful one, meaning someone who is annoying, in a hyper and overly excitable sort of way. 
 
 The pronunciation goes something like this: "cha-cha-raa-ch." 
 
 Tjatjarag. Keep that one in your back pocket.
– A political foe of Zambia's president has been arrested and faces up to five years in prison for the crime of likening the president to a potato, reports the BBC. More precisely, a sweet potato. And even more precisely, in the native tongue, a "chumbu mushololwa." President Michael Sata did not take kindly to this, and opposition leader Frank Bwalya is paying the price. Bwalya's supporters insist that their man wasn't saying the president looked like a potato, only that he acted like one. The phrase chumbu mushololwa "describes a person who lacks flexibility and who like a potato [icumbu] will only break when you try to change their fixed ideas," explains another opposition politician. The BBC notes that a newspaper editor in Zambia once got arrested for calling a previous president a "cabbage." And Global Post rounds up other political insults from southern Africa, including "limping donkey."