Sousa Jamba
My relationship with Zambia goes back to 1976 when, aged ten, my sister and her husband brought me with them after fleeing from the Angolan civil war. Zambia had then been independent for a mere twelve years.
President Kenneth Kaunda, the first president, was venerated as a hero for the fight for independence. UNIP, the then ruling party, was so powerful that no one, save for some elderly figures who had also contributed to the fall of the British, could challenge it.
In the last two decades Zambia has had several governments — which have always been reined in or voted out by the electorate.
Last month, Haikande Hichilema defeated President Edgar Lungu in a landslide, and Zambia witnessed yet another peaceful transfer of power.
Zambians like to describe their country as the Switzerland of Africa. That is stretching it; Zambia is certainly in a rough neighborhood — to the north it has the Democratic Republic of Congo, with its unwieldy political system and never-ending wars; to the West Angola, with its highly corrupt government; to the South Zimbabwe, with its authoritarian octogenarians military turned politicians.
Though genteel by these standards, Zambian politics have known stormy moments.
Once in power, cadres are rewarded with contracts or the right to tax small traders. Some of them are complete thugs who harassed and humiliated their rivals.
Zambians take education very seriously. In Kaunda Square, a poor neighborhood where I spent part of my childhood, there are kindergartens at every corner where children learn the basics.
Parents, even with meager means, are prepared to pay for their children to get a headstart. Where there was once a popular beer hall is now a kindergarten promising French and Portuguese lessons for children.
In my day there were less than twenty secondary Schools in Lusaka, the capital; now there are countless. There are also a number of universities in the capital.
In my childhood, nobody had a television set in our neighborhood; now there are screens beaming in political programmes, documentaries and soap operas from all over the world. The result is that Zambia has a highly savvy young electorate.
For years Hichilema, a wealthy businessman from the Tonga ethnic group in the South of the country, was described by his rivals as a tribalist.
The same was said of the UPND party that he led. But in the recent election the tribalist tag did not gain traction among the youthful electorate who were more interested in other issues.
Despite its several ethnic groups, Zambia’s first president ensured that the elite mixed and intermarried; I attended a boarding school in the northwest of the country with colleagues from all over Zambia.
My colleagues are now parents and in some cases grandparents — and their offspring have strong connections to different parts of the country; despite heated political discussions, Zambians have always avoided the extremes that have led to violence elsewhere.
This week, Zambians were pleased that their newly-elected president became the first African leader invited to the White House, originally to meet President Joe Biden. He ended up meeting Vice-president Kamala Harris who, it turned out, had visited Zambia as a child.
The fact that in his speech to the UN President Biden said that democracy lived in the youth of Zambia who voted in record numbers to get rid of a corrupt government, has filled many ordinary Zambians with much pride.
On radio talk-shows and in the bars, Zambians have not stopped bragging all week about how presidents from wealthier African countries have not had the honour of being invited to the White House.
They could also feel pride that Hichilema flew to the UN meeting in New York on a normal commercial flight accompanied by three aides – and that he walked four kilometres from his hotel to the United Nations rather than pay for an expensive limousine.
Zambians are deeply proud of their nation; but it is not the kind of pride that is tinged with unrestrained jingoism. Zambians want to prosper — but they also want other Africans to prosper with them.
