Zambian Quotes

There is a madman who lives on the road to Mkushi. Every full moon he comes out onto the tarmac and digs a deep trench across the road. Dad would like to find the madman and bring him back to the farm. 'Think what a strong bugger he is, eh?' 'Yes, but you could only get him to work when there was a full moon.' 'Which is twice as hard as any other Zambian.

Even fools, when in one accord and united in their foolishness, will appear to be wise.

One can hardly fault China for seizing on a great bargain, but for Zambia, the auctioning off of its most lucrative economic resources at fire-sale prices constituted another big stroke of bad national luck. Copper prices were still depressed and the government’s state of near bankruptcy at the time meant that Zambia had little negotiating power. Edith Nawakwi, who was the Zambian finance minister at the time of the sale, said that the country was pressured by its more traditional partners to accept this pittance. “We were told by advisers, who included the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that … for the next twenty years, Zambian copper would not make a profit. [Conversely, if we privatized] we would be able to access debt relief, and this was a huge carrot in front of us—like waving medicine in front of a dying woman. We had no option [but to go ahead].” The

The road north out of central Lusaka quickly transitions from a world of impressively broad avenues and fancy new commercial districts to a stop-and-start tour of desolate, overcrowded slums. There, half-dressed young men sit around glumly, seemingly lacking the motivation in the face of persistently high unemployment to even bother looking for work. When at last one reaches the highway that leads north to the Copper Belt it is the oncoming traffic that makes the strongest impression. It consists mostly of van after jam-packed van full of poor Zambians. They are overwhelmingly young and desperate to get off the land and they arrive in the capital with dreams of remaking their lives in the big city. When most people think about China’s relationship with Africa they reduce it to a single proposition: securing access to natural resources, of which Africa is the world’s greatest storehouse. As one of the top copper-producing nations, Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa, is doubtlessly a very big part of that story.

A Motswana in Zambia or Zimbabwe was referred to as gwerekwere and so was a Zimbabwean or Zambian in Botswana. Post-colonialism tragedy.

When in the hands of the greedy, even that which is free requires of us a fee.

Even fools, when in one accord and united in their foolishness, can appear to be wise.

[W]e might do better here to think of culture as fashion. And in fashion, of course, the key is not wearing a particular outfit but being able to wear it ... Clothing is a mere collection of garments; fashionability is a performative capacity, an ability to effect the right look through an effective combination of garments, social sense, and bodily performance.

At the end of the avenue, a large villa was set back from the road with a surrounding fence covered in hessian. This was ‘The Vatican’, the secret headquarters of the Department of National Security and Order – ZAPU’s spy agency. It made for a more discreet location for a rendezvous than Zimbabwe House, ZAPU’s headquarters in the city, which was believed to be under constant surveillance by the Zambian authorities and perhaps others. The Vatican was an anonymous-looking four-bedroom villa, but several sentries were positioned just behind the wrought-iron front gates. As the car drew in, one of the guards called through their arrival on a radio set.

I felt obliged to lend her my swim trunks. Getting back entailed making our way over to the Zambian side and then walking up-river on the bank before swimming across. So there I was, a stark-naked white Rhodesian army boy escorting two girls in what was essentially enemy territory, being watched through a pair of binoculars by my commanding officer. It was on the eve of a leave period for me, which got canceled as punishment. That ended up being fortunate, because the following night a platoon of ours got ambushed and sustained heavy casualties, so having an extra medic they could fly in was useful. The rest of my war stories are really mundane and boring. Well, none of them involve red pubic hair, and I’ve always thought, ‘What’s the point of a story without that?’ Haven’t you?

Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian who went on to work at Goldman Sachs and the World Bank, asked ‘what if, one by one, African countries each received a phone call, telling them that in exactly five years the aid taps would be shut off — permanently?’ Her view was that this would be an energising wake-up call, forcing countries rapidly to pivot to increase trade and attractiveness to foreign investment. Of course, the risk is that some countries would spread their wings and fly, others crash and burn. And, of course, that China would buy all of the ones in between. Such provocative ideas likely work better on the page than in the field, but they do challenge us all to recognise that current aid strategies have too often been ineffective.

But some turned out to be more human than others. ‘Zambian humanism’, he declared, ‘aims at eradicating all evil tendencies in Man … the attainment of human perfection’, by ridding society of ‘negative human inclinations such as selfishness, greed, hypocrisy, individualism, laziness, racism, tribalism, provincialism, nationalism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, fascism, poverty, diseases, ignorance and exploitation of man by man’.

On 15 August 1997, during the occasion of fifty years of India’s independence, the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust organized an international conference to which former Zambian president, Kenneth Kaunda, was invited. In previous years, all participants had been put up in Lalit Suri’s hotel on Barakhamba Road. For the 1997 conference, Sonia decided that all invitees would stay in the Oberoi Hotel. Kaunda arrived a day late and, like in previous years, he drove from the airport to Suri’s hotel. I informed Sonia of his arrival, and that he was staying at Lalit’s hotel. She was incensed and asked me to meet Kaunda and request him to shift to the Oberoi. It was a manifestly unreasonable demand. I had known Kaunda for many years but my errand was a painful one. When I told him about this, he said he had settled down and, after a long flight, needed rest. I conveyed Kaunda’s message to her. That should have ended the matter; it did not. Arrogance took over. She asked me to go back to Kaunda and ask him to shift to the Oberoi. I attempted to dissuade her but she did not relent. I told her she was being irrational. Kaunda was one of Africa’s most admired and respected leaders. He was twenty-two years older than Sonia. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv would never have behaved in such an insensitive manner. On hearing her second message, Kaunda said that this would put him in an embarrassing position. ‘What do I tell Suri?’ he asked. Kaunda could observe my discomfiture. I told him there had been a falling out. Kaunda agreed to shift after apologizing to Suri.