The Evolution Of Lusaka Roads

By John Simachembele

The roadblock era was a befuddling phenomenon. Roadblocks were mounted anytime, anywhere, for any reason or for no reason at all. Roadblocks were mounted at the break of dawn, in the dead of night, and most frequently during rush hours. They were mounted at flyover bridges, at roundabouts, the local bottle store or even your backyard, on the whim of the servicemen responsible. The police service should be commended for restoring sanity in this area. Due to excessive roadblocks, potholes developed. The potholes in turn rendered roadblocks redundant because servicemen simply had to walk over to a vehicle of their choosing (which would be crawling at about 3 kilometres per hour) and conduct their interrogations or inspections. Enter the pothole era.

During this era, one needed two drivers’ licences; the one issued by Government, and the “other” one. I am certain that most of you are familiar with the different classes of licence issued by Government, “A”, “B”, “C1” etc. This “other “ license was issued in classes “KP”, “KAP” and, the highest level, “KAPO”. The meaning of these acronyms was neither codified nor placed in the public domain. Upon investigation, I discovered that KP stood for “know your potholes”, KAP “know and avoid your potholes, and KAPO “know and avoid your potholes and other road users”. Unfortunately, the highest level of competency was rather difficult to attain and most drivers had, by the end of this era, not yet acquired the KAPO designation. Hence their tendency to occasionally make unintentional violent mechanical contact with other vehicles and other mobile or stationary objects on and immediately adjacent to the road. Primary data obtained by the writer indicates that there had in fact been a marked reduction of road signage, traffic lights, street lighting and even trees in the vicinity of our roads during this era. (It was therefore more dangerous to stand in the vicinity of any road than to jump out of an aeroplane without a parachute). To ameliorate the situation, Government put in place a road rehabilitation programme of an unprecedented scale.

The completion of the road rehabilitation programme gave rise to a new era. This era, which is also the current era, is characterised by obfuscating driver behaviour, amongst them inexplicable braking, unorthodox hand signals, and unaccustomed vigilance. This is the era of the speed camera. This gadget, mounted atop a tripod stand, has become the bane of every driver’s existence, in particular for drivers who use the Great East Road.

Before now, drivers were supposed to watch out for roadblocks, other road users, surviving (and replacement) road signage, fallen tree branches, goats, dogs, cats, chickens etc. Now, they have to look out for the tripod too. One would have expected the police service to procure other high-tech gadgets that perform some fantastic functions (such as detecting thieves from a breath analysis) to control the rising crime wave before they ever thought about road safety. If it is indeed road safety they were thinking about.

Perhaps the rains will bring some relief…..