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Turning 40
by Rose-Marie Wardle
“Most Zambians
won’t live to see their 40th birthday” was the rather
arresting quote that caught my eye in a recent well-known human
rights campaigning magazine. There is more than one reason for this.
First of all, I am a Zambian born and bred (Kitwe)
just as my father is (Sesheke). Second, I was born in 1964 – the
year of Zambia’s independence – which means we both turn 40 this
year. I was given cause to ponder.
In the bible 40
is the numerical value given to anything considered “a great many”
thus 40 days and 40 nights of rain flooded the world, the Israelites
wandered aimlessly for 40 years before they found the promised land
and Jesus spent 40 days in the desert before his crucifixion – yet
in western culture there is a much vaunted saying: “Life begins at
40”. Whichever way you look at it, 40 is a pivotal age and my
experience of it so far has been to find myself in a kind of
meta-physical road side lay-by offering the chance to look back at
where I’ve come from and ahead to where I’m going. I wondered if it
could be the same for a nation.
The birth of a
new country is not unlike that of a new person. It is a time when
everyone comes together, setting aside differences to commune in a
great spirit of joy. There is a sense of anticipation and good will
and much talk of the hopes and dreams that lie ahead.
I remember the
early years with fondness for it seemed that everyone was happy.
Ice-cream trips to Parklands in the back of a Landy shouting “I
scream…” (you know the rest); Dennis Liwewe commentating at our
wildly exciting school sports days (his children went to our
school); blissful weekends at the 17-Mile Dam (now Chembe Bird
Sanctuary) where the highlight of the day was eating the post-barbie
“mush” (tomatoes, onions and baked beans thrown into a plough disc
that had just seared the steak and wors); we enjoyed the latest
tunes on “Sound Power” albums and shops sold everything. We had no
reason to suspect it might all end.
The fortunes of
the new nation began to slide when the bottom fell out of the copper
market in the mid 70s. It seemed our happy Copperbelt days were over
too as we moved to
Lusaka
then, a place hated by many because it lacked a sense of community.
It was full of “foreigners” and “city dwellers” and worst of all,
they had their own interpretation of KK’s humanism. To me, everyone
seemed cross and miserable.
Then the word
“shortage” crept into our vocabulary. Shortages have had a lasting
impact on those of us who were young kids back then – it was scary.
Just about everything was “short” at some time or another but mostly
it was sugar, salt, tea, coffee, cooking oil, soap in any form,
paper including toilet paper, butter, milk, (forget cheese and
cream), bread, tinned foods, processed foods, biscuits, sweets and
chocolate, clothes, books, toys, electrical goods, not to mention
most of what we take for granted in our store cupboards today
(spaghetti, tomato sauce, vinegar, jam…..) and mealie meal, which
sparked the food riots of 1990. Who living in those days has not
eaten grey, crumbly bread full of sand, burnt off the hideous smell
of “Saladi” to make it palatable, moulded new bars of soap from end
bits of old bars and wiped their a*** on the Times of Zambia? The
80s was a time of boom and excess in the First World but it was
bleak at home.
If shortages
meant we went without bread and butter for a while, one casualty of
Zambia’s declining fortunes – which has had an even more significant
effect on young Zambians – was education. Or lack of it. If we
managed to get a basic grounding the opportunities for higher
education and training were very slim. Some of us were lucky enough
to be sent abroad for a couple of years, expensive though it was. I
know others who simply walked out of their Zambian schools before
they received any qualifications because books were not being
replaced and teachers simply didn’t turn up. The dream had turned
into a nightmare and the victims were young people with potential
but no means of securing a bright future. This is the effect of
high-jacked education and if a nation’s youth cannot be educated,
what hope is there for the nation’s development? Recycled
politicians are what you get followed by further economic decline
compounded by the brain drain of those who do have education or
those who need it.
Nelson Mandela
has one or two things to say about this, for example: “education is
the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Open University Vice Chancellor Professor Brenda Gourley says that
for Mandela, “one of the great injustices of apartheid was its
systematic destruction of the hopes and potential of black people as
it deprived them of educational opportunity” and he has just been
awarded an honorary Doctorate (Open University) for the role he has
played in advancing social justice through education. Mandela
refused to let harsh prison conditions get in the way of personal
development, (for even without the advantage of moving up the
careers ladder, education is nectar for the mind.)
Robben
Island
was known as “the university” and Mandela and his fellow prisoners
surrounded themselves with books, earning not just one, but several
degrees. By contrast, I know some first generation Zambians whose
lack of access to higher learning made life itself a prison.
And there is no
getting away from the fact that there is a direct correlation
between levels of poverty and levels of education and at least an
educated mind has some idea of self-preservation. A glance at
Zambia’s current profile in the CIA World Factbook says: “86 percent
are living below the poverty line” and “Zambia’s economic growth
remains below the five to seven percent necessary to reduce poverty
significantly.” There is another alarming statistic – life
expectancy at birth is 35.18 yrs (compared to the
UK’s
78.27yrs) enhanced dramatically by AIDS.
Perhaps it is
time to start investing in education and set the ball rolling for a
more positive 40 years ahead. Perhaps this is the answer that Tony
Blair’s Africa Commission is looking for. After all, Blair sailed
into the job with the words: “Education, education, education” and
launched his government’s idea of “The Learning Age” during which it
is hoped that 50 percent of the UK population will acquire a
university degree (traditionally 10-15 percent) to cope with an
economy that, post-industrial age, is less physical and more
intellectual and interpersonal.
One group of
Zambian children that are benefiting from “the luxury of a basic
education”, to quote their prospectus, is the Yosefe Primary School
near Kapani. It is helped by donations and material assistance from
a number of Kapani’s guests, two of whom live three miles down the
road from me here in Nottingham. These children hold diamonds in
their hands, so precious and valuable is the opportunity to learn,
especially in such a rural setting. Knowledge is power (despots
always target the educated elite) and a key to the door of success
(doctors earn more money than shop assistants). Without education,
there is no voice, only the silence of the ignorant.
To round off
the tale, I must confess that as I am currently enjoying a greatly
longed-for university education at the age of 40 (unfortunately not
in Zambia) I believe life begins….
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October 2004