The Real Michael Sata

The Cabinet

The Cabinet

            I put my head round the Editor’s door. ‘Ha ha Richard,’ I said, ‘There’s no job for me today, so I’m off to the bar!’

          ‘Not so fast!’ he replied. ‘I want you to go and interview the Cabinet!’

          ‘What!’ I laughed. ‘You must be joking!’

          ‘I’m certainly not,’ he replied, pulling a serious face. ‘I’m fed up with you just sitting on your bum and making up stories, rather than going out there and digging up a real story. So you go and interview the Cabinet!’

          ‘Hah!’ I cackled, ‘I wouldn’t even know where to find them. Do they meet at the Secretariat or State House? Or at Crapsody's? Or do they ever meet? Where are they? They’re probably all abroad seeking medical treatment. I think I’ll write something about that.’

          ‘Look, Kalaki,’ he said seriously, ‘I’m fed up with reading stories from your brandy bottle. Go and interview the Cabinet. In case you didn’t know, they all stay at the Cabinet Old People’s Home at Chainama Hospital.’

          So I got on my bike and off I went. An hour later I was knocking on the door of the Chainama Superintendent, Dr Mankhwala. ‘Kalaki!’ he said, as he rose to greet me. ‘Have you had a relapse? Got the shakes again?’

          ‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘I’ve just had the brilliant idea of interviewing the Cabinet.’

          ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘I try to keep them away from journalists. You know they’re all rather old and confused, and get very irritated if anybody asks them a question because they never know the answer.’

          ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said. ‘My technique is just to let them babble, and write down everything they say.’

          So off we went to the Cabinet Old People’s Home, built in a wooded area of Chainama, away from prying eyes. The first room we came to said Vice President Dotty Scotty. Mankhwala knocked on the door, and in we went.

          There he sat in the October heat, an old man hunched on an ancient Dundee chair, wrapped in a thick blanket in front of a roaring wood fire. He looked terribly pale and the skin under his chin hung in folds like a pair of curtains. ‘Feel my skin, doctor,’ he said in a quavering voice. ‘Cold. I’ve gone all white. I can’t keep warm. I need a diagnosis. I may be dead.’

          ‘Don’t worry Dotty,’ said Mankhwala soothingly, ‘I’ll bring the pathologist to have a look at you.’

          ‘They were all clever chaps once,’ said Mankhwala sadly, as we walked down the corridor. ‘This is what happens if you linger on too long.’

          The next room contained nothing but boxes of pills, piled high to the ceiling. Except that in a far corner sat the remains of the Minister of Medicines, Dr Joseph Kasombwe, strangely dressed in a thick woolen English suit. ‘Don’t take my pills,’ he sobbed. ‘The donors won’t give me any more after I lost the last lot!’

          The next room was equally strange in an entirely different way. There, on an academic throne, up on a high platform, sat a little man fully dressed in a purple gown and golden mortarboard. On the wall around him were all his certificates, and on the shelves were many photos of himself wearing different gowns. He was the Minister of Certificates, Professor Pompous Piri-Piri. ‘These students just need to study!’ he suddenly screeched. ‘Why do they always talk about hostels, toilets, bathrooms and dining rooms! They must just shut up, stay in the library, and study their books!’

          I looked round the room puzzled. ‘But no books in here?’

          He tapped his forehead with his forefinger and squealed sarcastically ‘It’s all in here! I read all the books to collect all these certificates!’

          ‘Very sad,’ said Munkhwala as we pushed on down the corridor. ‘His certificates are still here, but his brains have gone.’

          The next experience was even more frightening. The inmate was a little fellow with splayed eyes, one looking at us and the other watching his back. ‘They’re after me!’ he shrieked, clutching at my sleeve. ‘All these ministers are out to get me. They’re jealous of me because I am the only one who’s sane! They are mad jealous tribalists, thieves and assassins, but I shall discipline them because I am the Minister of Discipline!’ He scurried to a corner and hid behind a bookcase full of law books, from whence came a heart-rending screech ‘I am not scared because I was appointed by the Great Leader!’

          And so we came to the door labeled The Great Leader. Mankhwala took out a key to unlock the door. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Do you have to lock him in?’

          ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I have to lock the others out!’

          He opened the door, and we went into a completely bare and empty room. ‘They must never know that their Great Leader has gone. One day he just disappeared, and took all his promises with him. His poor Cabinet is driven to distraction and madness, waiting for him to come out of this room and inspire them with his great vision, and remind them of his promises. But they waited in vain, driven further into madness and despair. Every day they bang their heads on this door, but no response. He was the one who appointed all of them, and without their leader they are lost souls.’

          We walked out of the Old People’s Home onto the wide lawn. ‘But how can we be governed,’ I wondered, ‘with the entire Cabinet locked up here, waiting for nothing?’

          ‘Don’t worry,’ he laughed. ‘We’re much better off without them.’

Geriatric Youth Policy

Geriatric Youth Policy

          ‘The next item on the agenda this morning,’ said Cycle Mata, as he looked around the cabinet table, ‘is youth policy. Tomorrow is Youth Day, so I want to go to the march past and say something about youth employment policy.’

          The Minister for Age and Fat, Chipembele Kambilimbili, turned to the minister next to him, the slack jawed Eager Bungle, Minister for Deceptions and Deportations. ‘What’s a policy?’ whispered Kambilimbili.

          ‘It’s what every minister should have,’ Bungle smirked, as he pulled his hip flask out of his pocket and took a quick swig.

          ‘You, Feckless Shambles, wake up!’ shouted Cycle Mata. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be the Minister for Employment?’

          Poor old Shambles woke up with a start. ‘What employment? I haven’t been employed for years!’

          ‘What!’ shouted Cycle Mata angrily, ‘I thought I employed you as my Minister of Employment!’

          ‘You definitely said Minister of Unemployment,’ retorted Shambles, now waking up and coming to his senses. ‘I’ve even got it on video.’

          ‘Never mind that!’ shouted Cycle Mata. ‘The question is, does your ministry have a youth employment policy?’

          ‘I don’t think so,’ said poor old Shambles, scratching his head. ‘I think we only have an unemployment policy.’

          ‘I distinctly remember,’ said Clueless Cluo, the Minister for Bribing Chiefs, ‘that we agreed on a youth policy at our previous meeting, in October 2011.’

          ‘Did we? Did we?’ said Cycle Mata eagerly. ‘What did we say?’

          ‘We agreed to employ all our PF cadres.’

          ‘I know that! I know that!’ shouted Cycle Mata angrily. ‘But I can’t say that at tomorrow’s Youth Day Parade! Give me a policy quick! What’s the use of having all you ministers if you can’t even give me a policy? You, Dr Phiri-Phiri, aren’t you the Minister of Education?

          ‘Good gracious no,’ sneered Phiri-Phiri, ‘I’m nothing to do with Education, I’m the Minister for Schools.’

          ‘Same thing, same thing!’ shouted Cycle Mata angrily. ‘Aren’t schools supposed to make youths employable?

          ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘But we can take unemployed youths off the street!’

          ‘Same thing, same thing,’ said Cycle Mata eagerly. ‘How d’you do it?’

          ‘Well, it’s many years since we got rid of the Grade Seven leaver problem by putting them all into secondary school. A few years later we had the Grade Twelve leaver problem, so we put them all into university. So now we have the university leaver problem, the solution is to put them all into post-graduate school to do PhDs.’

          ‘What a silly idea!’ shouted Cycle Mata. ‘Give them all PhDs and they’ll end up as silly as you!’

          ‘And would there be room for all the girls?’ wondered Gender Wina.

          ‘This is Youth Day not Women’s Day!’ shouted Cycle Mata, as Gender hid under the table. ‘We’ve already done Women’s Day!’

          ‘I’ve been looking at the figures,’ said Dotty Scotty, as he scribbled on his notepad. ‘We’ve got about a million people in work and two million unemployed. Now if people work on average for 30 years, then about 35,000 vacancies will become available every year as people retire. This means that we can employ all the unemployed within a period of only 60 years!’

          ‘Is that correct?’ asked Cycle Mata, as he turned to Feckless Shambles.

          ‘Don’t ask me,’ replied poor old Shambles, ‘I always get confused by numbers.’

          ‘Of course it’s not correct,’ snapped the Minister for Internal Division, Splinter Kapimbe. ‘If it takes 60 years then all he youths will be dead before they ever get employment. And he’s also forgotten about the additional fifteen million people that will have been born in the meantime.’

          ‘Oh dear,’ said Dotty, scratching his head. ‘I used to be so clever when I was at Cambridge.’

          ‘I can still do arithmetic,’ chirped up the Minister for Food Shortages, Bald Sichilienge. ‘And I’ve got a simple arithmetical solution to the problem. We already have 350,000 self-employed vendors on the pavement. So if we increase the size of the pavement by a factor of four, we could have another million self-employed.’

          ‘But then all of the road would be pavement,’ chuckled Dotty, ‘with no space for the traffic.’

          ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Eager Bungle eagerly, as his red eyes lit up, ‘I could create 100,000 jobs by deporting all the Chinese!’

          ‘They’re the ones that fund the party,’ snapped Splinter Kapimbe.

          ‘Then how about,’ said Bungle, ‘Creating ten by-elections and recruit 50,000 into the party militia?’

          ‘We’re already done that!’ hissed Kapimbe.

          ‘I’ve got it,’ said Kambilimbili, ‘The answer has been staring us in the face! Just as every minister has five deputy ministers, so it should be in the entire economy! Every managing director should have five deputies! Every bus driver must have five deputy drivers! Even a carpenter must have five deputies! Then instead of having one million jobs, we shall have six million jobs!

          ‘You’ve forgotten one thing,’ chuckled Phiri-Phiri, ‘these deputy ministers don’t have any job, they just have salaries.’

          ‘I’ve solved the problem,’ laughed Clueless Cluo.

          ‘Oh?’ said Shambles. ‘What’s the answer?’

          ‘The answer is that we don’t need a policy anymore, because Our Beloved Excellency has fallen fast asleep.’

          ‘He was working very late last night,’ explained Kapimbe, ‘examining HaHa’s bank statements.’

          ‘But he’ll still need a new policy to announce tomorrow,’ said Shambles.

          ‘He’s completely worn out,’ said Clueless Cluo. ‘Call the nurses to take him back to bed.  Dotty Scotty will have to attend the Youth Day celebrations instead.’

          ‘But he hasn’t got a policy either!’ said Kapimbe.

          ‘He’ll think of something,’ laughed Clueless. ‘What will you say, Dotty?’

          ‘I shall announce,’ said Dotty in joyous voice, while raising one wrinkled and wobbly fist into the air, ‘that our New Policy of Full Employment for All Youth will be presented to parliament within the next 90 days!’