Speech day in Muchinga

Speech Day in Muchinga

            Sara and I had come to Speech Day at Muchinga Secondary School, to witness our grandson Kondwa being awarded the prize for mathematics. All the teachers were sitting at the back of the stage as the Headmaster walked to the front.

          ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘I am the Headmaster, Mr Noplan Chimbwi, and I am pleased to welcome you to the celebration of our greatest achievements during the past year. Behind me you see the rest of the staff who work closely with me in bringing your children to a bright and prosperous future. Ours is a closely knit team, working in close agreement and harmony to achieve the great ideals of this long established and distinguished academy, always remembering our resounding motto One Muchinga, One School, One Headmaster.

          ‘I hope the old fart gets a move on,’ Sara whispered in my ear.

          ‘To give you some examples of the latest developments in our school,’ continued Chimbwi, ‘I ask our Deputy Headmaster, Mr Scotty Cholaboy, to join me here at the podium. As he spoke a bent figure in a faded salaula suit shuffled to the front, and groveled and slobbered before the headmaster. ‘Tell me, Cholaboy,’ rasped Chimbwi, ‘What have you been working on recently?’

          ‘I’ve been buying second-hand books for the library, Headmaster.’

          ‘You’ve been doing WHAT?’ screeched Chimbwi. ‘Why have you been doing that?’

          ‘I know it’s a long time ago since the school was able to buy books, Headmaster. But these second-hand books are very cheap.’

          Chimbwi now looked round at the other teachers. ‘Can someone tell this old fool why we can’t buy books?’

          A hand shot up. ‘Because, Headmaster, the book allocation is being spent on your fuel allowance.’

          ‘Nonsense! Shut up! Leave the room! Don’t come back!’

          ‘Where is all the unity and harmony?’ Sara whispered.

          Now an ancient old man hobbled to the front, with the help of a stick. ‘Ah, at last, our History Teacher, Mr PaModzi Munshumfwa. I’m sure he can help us.’

          ‘During colonial times,’ explained Munshumfwa, ‘this library was full of many books. Subversive books. Scurrilous books. Seditious books. Revolutionary books. The students read these books, and rebelled, and took over the school. We must never make the same mistake as the colonial authorities!’

          ‘Exactly,’ said Chimbwi, as Old Munshumfwa hobbled back to his seat. ‘And you, Dotty Cholaboy, try to stay awake in staff meetings in future. Now tell us, what is our policy on books in the library?’

          ‘No second-hand books,’ muttered Scotty.

          ‘No!’ screeched Chimbwi, ‘No books at all!’

          ‘Very sorry for my awful mistake,’ groveled Scotty, as he shuffled back to his seat.

          ‘They shouldn’t have let in the parents,’ said Sara, ‘just to see them quarreling amongst themselves.’

          ‘The only books allowed in the library,’ shouted Chimbwi, ‘are the Bible and the School Rules. Now let us hope we get a better report from our Communications Teacher. What have you been doing, Mr Manuel Mwalwe Mwalwe?’

          ‘I have put up new notice boards for students to express their opinions, analyse current affairs, and to ask questions of others.’

          ‘What!’ squealed Chimbwi. ‘As Headmaster, I am the one in charge of information dissemination. All information must first be approved by me and then put on the Headmaster’s Notice Board.’

          ‘No,’ said Manuel calmly. ‘We have the Independent Board Authority which authorises other groups to have their own noticeboards.’

          ‘All Independence rests in me as the Headmaster,’ growled Chimbwi, ‘So your Independent Board Authority is cancelled immediately, and so is your job. Shut up. Go away. Never come back. Shooo!’

          ‘It looks to me,’ said Sara, ‘as if this Headmaster has completely lost control of his staff and has no idea of what’s going on.’

          ‘Good gracious,’ growled the Headmaster, as he turned back to his audience, now restless and muttering amongst themselves. ‘Let’s hope there is better news from the Maths Department. I call upon Mr Redhot Piri Piri to explain the latest developments in maths teaching.’

          ‘In this modern world,’ began Piri Piri, ‘we’re teaching modern mathematics, such as set theory…’

          ‘Sex theory!’ shrieked Chimbwi, ‘I don’t want any homosexuals here!’

          ‘I said set theory,’ said Piri Piri. ‘It’s about how we analyze the mathematical relationship between members of different overlapping groups.’

          ‘Different groups!’ shouted Chimbwi. ‘What are you talking about! This is subversive talk! This is seditious! The motto of this school is One Muchinga, One School, One Headmaster. We’re not supposed to have different groups!’

Now his arms began to wave wildly, his face went purple, and he began to march up and down the stage howling ‘So now I see it! You are the one behind all this! You have foolishly revealed yourself! You are the divisive influence! You’ve been dividing this school into groups and cliques, plotting against me, trying to bring me down! Well let me tell you that before this day is out I’ll…’

          But as he was ranting on, two men in white coats came onto the stage. Each took him gently by an arm and guided him, still ranting, down the steps and out of the hall.

Then onto the stage waddled the ample figure of the School Matron, Ms Christine Award Winner. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, ‘I do apologize for that. Our dear Headmaster is not feeling very well, so he has asked me to distribute the School Prizes on his behalf…’

          But by now the school hall was more than half empty, as parents scurried out with their children, quite frightened by their strange experience.

          ‘If we all run away,’ I said, ‘that’ll be the end of his career as a Headmaster.’

          ‘From what I’ve seen,’ laughed Sara, ‘It’ll be no great loss.’  

[Story line suggested to Kalaki by Facebooker Victor Kabwe]

           

            

2023

2023

            ‘This is Stephen Cole on Al Jazeera. For our weekly Africa Interview we go over to Sulaka, the capital of Zombieland, to talk to the famous government propagandist Kibamba Chanyama. Welcome to the interview, Kibamba. First of all I’d like you to give us a bit of background on how the one-party state managed to re-emerge in Zombieland.’

          A fat self-satisfied face appeared upon the screen. ‘Thank you Stephen. It all began ten years ago, in 2013, after Zombieland’s most intrepid explorer, the late Dotty Scotty, had reached as far as North Korea, a country that no Zombie had previously reached. What he found was a revelation. All the people were dressed exactly the same, and spent most of their time marching up and down in front of their Great Leader Kim Jong Un, singing and cheering and waving their flags, and obeying his orders without question and with happy smiling faces.’

          ‘Dotty Scotty must have been terribly shocked.’

          ‘Good gracious no, he was very impressed, and declared that this looked like a very good system of government!’

          ‘Was he a fascist?’

          ‘Oh good gracious no,’ laughed Kibamba. ‘But he was very impressed by such a show of national unity. You see, in those days Zombieland was a very confused place and government was very difficult. The new Zombie government of the Punching Fist had been energetically punching in various directions, but not hitting any of its targets. Everybody had a different idea of how the country should be governed, and nobody took the government seriously.’

          ‘Didn’t the Punching Fist have a clear programme?’

          ‘Unfortunately not. They had promised everything to everybody and therefore nothing to anybody. Everybody was saying different things and arguing with each other. So when Dotty Scotty went to North Korea and saw everybody speaking with one voice he was very impressed.

So he stayed there for some time to study the system, so he could bring its benefits back to Zombieland.

          ‘Who was the president of Zombieland at that time?’

          ‘A man called Cycle Mata. But when Dotty Scotty explained to him the Korean system, he immediately changed his name to the Great Leader Pscho Ma Ta. His Punching Fist became the Paternal Father, meaning that he was now in charge of everybody.’

          ‘So how did he gain control over his constantly quarreling rabble.’

          ‘The first thing he did was to change the Constitution, which had previously been a long rambling document of 200 pages which nobody understood. He replaced it with a single sentence which said The Word of the Paternal Father is Law and All Must Obey.’

          ‘But did parliament agree to this?’

          ‘Stephen,’ laughed Kibamba, ‘You’re not seeing the implications properly. If the Paternal Father makes the law, then there is no need for a legislature. So parliament was automatically abolished!’

          ‘Wasn’t this challenged in court?’

          ‘Try to adjust your thinking,’ replied Kibamba impatiently. ‘There is no need for a court to interpret the law if the Paternal Father is the law. So courts were also abolished.’

          ‘But on what principles was the Great Leader operating?’

          ‘He acted according to his own philosophical principles.’

          ‘Did he have any?’

          ‘That’s where I came in,’ replied Kibamba proudly. ‘I was appointed the Chief Commissioner for Ideology and Propaganda and employed to write the Thoughts of the Great Leader Pscho Ma Ta which became the curriculum in school and university. All other books were banned.’

          ‘So did people stop quarreling?’

          ‘Of course. People had to follow the Thoughts of the Great Leader, so they were all of the same opinion.’

          ‘Didn’t the chiefs rebel against this intrusion into their traditional power over their subjects?’

          ‘The Great Leader had the Great Idea of putting CCTV cameras in all their bedrooms, and it soon became apparent that their nocturnal behaviour transgressed all traditional moral norms. After the public exposure of their scandalous behaviour they were all detained on Lichubi Island.’

          ‘Did anybody complain?’

          ‘Only a few. They were also sent to Lichubi Island.’

          ‘And did the economy improve?’

          ‘We soon had full employment, just as the Great Leader had promised. Half of the labour force was put into the army to march up and down and praise the Great Leader. The other half of the labour force was put down the mines to dig out copper to be sent to North Korea.’

          ‘What happened to all the money from the copper?’

          ‘It was used to pay the army to march up and down in praise of the Great Leader.’

          ‘Surely there must have been a lot of argument about all this in the press?’

          ‘All argument,’ explained Kibamba, ‘was banned in favour of national unity, peace and harmony, which were the essential principles in the Thoughts of the Great Leader. North Korean technology was used to channel all news through a department under my control known as ZNBC, Zombie News Banning and Censorship. In this way people didn’t get upset about anything divisive, unpatriotic or treasonable.’

          ‘And then this great African totalitarian experiment collapsed earlier this year, when Paramount Chief Kalaki escaped from Lichubi Island and began his great thousand mile march on Sulaka and, with his rallying cry of  Democracy and the Human Rights, restored multi-party democracy to Zombieland.’

          ‘It was a sad day for dictatorship,’ replied Kibamba.

          ‘Do you think democracy can ever work in Zombieland?’

          ‘Never!’ replied Kibamba.

          ‘Is that because the principles of democracy and human rights have been forgotten?’

          ‘Certainly not!’ replied Kibamba.

          ‘So the principles of democracy have been remembered?’

          ‘Certainly not!’ said Kibamba. ‘They were never understood in the first place!’

          ‘Well, thanks for talking to us,’ said Stephen. ‘And we do hope that you’ll soon be released from Kamfinsa Prison.’  

  

             

Winterstein's Monster

Winterstein’s Monster

            Kusala was a very frightened city. There was a serial killer on the loose. Every other week another corpse was found. Not only that, but there were body parts missing. Sometimes the eyes, sometimes the brain, sometimes the heart. And the police were making no progress. But to be fair to the Zombie Police, they had never been trained to investigate, only to follow orders in locking up the enemies of the government.

          If the police had been interested in investigations, they might have taken an interest in the strange goings on at the Kusala Museum. This sinister memorial for the one-party state faithfully and reverentially preserved all the relics, bones, charms, chains and instruments of torture from this bygone age.

          Visitors to the museum had been complaining for months of the strange sickly smell of formaldehyde which permeated the museum. But the janitor at the museum, Professor Winterstein, had always explained that there was nothing unusual about the smell, because he had to use formaldehyde to preserve the bones and relics which would otherwise be eaten by termites, or even by the visitors. For this was a very hungry time in the starving city of Kusala.

          But if there had been any detective to detect, he would have found that the sweet sickly smell of formaldehyde was not coming from the exhibits on the lower floors, but was permeating slowly down from the uppermost floor. It was here that Professor Winterstein had his own apartment, right under the glass dome which formed the roof of the museum.

          Or rather, to be more precise, this was where Winterstein had his laboratory, where he also lived as a recluse. For the professor was also an earnest and dedicated researcher into the occult, dedicated to finding the secret of eternal life. More precisely, his project was to collect the parts from various corpses and sew them all together into a new human being. And not only into a new human being, but a superman. A man of extraordinary intelligence, wisdom, courage and strength. For Winterstein was one of the most dangerous people on Earth – he had a passion to do good.

          One of the most mysterious aspects of the serial killings was that the victims were mostly prominent citizens, and always with a different part cut out. The body of a politician was found his tongue cut out. The body of a judge had been found with no brain. The priest had no heart. The wrestler had both his arms missing. The city’s most famous womanizer was found with his essential equipment entirely missing.

          All this was because Winterstein was following his theory that society is flawed because of our human imperfections. We had clever people with no heart, people who talked excessively but without brains, and fools with excessive reproductive energy to reproduce more fools, and so on. Winterstein’s aim was therefore to build a perfectly balanced man whose parts were all excellent – a superman!

          But the theory went further. Winterstein had seen that government, like the human body, had its own specialized parts. The executive was the tongue, which gave the orders, the judiciary the brain, parliament the rules, the opposition the devil’s advocate, civil society the heart, the media the eyes, investigating agencies the nose, always sniffing. But each part was always arguing with the other, and government was going nowhere.

          So Professor Winterstein had the brilliant idea of bringing all the best of these organs into one body. And this one body would unite all the different organs of the state, which would then work together without argument or discord or conflict, provided everybody did as they were told by Superman. All the previous failings of the one-party state would now be overcome as it was personified into the rule of Winterstein’s Monster.

          And then, after Winterstein had sewn together all the parts, and erected the high copper antenna above the museum, there finally came the fateful night of a big thunder storm, the climax to Winterstein’s great experiment. Down came a great bolt of lightning straight into the borrowed heart of the monster, who quivered with life, and lurched up from the huge laboratory bench and staggered in the direction of the brilliant professor.

‘You are my Superman!’ squealed Winterstein, ‘Look at yourself in the mirror! See how beautiful you are! You have all the best qualities of several humans all rolled into one!’

‘You fool,’ roared the monster, as he staggered towards the mirror. ‘I am an ugly monster, not made in the image of God but in the image of the idiot Winterstein! How shall I ever find a wife?’

‘You are made from all the very best organs,’ squealed Winterstein excitedly, ‘all working in perfect harmony’

‘They are all working against each other,’ bellowed the monster, ‘I’m in the most terrible agony.’ So saying the monster picked up little Winterstein and hurled him off the museum roof, where he met his death by crashing into the Freedom Statue, which remains to this day with broken chains.

And then Winterstein’s Monster leapt down from the museum roof and into the city, where people screamed and threw stones when they saw him coming. So he ran all the way to Zumbubwe, where One-Party Monsters are better understood.

And for the next week a strange sickly smell of formaldehyde pervaded the entire city of Kusala, so much so that the government had to put out a statement that the chemical had been found leaking from all Zombiebeef products, and that all the directors had been arrested.

And that was the last time that anybody tried to re-introduce the one-party state in Zombieland.

            

Passport Problem

Passport Problem

We were having a sundowner on the veranda when round the corner sauntered Sara’s cousin Kelvin. ‘My God!’ squealed Sara, as she hugged him. ‘Is it really you! What are you doing here? Why didn’t you say you were coming? How did you find us? Are you back for good?

That was more than a month ago. The very next morning he set off on the bus to Lundazi to visit his project, as he called it. For the past twenty years he’d been sending money back to his sister to build his retirement home, and now he wanted to have a look at it. ‘Be prepared to be disappointed,’ Sara had said. ‘Nowadays people are hungry, and can easily eat an entire house.’

‘Not my sister Enela,’ said Kelvin, ‘she’s the one who brought me up.’

‘Are you still married to that Malaysian woman?’ Sara asked.

‘That’s another long story,’ said Kelvin sadly.

It was a full forty years ago since Kelvin had disappeared into the melting pot of Glasgow, where he finally became Scotland’s only Zambian Glaswegian bus driver.

He had promised to visit us on his way back from Lundazi, But some three weeks passed and he didn’t return. ‘Maybe he’s found a new wife in Lundazi,’ said Sara. ‘There’s a few there who wouldn’t mind the inconvenience of a rich Zambian Glaswegian bus driver.’

But then, a week ago, he reappeared, dusty, dirty, unshaven and exhausted. ‘Good God Kelvin!’ I said, ‘What happened? Did they think you were a ghost? A witch? You found no house at all? We warned you!’

‘Nothing like that,’ he said, as he slumped into a chair. ‘Everything was fine in Lundazi, Enela is living in my house with her grandchildren, and the whole village welcomed me with a big feast. But I came back with no spare time to visit you, and had to rush straight to the airport. That was a week ago!’

‘A week ago! So why are you still here? What happened? Where have you been?’

‘Passport problem!’ he exclaimed. ‘Immigration confiscated it! And then locked me up!’

‘What, confiscated a British passport?’

‘No, I still have my Zambian passport. If I’d had a British passport I’d have been alright!’

‘So what was wrong with it?’

‘They asked me where my parents were born, and I said in Mzuzu.’

‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ said Sara.

‘They said I must have obtained it by dubious means, and confiscated it. Then they confiscated my cell phone and computer, and threw me in the cells.’

‘Your name must have been on their list,’ said Sara.

‘That’s how it turned out,’ said Kelvin. ‘They kept asking me about the Zambian Warthog, and insisting that I wrote stories for the Warthog, and demanded details of the identity of all the other journalists. It seems that one of the journalists they were looking for is also called  Kelvin Nhlane. After a week I got out on a police bond of K500, pending further investigations, but they’re still holding my passport. So I’m stuck here.’

‘Why didn’t you contact us?’ asked Sara.

‘I told you, they confiscated my phone and computer.’

‘You were entitled to one phone call, we could have got you a lawyer.’

‘They laughed in my face and said criminals don’t have human rights.’

‘We must apply to the court,’ I said. ‘We can get a judge to order that your passport is returned.’

‘What!’ laughed Sara. ‘All our judges are all hiding under their desks or under their beds. Even if you got a court order, the Immigration officials would tear it up in front of you.’

‘Haven’t you got connections?’ asked Kelvin.

‘Obviously not,’ I laughed. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t be living in this little house in Chainda.’

‘What about my cousin Dingiswayo?’ asked Kelvin. ‘The one you said is an odious little bootlicker?’

‘OK,’ said Sara. ‘We don’t usually have anything to do with him. But I’ll take you to his place, and maybe he can just have a quiet word with somebody, and everything can be sorted out. Obviously there has been a terrible mistake.’

So Sara took him to Dingiswayo’s mansion in New Kasama, and they took him in, and took over the problem. Imagine our surprise when, only a couple of days later, we picked up our copy of The Post to find a screaming front page headline ‘Opposition Journalist Apologizes to Cycle Mata: Rogue journalist confesses his sins and pledges loyalty,’ accompanied by a picture of the Zambian Glaswegian bus driver, now dressed up in a new bling bling suit.

‘Maybe that’s the way to go,’ I suggested. ‘Don’t try to contradict their nonsense – just go along with it.’

‘If Kelvin can find his way through the Glasgow traffic,’ laughed Sara, ‘maybe he can wriggle out of this!’

The next the day the front page of The Post had a picture of Kelvin shaking hands with the dreaded Splinter Kapimbe, under the heading Internationally Renowned Journalist Joins the Party.

The next day was even better: Kelvin Nhlane appointed Member of Parliament and Minister of Propaganda.

And we knew the problem was completely solved when we picked up The Post the following day and read Nhlane Leads Delegation to UK: Nhlane to instruct British government on freedom of the press.

Two days later Sara got an e-mail from Kelvin: ‘Phew! Thanks for your help. Am back in Glasgow, driving my bus.’  

  

Ukwa's Wives

Ukwa’s Wives

       It was Sunday morning, and as good Christians Sara and I were at the Cathedral of the Very Cross.

      ‘The lesson this morning,’ intoned the bishop, ‘is taken from the Gospel according to St Kalaki, Chapter 13, Verses 23-37...’

     In those days Babylon was ruled over by the Great King Ukwa, who was so powerful that he had a harem of sixty wives. For in those days the power of a ruler was measured by the size of his harem.

     And in neighbouring Samaria there ruled the talkative little King Mumbo Jumbo. But there was great trouble and tension between these two kingdoms because King Ukwa had the habit of stealing wives from the harem of King Mumbo, which made Mumbo look foolish and powerless.

     Ukwa would send one of his indunas, dressed as a woman, into Mumbo’s harem to whisper into the ear of one of the most beautiful wives, saying ‘Your king is old and fat and past it. Come to the harem of the Great King Ukwa and he will make you a princess, and give you a mansion, and you shall eat dates and drink wine and enjoy all the fleshly pleasures three times a night.’

     ‘In those days,’ I whispered to Sara, ‘If a rich man had fifty wives, then a poor man had none!’

     ‘So what has changed?’ she hissed.

     And so Ukwa became more powerful as Mumbo became more powerless. As Babylon grew bigger and bigger, Samaria shrank smaller and smaller. And it came to pass one day that Mumbo suddenly lost his temper. He stood up from his little throne and declared to his few old seedy indunas ‘I have had enough! This is war! We march on Babylon! We shall storm Ukwa’s castle! I shall recapture my stolen wives!’

     But when Mumbo Jumbo banged on the door of the castle, the malonda just laughed and said ‘Go away!’ And when he tried to climb the castle wall he found that his arms and legs were too short, his belly too fat and his fingers too greasy. So instead he turned around to address the puzzled onlookers, saying ‘I am storming Ukwa’s castle to rescue my stolen wives.’

     And everyday crowds came to watch the enraged little Mumbo make his ineffectual and impotent attacks upon the castle wall. He punched at the mighty wall with his little fists, shouting ‘It is written in the scriptures that thou shalt not steal another man’s wife!’ And the crowd would laugh and shout back ‘Just blow your trumpet and the walls will all fall down.’

     ‘In those days,’ I whispered to Sara, ‘There were no TV programmes to entertain them.’.

     ‘Same as today,’ she replied.

     And this went on day after day, until some people stopped laughing and began to weep for the sad plight of poor little Mumbo, with stolen wives inside the wall. Then Ukwa’s crafty advisor, the insidious little Splinter Kapimbe, spoke to King Ukwa, saying ‘O Great King, he is beginning to evoke sympathy from the mob. Better to let him inside. Then he will have a bigger problem than how to get in. He will have the problem of how to get out.’

     ‘Verily I say unto you,’ agreed King Ukwa, ‘that a man standing outside the castle is a very different man after he has walked inside the castle.’

     And the wise words of King Ukwa proved to be a great prophesy. For when Mumbo Jumbo came before Ukwa he stopped shouting and screaming. Instead he knelt before King Ukwa saying ‘Let us not quarrel, O Great King. Let us not differ over a few wives when we kings have so much in common. I’m sure we can come to an agreement beneficial to both parties. My only little problem was that we did not agree on a mutually acceptable arrangement before you took my wives.’

     ‘If we are going to agree on the harem,’ said King Ukwa sternly, ‘then you must first understand that my harem is not merely a place for decadent entertainment. It is also essential to the running of the state. The job of my wives is to chatter about politics during the daytime and confine their fleshly pleasures to the night.’

     ‘An early form of parliament,’ I whispered to Sara.

     ‘Or the National Assembly Motel,’ she replied.

     ‘It’s not that you can’t have my wives,’ whined Mumbo Jumbo. ‘Of course we can share our wives, provided we agree to share our power, and then we can overcome these divisions and unify the nation. So I suggest you just make me your vice, and then all can be resolved!’

     ‘Verily I say unto you,’ declared the king, ‘You have made an excellent suggestion. There is no better place for vice than my harem. We shall declare the unified state of Babylon, with you in charge of the harem and myself in charge of the government!’

     ‘Very good,’ declared Mumbo Jumbo, now standing up and puffing out his flabby little chest. ‘In fact I was never a real Samaritan, I have always really been a Babylonian at heart.’

     But Mumbo Jumbo had been tricked. He had entirely overlooked one tradition that was common to both Samaria and Babylon – that only a castrated man can take charge of a harem. And so, with a single slice of the knife, his position was gained but his power was lost.

     Now the bishop looked up from the Good Book. ‘What is this story telling us? It is telling us that we must be willing to sacrifice ourselves for national unity.’

     ‘It is telling us,’ I whispered to Sara, ‘that we should beware of being given what we have always wanted.’

     ‘More than that,’ Sara replied, ‘it is telling us that a sell-out always gets his just deserts.’