Rupiah Banda: A study in greatness

                                                   

Young Rupiah Banda

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The Pilgrim, Friday March 18, 2022*

I’ve spent the week mulling over what I would write about former Zambian president, Rupiah Banda, who died of colon cancer at home last week Friday at the age of 85.

I grieved for the country and his family when I heard the news because I was one of many Zambians that watched the president with vicarious optimism as he weathered his debilitating bout with cancer. I had hoped for the best.

Just last year, I had written the Zambia Daily Mail special edition obituary of the great and inimitable Kenneth Kaunda.

But on the occasion of Rupiah Banda’s death, I’ve had to face the same literary struggles as I did when I jabbed my pen at KK’s life. The question that should be addressed is like a pesky refrain as I battle my own writer’s block: what is the best interpretation of RB’s life?

It’s not easy to write about RB and it is a no-brainer why this is the case. It’s not as easy as writing a banal social media essay about the corruption allegations that dogged the fourth president’s administration. Instead, the writer should consider the deceased president’s life as a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Banda was like the classic Zambian president we have to know: simple yet sophisticated. From Kaunda to Hakainde Hichilema, it’s not easy to write about any one of them.

Unlike other countries that have presidents who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, we have presidents who lived many lives before they became heads of state. We once had a leader who was a teacher, musician, intellectual and freedom fighter, and one who was a student leader, farmer, and accomplished hotshot lawyer before he took over the reins of power. That is Zambia for you.

As a diplomat, musician, sports administrator, businessman and politician, President Banda was exactly that as he perfectly sustained the tradition and perfectly embodied the concept of the Zambian president.

But since he died just before Youth Day, it’s important that lessons are hewed out of his large life and decoded for posterity. Youths should ask the pertinent question: what made the man tick? What can we learn from him?

President Hichilema himself has already seen the need to guide the Zambian youth, who once seemed to be incorrigibly laid-back with a penchant for handouts from politicians. The President has urged young people to embrace a culture of hard work, which we could clearly see was exemplified by Rupiah Banda when he was a young man.

Value education

There is an interesting fact about the young Rupiah Banda, which has not received attention from journalists in the country: it was the role education and Kaunda—surprisingly—played in his life.

Ostensibly a careerist student who was interested in politics, Banda first distinguished himself academically at Munali Secondary School and later at the University of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, which proved to be a veritable crucible for his intellectual engagement and curiosity.

But he did not stop in Ethiopia. As an ambitious student, he subsequently studied economic history at Lund University in Sweden through a scholarship facilitated by Kaunda.

Reflecting on the role played by Nordic countries like Sweden in the liberation of Southern Africa, Kaunda himself once remarked: “That is how we organized scholarships for some of our students. For example, Alex Chikwanda, who was in my government for a long time, studied in Sweden. Rupiah Banda came under the same scheme. I organized those scholarships.”

It can be noted, against this background, that a strong academic foundation had set the stage for Banda’s future exploits in the sports, business, and political worlds.

But what is even more important to note were the earned academic scholarships that stood him in good stead as he moved from one university to another. They clearly were products of a personal culture that took up education with the seriousness it deserves.

If indeed so-called handouts partly have been the undoing of the Zambian youth, it’s about time that we turned to the young life of Rupiah Banda for counsel: with school, you never go wrong.

It’s important that the young Zambian takes a cue from a man of this stature. We need as many young people to make the right investment and the right sacrifice at the right time.

The last time I checked, the deceased Zambian president was less than 30 years old when he obtained his degree in Sweden in 1964. This demonstrates one thing to young Zambians who wish to emulate his life: it’s possible. 

*This column is published every Friday in Zambia's best-selling newspaper, the Zambia Daily Mail