The Pilgrim, February 10, 2023*
Yet again—and again and again—it feels like we’re already
in the silly season. Tribal talk, which one would relegate to election
campaigns, seems to have reared its ugly head in the country. Rogue elements in
opposition political parties won’t just stop with their tribalism.
We’re so fragile as a country that we’re suddenly beginning
to link tribe to everything that happens in daily life.
I see it on social media, for example, when clearly
ill-intentioned people insinuate that a mere government reshuffle is tribal.
Perhaps the most important culprit here is the self-styled
politician Chilufya Tayali. I mean the overbearing social media influencer who
likes to have a brash with the law, whose allegedly estranged wife is Ethiopian.
Recently, when President Hakainde Hichilema’s press aide
Anthony Bwalya was removed from his position, Tayali went up in arms.
Commenting on the news in his January 25 Meta post, Tayali
wrote: “…we might need to apologize to [Mr] Kambwili. This tribalism is too
much.”
In a separate post on the same day, he wrote: “Truth be
told, most of us from the Bemba clans are useful idiots to be used by others
and they dump us at their convenience.”
I want you to see how incendiary those remarks are. And I
want to show you, as this column moves along, why I resent such tribal talk.
I personally descend from the Mambwe people of Northern
Province and men of my ilk are referred to as Mbala Mafias. Though I clearly
don’t delight in the appellation—and I’ll tell you why—Mambwes, as victims of
tribal talk, are perceived to be relentless troublemakers.
I’m digressing a little bit here, but some say the Mambwe
Mafia term was launched into popular parlance by President Kenneth kaunda
reportedly by dint of playful reference to the late Ronald Penza.
It would seem Penza fit the bill just because on July 7,
1971, as an outspoken student leader at the University of Zambia, mobilized
students to protest the French government’s move approving the supply of
advanced military weapons such as Mirage fighter jets to apartheid South
Africa.
Of course, I won’t write about the exploits of Wila
D’Israeli Mung’omba, Dean Mung’omba and Dr. Mbita Chitala because not only is
that beyond the scope of this column, but I’m also not trying to buttress the
Mambwe Mafia or any other stereotype.
I want to point out that the tribalism which we preoccupy
ourselves with as Zambians is nothing other than a fixture of the imagination
and a by-product of bad socialization. We’re common in more ways than we
realize.
You see, the insinuation that a particular Zambian tribe is
cunning, selfish, or domineering disintegrates on close inspection when you
look through your own life experiences.
When I went to UNZA and met Zambians of all kinds, there
was always this bigot who thought that the Bembas were supremacists or that the
Tonga ate alone, or that the Lozis were damn clannish!
But despite me being Mambwe, the person who fostered my
academic career at UNZA was none other than Dr. Basil Hamusokwe, a simply
wonderful Tonga man. It was also Dr. Joseph Moola, a highly intelligent and
accomplished Lozi lawyer, who generously saved me from penury and introduced me
to the sporadic delights of Lusaka life, and the possibilities of a good
education. Folks, they never bothered about my tribe.
It was also a Tonga media academic, Roberta Muchangwe, who
provided a platform for me to exercise my editorial abilities when I was
appointed managing editor of UNZA’s teaching newspaper, Lusaka Star.
And when I was starving at UNZA, it was my Lozi and Tonga
brothers on the other side of the room who came to my rescue.
I can’t remember how many times my own people have denied
me help. And my experience is that people of all types are evenly distributed
on either side of the spectrum. There is an equal number of bad and good people
in all tribes.
I’m using Tonga and Lozi examples because unscrupulous
individuals like Tayali want to condemn these people to an awful sense of what
I might call “Tribal Fragility” by making them look like the bad tribes of
Zambia, especially now that the president himself is Tonga.
Folks, there has never been a time when I believed that
tribalism exists. To me it doesn’t because not only have I never seen the
wickedness of a particular tribe, but also because even if I saw it, I would
rather focus on the good and work toward a better Zambia.
Entrenched tribalism, like racism, is a learned behaviour
which can and must be unlearned. The power rests in the human mind to see and
create good.
The sensitization should not start and end with this
column, but it must continue in your own home. Teach your children to love and
respect others, and to learn to experience the love of strangers.
Tell them that if you’re open-minded, not only will Tongas
and Lozis love you, but also whites, Indians and Asians, as they have done with
my man Victor Kalalanda.
*This column is published every Friday in Zambia's leading
newspaper, the Zambia Daily Mail
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