O' ye Fastidious Generation, GBM and the Constitution

My friends are from mid-twenties to early thirties. I went to School with some of them, work with most of them and go to church with others still. I have noticed that a common thread unites us in that we are extremely hard to please or fastidious if you like. Nothing satisfies us, be it our jobs, education, salaries, cars and so forth. We are ever looking for that s"something better".

Take for example my table during the budget dinner hosted by ZICA at the Taj Pamodzi Hotel last year. It comprised of people my age give or take three years, all smartly dressed and coming from some reputable institutions such as renowned banks and quasi-government entities. Yet as soon as the niceties were out of the way and we had gotten comfortable with each other we began complaining about our jobs. There was always something to complain about the job, it was either not paying enough (in about 90% of the cases) or the boss was an incompetent bumbling fool. In almost all the cases the inevitable conclusion was that we needed better jobs. Surprisingly, even colleagues from organisations that are rumored to be better paying appeared not satisfied by their jobs.

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Once the job topic had been exhausted we moved on to other matters that depressed us. On education, those with Masters Degrees expressed frustration at their attempts to obtain Phds while those with Bachelors yearned for Masters Degrees not to mention a sundry other professional qualifications. Inevitably the conversation moved on to marriages and love relationships. The married were desperately trying to get out or radically alter theirs while the unmarried had their own issues. In short no one was content with what they had.

This lack of contentment is a theme that keeps playing itself out almost on a daily basis among those that are of my generation. Our meetings are one big therapy session. I have discussed this state of affairs with some friends whose views can be summarized in one of the following categories:

• That there is nothing wrong with the current perceived discontent with many young people but is rather a symptom of their ambition to succeed and better themselves. It should therefore be encouraged and given a platform to thrive. People should just learn to live with its consequences such as job-hopping and credential-ism (the relentless pursuit of qualifications without gaining or even using the attendant skills but simply to impress others or one's importance real of perceived) knowing that it is all done in search of fulfillment. Put differently it just someone taking a step upwards on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
• Western cultural influence as propagated through the media is distorting our view of society and as such causing us to have unrealistic expectations. This certainly is the view that one of my former University of Zambia lecturers takes. During my final year, he kept tempering our expectations by constantly reminding us that our dreams of a huge house and car upon graduating may take long to be fulfilled and in some cases may even never be met. That despite being armed with various degrees, graduates faced a harsh reality once they left university. He would follow this advice with an anecdote about an engineering graduate who ended up doing menial jobs for years before landing the job of his choice. Clearly there is more than an element of truth to his words as I personally know people who have struggled to find gainful employment from the time we graduated in 2008. This unrealistic expectation this school of thought holds, is the very reason for the apparent breakdown of typically and traditionally African institutions such as the extended family. It is also the reason why marriages are now being trivialized. It follows that many are in jobs that they simply consider as stepping stones and will not rest until the land their dream job. Contrast that with a now dying attitude of "working your way upwards" this can be called "job-hopping your way upwards".
• This is all because of serious lapses in our education system. The shambolic organisation of the career guidance unit in most schools has made it difficult to people to pursue a career they are passionate about. As such many are stuck in jobs they don't love and you cannot blame them for doing everything in their power to get out of such jobs. You also cannot expect them to speak positively about their jobs. 

As with many similar issues, the answer either lies somewhere in between or is severely muddled by points from both sides of the spectrum that it is not possible to pin down. There are some (like me) who never received proper career guidance and even grew up not knowing what they wanted to do with their lives. They ended up studying whatever was available and are now hoping from one job to the other in a bid to find their life's vocation.

 Others have now only discovered what they are passionate about but are unfortunately stuck in their present jobs. No amount of money or benign bosses would make them love their jobs. 

It is perhaps true that virtues of loyalty especially to an employer are these days seen to be inhibiting and by extension marriages to jobs no longer hold the place that they did say 30 years ago. As I have heard many people say "its not my father's company". Again you can argue that is a necessary by-product of an efficiently functioning capitalist mechanism.

To borrow the great American Comedian Chris Rock's line of reasoning, you can never be satisfied with a job. To achieve satisfaction, you need a career. Something you can even do without being paid. Some might have already found their career, for others the search continues.

Let us move on to other things. 

And so it was refreshing to hear Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba (GBM) affirm that he resigned his minsiterial position as a sign of allegiance to his family. I don't believe him one bit, but I suppose he doesn't care. What I don't understand is the fuss about his resignation. Surely the World should not come to a standstill simply because GBM resigned his ministerial position. All of a sudden Kasama has become a hive of political activity churning out one saucy story after another. You have cops barricading certain radio stations, door to door campaigns and so forth. The Zambian politician is indeed a unique animal (and I mean unique in a bad way).

Meanwhile it seems the spirit of Eshu "The Confuser of men" has descended on the Patriotic Front.  The ball-juggling almost always out of breath Minsiter of Sport Honorable Chishimba Kambwili decided to give his fellow Member of Parliament a few choice words. Calling Honourable Chungu a "twit (has nothing to do with Twitter" and a former car thief and engaging in the sort of verbal exchange you wouldn't suspect a Minister capable of. But I suppose its all in a day's work for the PF who have shown a remarkable and most curious affinity towards lack of civility.

Let me end with a word on the constitution and I do this at the risk of sounding blasphemous. Civil society and the church gathered earlier in the week to pray for the release of the new constitution. I note that this is the second time that they have resorted to prayer to solve a problem whose solution has absolutely nothing to do with prayer. The other occasion being when a similar consortium gathered to pray against the removal of subsidies on fuel and maize but ended up being beaten by thugs sympathetic to the ruling party. I never bothered to watch the said prayers as I am of the view that they were a complete waste of time, not that I don't believe in God. 

It is this attitude towards religion that I find highly retrogressive. The whole "lets just pray and God will work out a miracle or in this case drop a constitution from the sky into our laps" business. We all know what and where the problem is. This whole maze or labyrinth named 'the constitution making process' is the biggest example of incompetence that ever was. The President has come out saying the process has been hijacked by individuals with dubious intentions, I would really like to know how and what those intentions are. Why pressure groups are going the route of prayer gatherings ( at great expense), instead of marching to Statehouse or picketing parliament beats me. 

I have officially given up on the constitution. In fact I am skeptical as to where it will be materially different from what we currently have. Just a pity that so much was spent on this process in terms of time and financial resources.

Shame.