Power, People, People Power

This giant billboard stands haughtily in the middle of Mpongwe- if you could call this the middle. For some reason this billboard reminds me of a book I read some years back whose title I can't even remember. In fact even the story line has grown foggy over the years. All I remember is that it contained these huge metallic tripods. This billboard's three steel legs, powerfully jutting from the ground portend some of the defiance associated with those tripods I read about years back..

Behind the billboard stack upon stack of maize bags await selling while the dust twirls around them. A tired looking scale bathes in dust just in front of the scale while bored looking men converse in silent tones, once in a while casting an upward glance every time some vehicle rolls by. A truck comes to a stop just beside the pile of Maize, a young man whose body is in dire need of a bath, gets up and lazily stretches his arms. He talks to the truck driver who doesn't even get out of the vehicle but just sticks his head out of the truck while furiously chewing what I can only imagine is bubble-gum. The chewing is only interrupted with him talking and shaking his head in disagreement.

Reluctantly the young maize seller accepts the price, gesticulates to his mates who swing into motion, hauling maize bags into the truck.

The imposing billboard broadcasts its message to all and sundry. Ministry of Local Government and Housing, it proclaims: Decentralization, Empowering the People, is its resounding message, if sound could be measured by the thickness of the paint and largeness of the font. So what does it all mean is the question I am left with.

The truth is I don't know and everyone I asked in Mpongwe seemed not to know. To many of the traders huddled along the strip of tarmac, the only use for the giant billboard was for shade from the scorching sun. The giant legs are pissed on once so often and life goes on.

But what about the defiant proclamation that seeks to empower "the people". Who are "the people" being empowered? Do they know it, what evidence of power do they have?

It certainly isn't the young men who huddle in groups, watching cars zip by Mpongwe road. The young men who share in loud dry laughter, while the push each other playfully. The young men who take turns swigging from some brown plastic bottle whose contents have a sickening putrid smell about them.


It is certainly not the kids who I see walking to school with mucous clogged noses. Their cracked soles used to the stones and pebbles along the road.  "The people" are certainly not the two youths who have just sold their maize, their hard earned sweat on the cheap. It certainly isn't the young man peddling bananas and cassava using a weather beaten bicycle. I greet him to reveal brown teeth engaged in an enormous tussle with his lips as he in vain attempts to keep them wrapped in his mouth. But every now and then, they naughtily keep breaching the perimeter.

Who do politicians refer to when they use the word "people". I have of late heard the phrase "people driven" being thrown around with such reckless abandon you would think it was a soccer ball. There is "people driven" constitution somewhere, a "people" driven developmental agenda and a "people" driven investment culture, and all thee other issues in the name of "the people" that I have lost count. But really who are the people?

For sure it isn't the young man who is too poor to wait for the government maize floor price in order for him to sell his produce. Even while the minister of agriculture announces the price in Lusaka, poverty-fueled defiance has all but ebbed his patience away. He sells his produce on the cheap, oblivious to announcements about floor prices.  It isn't the little girl who walks barefoot to and from school every day for two kilometres. It surely isn't the pregnant woman who has to combine herding goats and drawing water in some unsafe river three kilomtres from their home. It isn't the young man, seating on a tree stump by the roadside, picking his nose as he watches different cars drive by. It isn't the elderly women and men, forced to take care of their grandchildren orphaned by HIV and Aids.

So I ask you giant billboard, your legs stuck in the red Mpongwe soil. Who are you empowering? What do you mean when you say "Empowering the people? Actually I have been meaning to ask all our politicians, whether ruling or opposition, "who are the people?!!"