Sunday Interview, CVs and Tribe

I really want to be fair with Honourable Chishimba Kambwili, Member of Parliament for Roan constituency and outspoken Minister of Information and Chief Government spokesperson. Admittedly, it is highly tempting not to jump on the bandwagon of popular opinion which seems to have cast Honourable Kambwili into the role of a pantomime villain, whom everyone loves to poke fun at stopping short of casting aspersions on his intellectual capacity. The man has not done himself any favours going by his recently developed public persona. That said, we need not be too hasty in judging the man and categorising anything emanating from his mouth under the “verbose but not important” column.

But then pantomime villains exist for a purpose, no more so than to offer the alternative to the hero or heroine. They offer the contrast, the black background colour if you will. To lull us all into the belief that at the end of the day we backed the right horse, and the deserved loser actually lost. Although to be honest, life soon teaches us that seldom if not never are things ever black and white, that perhaps the law of binaries can only apply in probability theory when dealing with mutually exclusive variables. Much as our collective clamouring for one dimensional villains and their one dimensional nemesis (mostly dressed in white and considerably better looking than the villain) needs to be satiated, life almost always does not work like that.

I think Cervantes’ character in that classic, “Don Quixote” realised that. Eventually leading to the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, to concede that right and wrong often is a matter of perspective. Obviously that is not to condone lawlessness but simply to caution that it is always better to understand before we can judge.

Watching Honorable Kambwili do his best against Grevazio Zulu on the Sunday interview on the national broadcaster the other night left me musing about the great metamorphosis that the Minister has undergone. And by that I talk about more than just the spectacles that he has taken to wearing now, nor the sari like white linen that was draped on his huge frame, or the glistening forehead and fat fingers jabbing away in the direction of Grevazio (whom he repeatedly called Gravazio) Zulu as he made his point. I talk about the political transformation of the man, his ideas and how he his viewpoint has changed now that he is in government. Of particular interest was how he has now come to find a great ally in the Public Order Act.

It is hard to believe that this is the same Honorable Kambwili who not too long ago and while in the opposition, took it upon himself to launch a protest against the closing of Luanshya mine and the resultant job losses from the same, choosing to march to statehouse for an audience with the then president dressed only in a Nkhrumah style cloth and a miners’ helmet (an act for which he earns my deepest respect even to this day). Followers of Zambian politics will agree with me that while it might be argued that the Honourable Minister of Information can be lacking in some areas, courage is not one of them. And this part of his genetic makeup was evident (some will say too evident) during Sunday Interview.

Much of what he said on the interview was the usual political stuff. Just a two odd moments that I wish to highlight.

Firstly I found it very odd that the Minister thought it wise to go to the interview armed with the resumes of ZESCO senior management. I can understand the eagerness of the government to try and explain away the power crisis currently gripping the nation and assure the nation that ZESCO’s incompetence has nothing to do with it. But to go to an interview armed with a wad of CVs and to even read them out, reeked of desperation to me. I know Honorable Kambwili loves his points succinctly made and is vehement when he defends his government’s record, but bringing in ZESCO senior management on national TV was always going to raise more questions than answers. Thankfully, Grevazio after eyeing the thick wad of CVs, and seeing that the minister seemed intent on reading each one of them, decided to move on from that line of questioning.

And then there was the allusion to a particular region of Zambia and its penchant for tribal politics, so much that even if “Jesus Christ stood against its preferred party, He would lose” which I thought was the lowest point of the interview.  I will be the first to admit that our voting as a whole remains split according to tribal lines, a fact that cannot be exclusively only attributed to that part of Zambia referred to by the Honorable Minister in his thinly veiled innuendo. If anything, that part of Zambia actually has a history of voting across tribal lines as evidenced by the 1991 general election results where the MMD had a strong performance in Southern Province.

The point is, tribal or regional voting in Zambia is a problem and one that will no doubt be seen even in this year’s election. What sentiments like those made by Honorable Kambwili during the Sunday interview do, is to entrench the feelings of “them against us” even further. I appreciate that tribalism is a complicated subject, however it feeds off remarks such as the ones expressed by Honorable Kambwili during the interview. The only conclusion I can draw from all of this is that Honorable Kambwili and his party have already given up on getting any votes from this “nameless” region.

Personally I am yet to be convinced regarding the merits, let alone the need for voting. In addition, I have been privileged enough to have traveled throughout Zambia. I have experienced first-hand the deep lines of distrust that exist between tribes and have also experienced first-hand how these same lines feed off overused cliché and stereotypes. I also know just how hard it is to educate away these mentalities.  But I will also be the first one to tell you that there are lots of people out there who do not care about tribe, they have married across tribal lines, settled in “strange” tribal lands and built business empires for the benefit “strange” tribal lands.

Yes tribe can be an issue if we want to make it that way, but its one which we can overcome. Therefore those that have the privilege of speaking to national audiences, the way Honourable Kambwili did, it would be better if that time is spent building rather than destroying; finding and elevating that which holds us together than that which divides us.

Happy 2016.