HOW MWANAWASA’S ROMANTIC WALK THROUGH THE GOLF COURSE WAS DISRUPTED
We often think of Presidents as having total power and control, but this rare excerpt from the book: Levy Patrick Mwanawasa: An Incentive for Posterity (2009), By Amos Malupenga, shows the heavy personal cost of leadership.
The late President Mwanawasa once tried to escape the artificiality of State House by holding his wife’s hand from Nkwazi House, walk through the golf course, and simply sit on the grass like a normal couple before walking back to Nkwazi House.
What happened next shows just how little control a President actually has over his own life.
Read the excerpt below from the above cited book on page 115
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The artificiality of life at State House
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Mwanawasa missed the life of an ordinary family man. While he
appreciated the highly protected environment in which he lived, he
yearned for the ease with which he had lived his life before assuming
the Office of President of Zambia.
He recounted:
When I retire as President, I would want to see my children come home
and prepare me a meal instead of my food being prepared by workers
all the time. In other words, I would want to live like a human being.
Everything is so artificial in State House. Everything is done for me. The
only thing I do is come to the office, write letters, see people, give directions and see to it that the government is being run properly.
When I come out of the house, there are security men who open the
door for me. They take me to the office and when I leave the office they
lead me to the car. There is no time for relaxation.
There was a time I tried to walk from Nkwazi [the President’s official residence in State House] to State House through the golf course. There were a good number of security people who followed me behind. That is not how a normal human being lives.
You have no control over your life and you lose your privacy.
You know, I was walking with my wife hand-in-hand. So when we
arrived, we wanted to sit on the grass.
Suddenly, there were officers who came. Some brought the chairs and said, ‘No, sir, you sit here.’
But we wanted to sit on the grass and our intention was to walk back to Nkwazi House because it is not always that I walk with my wife. I was enjoying holding her hands, but they brought a motor vehicle in the golf course, so we didn’t walk back as planned.
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Picture caption: President Mwanawasa and his wife, Maureen, sharing a moment in front of Nkwazi House after an intimate conversation with author Amos Malupenga in 2004.
Look closely at this photo. Even here, the President could not fully exercise his power. He found himself entirely at the mercy of the author and veteran photographer, Thomas Nsama, who micro-managed and dictated these exact posing gestures for the Presidential couple.
It is a perfect visual reminder of Mwanawasa’s famous words: “Everything is so artificial in State House… You have no control over your life and you lose your privacy.”