A DIARY OF ZAMBIA’S PRESIDENTS: OUT OF MY BASHFUL EYES
By GEORGE CHOMBA
After bidding fare-thee-well to Rupiah Bwezani Banda, the fourth President of Zambia who died on March 11, 2022, I had a self-soul searching session about my interaction with the former Head of State.
But this ended up to be a reflection of over the last three decades of interacting with Zambia’s Presidents so far.
However, if you ask me about ‘dancing’ with either President Hakainde Hichilema or his predecessor, Edgar Lungu, I will plead suffering from amnesia.
Since the two still mingle with us, their stories are for the President’s men to confirm or deny.
All I can say is that it has been an enjoyable journalism work career, interacting directly or indirectly with State House job holders.
I guess it is true what mentors say about journalists; that they can dine with the poor in one moment and the Kings and Queens in the next hour.
Just how do you explain this life which struggled in the dark ‘continent’ of Kitwe’s Kamatipa township in the 1970’s to later relocate to Lusaka’s Woodlands near State House and then years later in the profession to attend a gathering of over hundred Heads of States at the United Nations in New York in 2015?
In this journey, sharing meals whether privately or in open space with all Heads of State of Zambia, has not been an underground operation. It has been a reality.
I have travelled with some locally and other Presidents internationally in pursuit of the product called news which is the fruit of my profession.
For example, when others discuss Konkola Copper Mines and its challenge, my memory lane drives me to the third President of Zambia Levy Mwanawasa when I covered him in Durban, South Africa.
This is when I broke the news that the investor in KCM, Anglo American Corporation, was pulling out of Zambia without leaving an exit package to allow for the operations of the mine.
At the World Economic Forum in South Africa, Dr Mwanawasa was upset that the Frederick Chiluba’s administration had not signed an Exist Clause for compensation in case of an abrupt Anglo American withdrawal from the investment.
There I was as a reporter with Zambia Daily Mail jumping on to a lead story of a major investor pulling out of a rich copper mine.
This was however not the beginning of my interaction with Mr Mwanawasa.
He was Mr Chiluba’s Vice President at Government House, opposite Ndeke Hotel which is now Chrismar Hotel was a journalist’s playground.
Unlike now when Ministers and the top two rarely have official meetings at their official residents, the MMD leaders attracted home working visits where journalists joined in toasting wine and breaking bread some after the change of Government from the Dr Kenneth Kaunda of UNIP to Mr Frederick Chiluba of MMD.
That is what has been from October 1991 when I joined the profession, a month before Dr Kenneth Kaunda left the State House after Mr Frederick Chiluba emerged victorious in the multi-party general election.
To start the journey with Mr Chiluba in the new culture, I was perched on one of the statue lions at the Supreme Court as the new Head of State read his acceptance speech on that November 1991 inauguration day.
Mr Chiluba was making a solemn promise to Zambians that freedom had come in the midst of a liberalized social, economic and political set-up.
He was not as hypnotizing as one Kenneth David Kaunda.
Talk about Dr Kaunda and those who knew him as KK, would confess that the first President of Zambia possessed some magical attraction around him.
Indeed, the first President possessed a hypnotic charm which made the public pay attention.
In July 1979, when with friends we vowed not to wave at KK as his motorcade drove on Independence Avenue to State House after welcoming Queen Elizabeth at the then Lusaka International Airport, I was to outdo others as my hand went up faster at the sight of the President of Zambia.
This was before I joined the profession of pushing pens and note books.
As a journalist, when I joined the department of Zambia Information Service under the Ministry of Information, it was evident that Dr Kaunda was a workaholic.
Maybe it was because he had set multi-party election for October 31, 1991 but to be honest, there was no playing under KK’s presidency, especially for a young man like me working in the press office.
I can confidently say the press office has been devalued but back then in our days, it was the first point of call for Presidential assignments and other ministerial public appearances.
The press office had a diary in which all government press assignments were recorded and the press officer on duty was expected to ensure coverage.
This office brought me in full contact with State House and I would end up in the midst of seasoned journalists covering assignments ranging from breakfast meetings, lunch, to dinner engagements of Dr Kaunda.
This did not happen once but every day of Kenneth Kaunda’s remaining days in State House.
On October 31, 1991, Dr Kaunda voted from the State House polling station and on this day, I hold the bragging rights with few other journalists having had the last lunch with Dr Kaunda after he played his golf on the lawns of plot one.
As they say, the curtains closed for Dr Kaunda and in entered Fredrick Chiluba, as second President of Zambia.
There was no Constitutional provision of a grace period of seven days before a new head of State takes oath of office and therefore as soon as Dr Kaunda had conceded defeat, then the Chief Justice was on the Supreme Court entrance with Mr Chiluba holding the Bible.
The initial days and weeks of Mr Chiluba’s were not as busy as Dr Kaunda.
From the press office of the Zambia Information Service, the first call around 07:30 hrs was to State House, which remained friendly in the early days to relax.
After being transferred to Kalulushi as District Information Officer, State House become distant until Joshua Mutisa led Copperbelt members to embark on the third term bid for Dr Frederick Chiluba.
When I splashed the first the first story of the third term bid for Dr Chiluba, it also signed my returned to Lusaka under the umbrella of Zambia Daily Mail who offered me a job.
Dr Chiluba’s bid failed and in came Mr Levy Mwanawasa and this is how I ended up covering him in South Africa and later in Angola on a State Visit.
I was News Editor of the Zambia Daily Mail when Dr Levy Mwanawasa died in Paris, France and the announcement was made live on national television by Vice President Rupiah Bwezani Banda amidst a bucket full of tears.
Mr Banda was to become the fourth President of Zambia and when he was invited to officiate at Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Show in Bulawayo, the air ticket was in my hands to offer coverage.
It is from Bulawayo that I joined President Rupiah Banda’s entourage to become one of the few Zambian journalists to know and see his birth place in Miko, Gwanda in an area of Gold mining.
Mr Banda, popularly known as RB was later to earn the shortest serving Zambia’s head of State when he won the presidency in 2008 and lost it to Michael Chilufya Sata in 2011.
I will not bore you that Michael Sata was a friend when he was Senior Governor at Lusaka City Council and I was a dramatist in the Council Theatre Club.
I will also not tell you that two weeks before Mr Michael Sata won the presidency, he stormed one of the Zambia Daily Mail editorial meeting where I was present to shout down the Chief Executive Officer for allegedly concocting a story about him.
Mr Sata was so confident such that during the encounter he warned that Zambia Daily Mail staff never knew their next President which would be him as fifth President of Zambia.
Well, Zambia Daily Mail sued Mr Sata for company trespass and demanded some billions kwacha but after two weeks, only the Courts of Law can tell what happened to the legal suit.
As earlier stated, President Hichilema and his predecessor Edgar Lungu are reserved for another day, whenever it comes.
For now, this is the edited interaction out of my bashful eyes of Zambia’s first five Presidents.