EDWARD MUMBI, MR TELEPHONE MAN, YOUR NUMBER 0966 744471 IS CONSTANTLY ENGANGED!
………………..MY LONG JOURNEY WITH A FIREBRAND POLITICIAN.
BY Davis Mataka.
About 40 years ago, a young engineer was seconded to the Mazabuka Telephone Exchange then under the Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (PTC). His name was Edward Mumbi.
His mission was to help sort out some of those nagging telephone blues that the growing town was facing. The services of a young were sourced and he seemed up to the task.
He was young and looked sharp.
All pumped up with biceps that looked like they could any time rip through the neat white short sleeved shirts that he was usually adorned in.
Some multi coloured engineering apparatus protruding from the neat white protective dust coat he only occasionally wore over his ever creasless attire. He seemed ready to take on the world and my word, did he dial a number.
He was one of the few learned guys we looked up to with envy. I heard he had just graduated from some prestigious engineering school in Europe or the USA. That you could evidently see in his swag.
Unlike others, his strong local accent did not miraculously metamorphis, like those wannabe self adopted guys who spent only 2 weeks holiday in the UK, courtesy of their Zambia Airways employee relatives, but came back faking cockney accents like they were first cousins of King George of England.
I remember from the talk in town, and you know how Mazabuka was, such a sleepy little town in the 80s , word went round that there was this guy who always brought the golf club bar down with his rounds of drinks on the house, when he prowled the joint, and of course the trunk telephone lines were no longer constantly enganged.
He was the kind of guy that you couldn’t resist but like. An older brother who had traversed the world and had all the juicy tales to tell.
I was then just a lad who at the time made it my business to know who was who in town and clearly I fitted under the wings of Mr. Mumbi’s tutorlage of life’s lessons.
He blended so well with everyone, he was the guy everyone wanted to be around. There were no dull moments with him as he lived his life with so much abandon.
Just as he had quietly appeared on the scene, he slithered out of Mazabuka and it is only weeks later that I learnt he had been given a higher assignment in Lusaka.
The next time I encountered Mr. Mumbi was a couple of months before he had that famous clash at a polling station with President Micheal Sata which was beamed on national television.
I was all grown up now, a respected scribe,and so was he, a tested and fiery politician. He was one of the founers of the Patriotic Front (PF) and served as Secretary General before he quit.
The tenacity he displayed against an equally aggressive political player in President Sata during that trancation aired on ZNBC was just a dose of what kind of a political animal Mr. Mumbi had become.
I was to yet again learn that this is a man who never shied away from a political fight or brewing conflict. An positive attribute he kept until his demise.
As a friend, my encounter with Mr. Mumbi in my formative and impressionable years as a young man paid off tremendously in my later years trying to find my feet in the sometimes brutal uncharted murky waters of journalism.
Following the historic win of President Sata over President Rupiah Banda in that epic election, fate again brought us together as two politically concious individuals who faced persecution for what we believed in and not defined by any criminal act committed under any circumstance.
I was, before I became Deputy Managing Director and head of Editorial at the Zamba Daily mail, assigned as Political and Diplomatc Editor at Times of Zambia.
I was, of course, the team leader of the Political section of one of Zambia’s foremost Public dailies and I bet you, I did not shy away from espousing the policies of the government of the day through their mouth-piece.
This role expectedly brought me mixed reviews. Many complementary and just as many others damning.
President Sata was not the type to keep away from newsrooms when aggrieved and many times I was left to stand toe to toe with the Cobra mimicking every move he made against me. His lethal venom I managed to duck sometimes.
But I was to pay one day.
My reward: Trumped up criminal charges and in and out of court room appearances for seven years.
Verdict: No case to answer.
On the other end, big brother Mumbi was going through a similar kind of hate campaign.He had been banished to police cells, his personal belongings ceased to the state and all that unsettling hogwash about some nondescript case. He was never charged.
It is during this time I realized what a true brother I had in this man.
For every single day that I languished in and out of court, all the mudslinging that went alongside some rogue press, painting me and others as criminals, Mr. Mumbi was steadfast.
Now do not get me wrong, and Iam saying this not for the first time. President Sata and I had a long standing good relationship spanning even before I was born. And undoubtedly Mr. Mumbi shared his own unique bond with him.
President Sata had a good relationship with my late grandfather Bishop Filimon Mataka of the Anglican church (1964-1980)They interacted closely even even with my my uncles before I was even born. Mr. Sata always reminded me about that fact when we encountered one another.
As for Mr Mumbi, he was SG of the PF and he and Mr. Sata forged that working relationship. He affectionately refered to him as “ka Ching” instead of King away from his earshot.
Mr. Sata always made that distinction very clear when he played his politics. He knew that beyond the politics, there were family bonds before. It was always his handlers who went for the Jagular.
Anyway, before the watchful scrutiny of observers and by standers , Mr. Mumbi never left my side. He and a band of his friends and relatives made sure that I remained ‘together’ during my decade long persecution, always offering me solace and helping me keep sane as I teetered between reality and emotional breakdown .
I remember vivdly how, during that painful period of my mothers’ passing, he and many faithfuls braved those howling cold June nights keeping vigil and always being the first to reignite the ebbing ambers of the logs. Ever consoling, ever helpful.
If you are African and you have ever been to a funeral before, you can never over emphasise the importance of that flame and the gathering around it over night.
He struck quite some conversation with my good old father around the fire talking about the good old days of sweet Mazabuka. My dad never ever forgot those nights and was devastated to hear about his passing.
To help me cope over those difficult political times, Mr Mumbi made sure that no day passed when we did not share lunches as long as we were both in town. Just to keep up with the latest political gossip and console one another.
We sampled quite a number of Nshima places in the city, staying away from the allure of the junk food craze of modern day society.
He understood what the word lonely meant after all those friends who masqueraded as brothers and sisters conveniently disappeared from our side and placed their phones on busy mode. Even some serving ministers in President Lungu’s government partook in those lunches, bought a plate or two for them.
Now, we were now political lepers and were not to be seen anywhere near them. Such is life Mr Mumbi would say, do not bother about them.
My relationship with Mr. Mumbi really surprised many because very few knew about the long friendship we shared from the Mazabuka days.
For instance very few will ever understand how, even as I menecingly towered quite a couple of inches over him in physical stature, and how I sported a whiter beared that he never had, he still had the exclusive audacity to wag his finger in my face and harangue me with unpalatables when I pissed him off. I would mockingly remain head down and unresponsive, much to his disdain.
Equally, many would hold their mouths in bated breath when I publicly lashed at him if I felt he had made a wrong political move, ordering him to rescind his decision as he mumbled some un audible excuse. All just wondered.
The many times I interacted with Mr. Mumbi over this long long period spanning close to four decades was always a learning process for me.
Even as he endured the pressures of life, never did he a little bit show that he was hurting. He always put up a bright face, always optimistic, always urging you on.
Amongst his friends, I could safely boast to be the few who had an undeclared truce with him. So much because we shared a special bond spiced with our long years of friendship and political comradaship.
In his later years, he took up farming and oh what a successful project it was. We drove along a couple of times to his farm resort in Mumbwa which he declared would be his retirement home.
He said he found alot of peace roaming amongst his crops, animals and birds. Fishing in the dam he personally dug out calmed his nerves so much that the hustles and bustles of the city seemed to immediatly dessipate like a morning dew.
For many of us who knew the family side of his life, we were ever fascinated at his complete dedication to his children. Never once did he abdicate his unflinching duty to the education of his offspring. Not even in the course of a social binge with us collegues would he ever delay a school run.
Until the very end, Mr. Mumbi also remained an astute political player, as Vice-president of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and a valuable member of the UPND Alliance.
He called a spade a spade even when he knew that some decisions bordering on his political survival could easily guarantee him a soft landing. He always chose what was right and towed the correct line.
Through some stroke of misfortune today, fate has brought us out to mourn. How will we mourn him?
We all have our little story to tell about a man who we love so much.
I can only tell my little bit of the long journey I had with my Hero, Our Hero.Tell your part.