Did you know that Enoch Kavindele underwent circumcision in the village without anesthesia just to prove that he was being turned from a boy to a young man?
Amos Malupenga:
Thank you for the opportunity at last after pushing for this interview for a long time. In fact, from the time when you were still Republican vice-president…
Enoch Kavindele:
Thank you very much for coming, Amos. It’s been quite a while from the time we talked about this interview. But it could have been most inappropriate for me to give this interview whilst the petition was pending in the Supreme Court for the reasons that you will come to learn later.
I also thank you for bringing some rains here. We haven’t had some rains for a long time. Where I come from, the fact that you have come and it is raining is a good omen.
Amos Malupenga:
For a start, I will ask for your full names and a brief background in terms of when and where you were born. I know your background is quite long but you try to summarise it.
Enoch Kavindele:
My full names are Enoch Percy Chipalo Kavindele. I was born in clinic number one, Kantanshi township in Mufulira on the 7th of July, 1950. I am the first born in our family and I had four other brothers and one sister. Three brothers are dead. I am basically a businessman, a politician, a farmer and a pilot. The name Percy was given to me to signify that I had become of age after the mukanda [circumcision traditional] ceremony. For the tribes that undergo the ceremony, it is custom that a further name from the original is added on. In my particular case, the name Percy was adopted from an expatriate colleague of my father called Percy Roberts.
My father’s names were Abraham Simisi Mampale. The name Kavindele is, in fact, a nick-name that my father acquired from the community, especially the North-Westerners as a result of the job he did on the mines. He was one of the first people to go to Mufulira mine to work as a miner from North-Western Province. Earlier in his career, he worked underground but he had an accident and he was brought to the surface. And his job at the surface was that of a meter reader. He went around expatriate mine houses to read records of their water and electricity consumption. That’s a job he did for many years. In most languages spoken in the North-Western and Western provinces, “Vindele” means white persons and, therefore, Kavindele means “one who belongs to the whites.” This is because in his job as a meter reader he interacted mostly with white people. As a result, a nickname was coined which stuck. So, although his official documents had his original names, everybody else in Mufulira just called him Kavindele. As a miner, his Chingolongolo or identity number was 20079.
My mother, Senda Maria, like most women, was a housewife but her grandmother worked for the mines as a traditional midwife. She was very famous and it was believed that she could assist women who could not bear children to be able to conceive using traditional medicine.
In terms of my education, I went to Mufulira Mine School. After a while, I became of age and it was decided by my father that I be sent home to Kabompo as per custom to go for the mukanda ceremony. So, I was dispatched to a place called Kabulamema Mission which was an orphanage where my mother’s elder brother was a teacher. Whilst there, I went through the mukanda traditional ceremony without anesthesia. In my time, these things [circumcision] had to be done without any medical assistance. The idea was that they were turning you from a boy into a young man. …
An excerpt from Conversations with Memorable Personalities]***
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