HOW LEVY TWICE LOCKED OUT HIS DAUGHTER FOR COMING HOME AFTER 17:00 HOURS
Miriam was President Levy Mwanawasa’s first-born daughter. She saw her father as ‘loving but very strict’. According to her, ‘If one didn’t understand him, [one] would think he was a bad person.’
His strictness made her understand life more and better. When she was younger, her father always insisted that she should get back home by 17:00, failure to which she would find the gate locked. Indeed, she recalls being locked out on two occasions.
Initially, she never really understood him. It was later that she was to understand and appreciate him because most of the things he had warned her about came to pass. For example, Mwanawasa would tell her that there was no need for her to get married because she had been hurt so many times before. He would advise her to concentrate on looking after her children, instead of thinking of getting married.
She recalls:
Dad would say, ‘Most men are just users, so just concentrate on raising your children.’ I didn’t believe him but later, when I experienced it, I realised that dad was right. I have had disappointments in that area. Dad guided me so many times, even before mistakes were committed, but sometimes I didn’t believe what he was telling me. I thought he was just being a strict dad.
A few times, some men proposed to marry me, but dad would say, ‘No, you are not getting married to this man.’ I got very upset but, at the end of the day, I would realise that dad was right because everything he said in opposing my proposed marriage would come to pass.
I recall that one time, during the time my father was President, the father of my first-born daughter proposed to marry me. He even went to my dad’ssister in Chisamba, Aunt Rona, and paid some money. But dad objected to this proposal. He said the man had no good intentions; he just wanted to use me to get a good position in government for himself because this man is a member of parliament and was at that time a deputy minister.
At that time, I didn’t think dad was right. But I came to understand after he died, because this man just disappeared. I have neither seen this man from my father’s death, nor has he phoned me. Now, this man is a full Cabinet minister, but he can’t even provide for his child. When I look back, I can see that my father was very right.
Dad advised me on a number of things which I can’t share, but have come to pass. The only thing that upset me about dad is that he was very hot-tempered. When he was annoyed, we just had to stay away because he would pick on anything and hit you with it. One time, when I was in grade five, I refused to go for extra lessons at school, so he beat me up so badly that I had to be taken to the hospital. He later apologised and from that time, he never beat me again. I am also hot-tempered, but I try to control that through prayers.
I miss dad dearly. When he died, I thought he would come back because I prayed and prayed. It is now that I feel it that dad is gone and will never come back.
Miriam will always cherish her dad for one particularly memo- rable act of kindness. At one point in her life, she was so fed up with everything around her that she decided to go away from Zambia. So it was that she took her children and went to the United States where she thought she could start a new life. But things in that foreign country were not as she thought they would be.
She fell ill whilst there. She did not know how her father knew about her condition, but he phoned her and asked her to go back to hospital and ensure that she was thoroughly examined. He told her not to worry about the medical bills, because he would take care of that.
She went back only to be told that she had meningitis, whereupon she was admitted to hospital until she fully recovered.
In her own words:
Without dad’s intervention, I would have died because I was not going to know that I had meningitis. I just thought I had a stiff neck. I thank dad for that because, if I had died, I don’t know who would have taken care of my three children, because he is also not here today. To me, dad was both my mother and father.
An excerpt from the book: LEVY PATRICK MWANAWASA, An Incentive for Posterity; Pages 94 – 96. By Amos Malupenga (2009).
Picture caption: Mirriam (in a white dress standing behind) as President Mwanawasa took time off from his busy schedule to pose for family pictures in State House.
Picture by G.T. Studio Photograph.
CREDIT: Robbinson Mazyombwe Jr