Origins of Underdevelopment
By Dr Canisius Banda
A human being is a bio-transceiver. He transmits and receives energy. When properly raised, devoid of any flaws or handicaps, he is capable of miracles, he is a marvel to behold.
Perception is intelligence. Trust me, current IQ tests are narrow. Cognition saves. And adaptation is everything.
In life, dear reader, you will learn that all things have their origins. For example, stupidity, divorce, poverty, war, success and failure all are both explainable and understandable phenomena.
You will also learn that there is no such thing as there being no cure for something. Duality of being negates such a view.
Ignorance about how things really work is common. But to all maladies, there is an antidote.
You see, a solution is an integral part of a problem, merely its other view. Look carefully at the lock and you will see the key.
Commonly, in restrictive societies, societies whose existential framework is warped and does not allow human beings to grow, thrive and fully express their potential, criminal behaviour is only a reflection of adaptation. It is in such instances that crime becomes only an expression of intelligence.
Yes, sometimes, it is not people that should be arrested but the wrong system which produces their offensive behaviour.
Things were bad. Very bad. And the village needed change. So change came. But it wasn’t the change that they had envisaged.
He badly wanted to be the headman. He often poured scorn on the sitting one to hasten his ascension.
He even cheated along the way. To him, cheating didn’t matter at all if the end justified the means.
As is customary in African settings, elders are held in high esteem, and usually offer unbidden advice. So it was that many elders in the village cautioned that the man wasn’t fit-for-purpose. He isn’t the one, they enigmatically said. Pick another one.
This one will impoverish and divide the village, they warned. But as God would have it, perhaps following His time and chance principle, the man was eventually made headman.
The man had promised many things. He filled the villagers with immense hope. This village is broken, he had proclaimed. I will fix it, he charmed the hapless villagers into acquiescence.
The current headman is too old, he said. And as is the case with old age, many organs of the body begin to malfunction and fail. This is exactly what is happening in our village, many organs of the village, departments of governance, are malfunctioning and failing, he illustrated.
The headman must go or we will all perish, he urged the villagers. Not wanting to perish, the villagers selected him as their new headman. As far as redeemers go, this is it, they agreed.
What no one knew in the village, what the selectors didn’t know, was that the man they had picked was a mutant. What the villagers didn’t know was that the man was a cripple.
The handicap in the man would soon become manifest. Perhaps because of the visibility of his office, the signs of the man’s disease quickly began to show.
They were delusions of grandeur. The man often boasted that the village was lucky to have him as its leader. You should have made me headman earlier, he was often heard to say. You wouldn’t be in this mess that you are in now. I am the best I tell you, he would brag. I am smart. I know these things. He openly exhibited an over-valued sense of self.
Only months into his reign, hardly a year after his ascension, some villagers began to grumble. When is the change we wanted in our lives going to come? They whispered amongst themselves, bile slowly rising in them.
Why is he harassing the former headman so much? They complained. Is this persecution going to bring the required development to our village? They wondered.
Our new headman is paranoid, they observed. His vengeful attitude is unwarranted, they concluded.
The old headman had become a sorry sight, a pitiable empty shell of his former self. All his properties and wives were seized by the new headman. All these are proceeds of crime against the village, the headman had proclaimed. What he did with the seized wives remained a matter of speculation in the village.
With all his properties grabbed, and his conjugal and other benefits taken away from him, all in the village could see that his predecessor was a broken man. It even seemed that the grave was now calling him.
Years and years went by but the prosperity which the villagers had been promised, and had long yearned for, didn’t come. Instead things went south, their lives worsened.
When the villagers reminded their headman about his promises, the Nirvana he had said he would bring, he only pointed at the old headman as the source of all their misery and pain. Shirking responsibility, that one is to blame, he repeatedly reminded them, utter disdain on his tongue.
Instead of fixing their problems, it soon seemed to the villagers that the man only came to fix them. How is it possible that our own saviour has now began to mock and torture us?
Can’t you see that we are dying of hunger? The villagers, now all gaunt-faced and frail, looking like a praying mantis from chronic starvation, would be heard crying to their headman.
You are just a lazy lot, the headman would tell them in answer. Besides, am I to blame? He would ask. Hunger is Biblical, don’t you know? As if in jest, the man would mock them.
It had all started in the man’s childhood. The villagers weren’t to know.
You see, the man, now their headman, had a very difficult childhood, one fraught with lack. It was as a result of this unhealthy environment that he had been raised in that he suffered severe stunting as a child. That is when the damage was done.
In Zambia today, nearly half of all children below the age of five are stunted. According to the 2024 Zambia Health and Demographic Survey [ZHDS], stunting affects a whooping thirty-two percent of all Zambia’s children under five.
Amongst other things such as the absence of parental love in a child’s life, chronic hunger, which is all too common in Zambia, leads to stunting. And at present, Zambia is ranked among the leading ten countries in the world with the hungriest people.
‘Madam Speaker, the levels of poverty in our country are unacceptably high. We must end the vicious cycle of poverty and bring prosperity to all. We will work to reduce various forms of inequality and create a more equitable society…In addition, we must sustain livelihoods, ensure affordable cost of living as well as food and nutrition security for our people.’
As if to confirm the dire state of living conditions that Zambia is currently facing, these words from the highest office of the land recently reverberated in the main chamber of Zambia’s parliament.
Dear reader, note that according to the Zambia 2022 Census of Population and Housing, a report issued by the Zambia Statistics Agency, a government department, nearly half of Zambia’s population is below the age of fifteen. In essence, this means that Zambia is still like putty. In the right hands, it can be moulded into the paradise its citizens envisage.
Zambia is akin to a blank canvas upon which an inspired leader, a consummate governance and development artist, can draw or paint its required future. The secret to what Zambia eventually becomes lies in its infantile age, the fact that most of its people are young, requiring the right app installation.
You will note that Zambia’s educational system, like in many countries of the world, both in structure and content, is anomalous. It suffers from terrible and malignant anachronism. Its curricula require continual and careful reformation to make them relevant to and reliable for the Zambian, for his survival and prosperity.
Further, that we do not have the best teachers, doctors and professors, adept persons in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, literature, music and art, the very best teachers, the crème de la crème teaching our children in the first decade of their lives, constitutes the biggest development scandal of our existence as a people.
Dear reader, note that nearly all the apps for living, which adults use in their later life are installed in children in the first decade of their lives. It follows then that experts in their fields should be the ones to install the apps for science, technology engineering, mathematics, literature, music and art in our children.
You see, dear reader, the best paid teachers globally, ought to be teachers of children. And all the apps about the basic principles of human survival and prosperity should be installed in our children by the very best experts.
Granted, we should have good teachers at every level of an educational system, but this is crucially so, in a make or break way, in early childhood.
Back to the village, things took a morbid turn. The man began to gag the villagers, their freedoms were curtailed. Strangely, spies were even deployed everywhere in the village to see who was sleeping with who. Rumour had it that the headman had a fetish for men’s buttocks. Arrests became the order of the day.
Any villager that reminded the headman about his failed promises and criticised him on his approach to fixing the mess in their lives was arrested and tortured. Expecting and voting for heaven, the villagers got hell instead.
Pa mudzi pa m’gwile m’gwile sipayenda [sipakhala] wanthu. Mfumu isamatele. Singing, some wise villagers admonished. The root of the disappointing behaviour of their headman remained elusive. No one really knew what was wrong with the man, the reason behind his odd, errant conduct and failure.
Offering an explanation for the further collapse of their village, some sages in the village questioned the mental status of the new headman. They said such conduct had been observed before, in a madman now long gone, a pollutant whom the gods, concerned, had weeded out from their midst.
What no one knew was that the headman’s brain had suffered severe growth and development insult in his childhood. Unbeknownst to the headman himself, he was a victim of stunting himself, in his childhood.
You see, dear reader, the growth and development of a child are indeed a sacred thing. Perhaps the most important for the survival and wellbeing of our kind. All culture, the way of life of a people, is acquired in childhood.
Though every village treated him as normal, the headman wasn’t normal at all.
Subtle changes had occurred to his brain which changes explained his aberrant behaviour. What was now manifest as arrogance, narcissism, lack of insight, inadvisable persona and inclination to vengeful and violent conduct was a consequence of the growth and development deficiencies that the headman had been afflicted with during his early, formative years.
So structurally altered in childhood, the headman’s brain was no longer capable of optimal performance. Though not easily discernible, the headman was a veritable retard.
Now here is the calamity, dear reader, the time-bomb. That today nearly half of all Zambia’s children suffer stunting means that, in time, Zambia will have millions and millions of citizens who are cognitively challenged, whose attention span is below par, and whose survival will hinge on violence. Millions and millions of retards, difficult and useless people.
You see, physical stunting is visible, and perhaps tolerable, but having thought limitations on the other hand, is not readily discernible but is a dire affliction that is extant in our midst, and threatens the wellbeing of our nation. It is a clear and present danger to our national security.
Then one day, during times when the village was in much squalor and poverty, when vermin was everywhere and everyone was gnashing their teeth in anguish, the headman convened a meeting of elders in the villagers.
Then something strange happened. The unthinkable occurred.
To the utter shock of everyone, and as if high on a psychoactive substance, the headman decreed that from that day onwards, he was going to be the leader of the village for ever.
Wafuntha munthu, wafutha munthu, whispers laden with consternation rippled through the crowd. Iyi ndiye ija amati misala. Mfumu yathu yasokonekezeka, Ambuye Mulungu titani, they cried, petitioning their Maker.
Everyone noticed something else about the headman. Something odd, something very disturbing. The headman had changed. He had metamorphosed. He was no longer recognisable.
Though his fingers had remained long, like the tentacles of an octopus, his head was now far bigger than before. It was bulbous, akin to that of an alien.
His eyes appeared sightless. Many speculated that he had lost his vision.
His previously large ears had disappeared. Only tiny holes remained where once those important listening receptacles had been.
His skin was becoming white, as if suffering from vitiligo. It was his tongue though which stood out the most and caught the eye of everyone. It looked reptilian. It had become much much longer, and it flickered like that of a venomous snake, scaring everyone.
It was a transformation like no other which spread terror in the village. It worried everyone. The headman was no longer one of them. Disquiet was everywhere. Bedlam had come.
What were the gods doing to this man? The villagers wondered. What are the gods telling us? They searched. This must be punishment, the wrath of the gods. Everything happens for a reason. What wrongs have we done as a people? They lamented.
Consensus was swift. Suddenly, the village had a Eureka moment. It was then that everyone in the village, all at once, discovered the exact reason behind their backwardness, the origins of their poverty and underdevelopment. Leadership, or lack thereof, was the cause, they all agreed.
Things that had been bad became worse. Much worse. And again the village needed change.
You see, the cycle of leadership never stops. Change is the only constant.
No one is indispensable. We all are replaceable cellular units whose relevance wanes with time, expendable biological vessels is all we all are.
Sometimes, people get it wrong. But oftentimes, they get it right. The more light the people take in, the better their choices. The more God they have in their hearts, the better the outcomes.
Vox populi vox dei. Indeed, the voice of the people is the voice of God.
When error in any given community has occurred, the power of correction, that of restoration is always with the people. Even the poorest person in the world knows the default setting of life that ought to thrive him. His direct connection with the divine enables this gnosis, this awareness. This is just the way it is.
That is how, collectively, against his wishes with his arms and legs flailing everywhere like those of a hurt and wild recalcitrant child fighting back, they lifted him off his throne and left him in isolation in a secluded hut in the forest. They feared that his affliction might be of the contagious kind, and could spread and spoil the young and innocent in the village.
To this day, the headman lives alone in the forest. Those that visit him, especially from the Roman Church, to offer their love and prayers for his redemption, find him lost in his own mind, his eyes unseeing, repeatedly talking to himself, his cerebral collapse now full-blown.
I am the best. You are all thieves. You need me. Lazy and drunkards, you all are. You do nothing but always talk-talk. I am the leader you have waited years for. You will regret ever removing me. You slobs.
Now only a reference in the history of leadership and the village, he remains alone in his ivory tower, totally disconnected from the villagers. As they say, he is bonkers alright, his confusion evident, and abhorrent.
In life, not everyone you see is normal, dear reader. But the mistake you make is to treat all things the same. Your blunder is that of perception. Looks indeed are deceptive, not everyone, dear reader, is sane.
And sometimes, the sieve fails. Spoiling everything, one rotten nut breaks through.
Godspeed!
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