(FUN FACT!!!!)
DID you know:
Renowned Lusaka lawyer, Sakwiba Sikota, got expelled in grade 3 for being stubborn?
For details, follow the excerpt below from (Conversations with Memorable Personalities)
Amos Malupenga:
I have heard some people say that you hero-worship Mr. Mazoka, is that the reason why you cannot challenge him?
Sakwiba Sikota:
I think Mr. Mazoka would not appreciate me if I was the kind of person that hero-worships him because he is somebody who is very consultative. And when he consults, he is not asking you to say ‘very good boss you are right’. When he consults, he is more interested for you to pick out the loophole in whatever he is suggesting. That is his style. He would not appreciate somebody who would be following him blindly. …
But I can tell you that I am somebody who is very stubborn when you say that I do everything that Mr. Mazoka wants. You are now forcing me to give away a detail which is very personal. I think that I may hold the record for being one of the youngest people expelled from school. I got expelled from school in grade three due to my stubbornness.
Amos Malupenga:
What did you do?
Sakwiba Sikota:
At that time, for some reason or the other, I enjoyed writing using a green pen. At that time in Zambia it was very easy to get a pen with whatever colour you wanted. At that time, the government used to give us textbooks as part of the free education. So we were doing this particular exercise due to be marked by the teacher and I was doing it in my usual green ink.
Then one boy comes, grabs the pen from my hands and scribbles in my book. So I said to myself, ‘he is just a silly boy, I will carry on’. All I did was to turn over my page and copied whatever I had written on the other page.
When I finished the exercise, I took it to the teacher for marking. For some reason the teacher flipped up the page and saw that scribbling. So the teacher was annoyed with me asking why I could do that in the book when the government was spending a lot of money buying that.
I tried to plead my innocence saying ‘it was this guy who did it’. The teacher said ‘no it can’t be him because you are the only one who writes in green’. I said ‘he pulled my pen and used it to write on the page’ but the teacher didn’t buy that and decided that she was going to punish me.
The usual punishment then was the hand out and with the ruler she would whack you. When this happened, the whole class was laughing including the culprit. I looked at him and lost it. I went straight where he was and whacked him a good one. So the teacher sent me out from the class to stand in the corridor.
As I was standing there and as misfortune would have it, the headmaster was doing his round and he asked what I was doing there. I tried to explain my case but he too didn’t believe me and asked me to follow him to his office. At that time canning was legal but we have now changed the law. But that’s not why I voted for the change of the law, by the way.
So the headmaster gave me one or two strokes of the cane and I really felt that it was an injustice on me. Break time came and I went over to this guy. We had a fight and basically I beat him up. The teacher was informed after break time and she sent me with a note to the headmaster who said ‘you are incorrigible. The teacher has punished you and you are still insisting, I canned you and you are still insisting. I can’t cane you anymore so I will throw you out of school’.
So I was expelled. It took time for me to get back. I lost a term of school because of that. You know I have got an easy-going nature but I have got this very strong streak of stubbornness when I am wronged. But it doesn’t mean that I am stubborn to the extent of not listening. I try to put up my case in a civilised way. I do admit I wasn’t civilised the way I put up my case but I was young then.
And with that kind of background and with the grounding as a lawyer, they say lawyers are argumentative, I don’t see how I can be somebody who is a cowed person. I am somebody who is always ready to give my viewpoint. And that is what my colleagues like about me because I always try to tell it the way it is. …
An excerpt from (Conversations with Memorable Personalities)