‘Uma ndime’! Could it be Dr Sishuwa needing Chainama mental checkup for suggesting ‘killing God’; not President HH?
By Austin Mbozi
‘Limbi’ (maybe) it is University of Stellenbosch
lecturer Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa who might need Chainama hospital mental checkup for wanting to ‘kill God’ (Lusaka Times, 28 June 2028); not President Hakainde Hichilema (HH) who merely said ‘hunger is biblical’.
Since Dr Sishuwa chose ‘locker-room banter’ by suggesting President HH’s ‘psychiatrist evaluation’, I am telling him to ‘uma ndime’ (beat/ ‘banter’ me) instead of him ‘bantering’ HH. Dr Sishuwa is a respectable academic. He critiqued President HH even when he (HH) was in opposition, arguing that HH offered no alternatives/solutions. Although I am a UPND supporter I read/encourage Dr Sishuwa because I learn from/reflect on his writings. I also critique politicians like Dr Sishuwa’s ‘friend’ comrade Fred M’membe. But I have never digressed to personalising things and suggesting their ‘psychiatric evaluation’ as Dr Sishuwa is doing on President HH.
The most charitable interpretation of President HH’s ‘hunger is biblical’ is this: He never justified as good the hunger-causing drought. He merely meant that he would try to tackle it as did the biblical former slave and prisoner Joseph who helped king Pharaoh to prevent hunger during the seven-year Egyptian drought. But even if President HH’s rivals were to draw the most uncharitable interpretation, that would still not amount to recommending the President’s mental checkup. President HH’s rivals can only disagree saying, ‘no Mr President, Pharaoh actually PREVENTED hunger by stockpiling the food during the good harvest years like Edgar Lungu tried to do with the FRA, while you sold off the good years’ harvest’.
On that we in UPND are like good coaches. When players on the pitch error, we say ‘we’ erred, even if as coaches we were not playing on the pitch. So ‘we’ concede as UPND that ‘we’ miscalculated, for ‘we’ are ordinary humans who did not have the divinely-inspired future prediction capacity which the biblical Joseph had. So we sold off FRA-stored maize hoping that the 2023/2024 season would have good rains.
‘Our’ error was to neglect to tell Zambians AT THAT TIME that we were selling to pay PF-era debt to farmers or to create storage capacity. Hence their mistrust of ‘us’, thinking these are just our ‘aftermath’ explanations rather than just apologise for our miscalculation. But apologise, how? My dear, in our African Ila tradition, you preserve your father’s dignity by not expecting him to kneel down saying sorry for accidentally whipping you with a ‘mukwilo’ as he tried to whip that troublesome, plough-pulling ‘kajongosi’ (ox). Your father’s way of ‘apologising’ is by taking you for treatment at the village medicine man. President HH is saying ‘sorry’ by spending ‘sleepless nights’ trying to resolve our hunger crisis!
But Dr Sishuwa proposes that ‘there are times when I feel Zambia must kill God’ so that we learn to be self-critical and self-reliant. If Dr Sishuwa was charitable to President HH, I would also have been charitable to him by interpreting him as defending the respectable view that we should replace our religious beliefs with scientific ones, as held by Jewish-German philosopher Karl Marx in his essay, ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ where he remarked that religion is ‘the opium of the masses’. Or like French philosopher Jean Paul Satire’s existentialism based on the idea that ‘god is dead’.
But he chose to be uncharitable, proposing President HH’s ‘psychiatric evaluation’.
So I reply to him using his uncharitable ‘medicine’ by interpreting him as literally suggesting flying to Heaven, jump through the Heaven-house window and axe-cut to death both Jesus Christ and his father Jehovah! ‘Ndaiyasa nondo muliso aisha!’ (I’ve nailed Dr Sishuwa!) This interpretation makes Dr Sishuwa the one needing Chainama mental checkup; not President HH!
Let me now ‘saulula’ him (finish off). First, HH is right that ‘hunger is biblical’ but no normal thinker ever suggested physically killing a god as did Dr Sishuwa. Second, many religions concur with HH that only gods can understand/resolve the mysteries of drought –rains dichotomy while even climate change scientists whom Dr Sishuwa wants to associate with are still investigating these mysteries. The biblical floods of Noah can be interpreted as ‘climate change’ in modern science. But those Jewish ancients attributed them to God’s move to wipe out sinners. While the Jews were religious, the Greeks were philosophical. But even the Greeks could not escape religion, and thought the rains-droughts dichotomy was dictated by a god called Zeus.
In Africa, the Tonga believed chief Moonze to be the rain-maker, the Lozi believed in Nyambe while the Ibo Eastern Nigerians had Amadiora the god of fatal thunder. Former president Chiluba who declared Zambia a Christian nation and president Edgar Lungu who declared 18 October as Day of National Prayer, all believed that somehow, gods have a say in the drought -rains dichotomy. Even science has not proved or disapproved God’s existence; nor has the philosophical god-existence-proving arguments like the ontological argument, cosmological argument, design argument or Blaise Pascal’s Wager. Thus many philosophers, including me, tend to be agnostic.
Thirdly, Dr Sichuwa has also implied that even you the reader should go for mental checkup, that is, if you are a Christian. He said the idea of attributing gods to droughts ‘is a belief that is prevalent among Zambians today’ because most Zambians are ‘unquestioning’, ‘passive’, ‘cowardly’ and [worst of all] ‘zombie-like’. I think zombie-likes are those supporting Dr Sishuwa’s article in the comment section of Lusaka Times. You support a Dr Sishuwa who has just called you zombie-like just because his article attacked the HH whom you dislike? You also need to be taken for Chainama for mental checkup and queue up behind Dr Sishuwa in psychiatrists’ waiting room.
The author invites awaits/will enjoy Dr Sishuwa to counter-attack him. So he is beckoning Dr Sishuwa saying, ‘uma ndime’ (‘banter’ me) instead of ‘bantering’ HH. Phone 0978741920, email: austin.mbozi2017@gmail.com