A PAPER PRESENTED TO THE ZAMBIA OPEN

UNIVERSITY FORUM DISCUSSION ON:

CULTURE: THE MISSING DIMENSIONS IN
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.

Senior Chief Mwamba Kapalaula II

Cultural Genocide.

Mr. David Punabantu wrote: ‘’…as early as 1930s the then Secretary for Native
Affairs, R.S. Hudson, distressingly noted that ‘when an African became settled in town,
he ultimately ceased to belong to his tribe and no longer fitted into the native authority
system. Against this, Zambian rural culture in the colonial era was seen as the only tool to
deal with this cultural genocide that occurred in urban Zambia.

‘’In 1932, Hall sadly wrote, ’Urbanization produced a sharp lowering of sexual
morals which was causing concerning. The children of these casual unions often turned to
petty crimes.’ Orde-Brown said, ‘A disquieting feature of these compounds of all kinds is
the large juvenile population without occupation or control. Children and adolescents of
all ages throng the vicinity, finding amusements as they can and devoid of teaching or
training. In native villages this would not be the case, since almost all the tribes have very
definite arrangements for training the young people according to their ideas.’

‘’In other words, children were being born in towns without any knowledge or
concept of village life. These children produced other children ____ compound kids and
their concept of development at that time was to follow the white man into shops. These
compound kids then, became compound adults and ended up, as street vendors, while
others became street adults as seen today.’’ (The Post {supplement} 24th November
2004).

In the article titled African Culture and Development, Mr. Simeo Siame wrote:
‘Culture for what?....it is futile to mobilize thousands of manpower to paddle a big boat
or spend days and nights dancing round a bonfire, when such manpower should have
been at points of economic production… …Try and remove all those village taboos and it
will free your mind…….May I challenge all readers that are in the cultural closets that,
this (culture) can no longer be a tool for modernization and economic development.’’
(Sunday Post [Lifestyle] 15 October 2006)

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 We must not overlook the social expression which Dr. Sigmund Feud, the pioneer of
modern a psychology called the ‘’reality principle.’’ If so, what is ‘’reality?’’ It would
seem to have something to do with the very ‘’human nature,’’ that the so-called jacked-
up urbanists are trying to deny. I do not mean human nature as a rigidly set entity, but a
general psychobiological potential within a particular (though always changing) cultural
and historical matrix. Human nature thus understood is highly flexible, yet at the same
time an imposer of limits. One of these limits is the need for a certain amount of harmony
between the evidence of the senses and socially shared images of Self and the world.

And here I must discuss what is actually involved in culture. Man unlike other
animals is inner-related by nature. We were designed to be intuitively impelled and
without this, we are like ships without rudders at the mercy of everyone’s opinions and
selfish motives. In the outward motivated person, ideas rise out of reaction to things or
people or situations. These ideas grow to create feelings (largely fear) through continued
‘’idea-feeling relationships.’’ So the victim has guilt or panic buttons that can be pressed
for another’s advantage, because his ‘’Reason’’ has not been developed as a stronger
influence than outside pressures.

For example, the freedom fighter had a fortified cultural background and therefore
knew that only political struggle would provide an opportunity to work out externally
what he had built up internally and therefore sought confrontations, for he saw them as
providing him with the means of becoming who he really was. The genius or intellectual
of today is aware of how unfair his white counterpart is, and yet he has no courage to
shout this out, surrounded as he is by the signs of presumed equality. The difference here
is between the struggle which forces the granting of recognition and the liberation which
is granted.

This can be traced from what Mr. Orde-Browne had pointed out: ‘’The disquieting
feature of compounds of all kinds is the large juvenile population without occupation or
control. Children and adolescents of all ages throng the vicinity, finding amusements as
they can and devoid of teaching or training..’’ The ‘’reality principle’’ that lacks in this
scenario is the proper, fixed and stable life-foundations, whereas culture deals with clear
understanding of Self which is intertwined with identity and a sense of self-esteem.
Though cultural identity is not fixed, but nevertheless it springs from factual and
historical formations.

And therefore the defeatist attitude is due to the lack of a concrete life-foundation or
cultural heritage which has led to what Bismarck said, ‘’Every man has his own value
diminished by self-doubt.’’ And of course, lack of self-confidence robs the ability to be
virtuously brave and to speak out with conviction.

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 Of course, no one can overlook the fact that the white man has brought a lot of good
civilization to Africa, but it comes with a sly danger, because while celebrating the
generous donor aid and such privileges as learning and enlightenment, it can easily blind
us to who we really are and come to the fatal conclusion that the white man is the
measure of all things. And this mentality has subverted the African personality like no
other ideology.

It is therefore essential that our cultural heritage awakens us to a new level of

consciousness that makes available to us ‘’new power’’ containing information value to
re-mould our minds and re-direct our lives within and without this information emerging
through the lens of consciousness to light our way, we tend to become ‘’hung up’’ with
anything or anyone supposed to help us, including music, positive thinking, mantras etc.

In this scenario, what lacks is not intellect or artificial accumulated book knowledge
per se, but understanding of Self or the ability to relate to one’s whole being to the rest of
the universe. St. Augustine in De Ordine wrote: ‘’Self-knowledge is the result of inner
unity.’’ He compared human nature to a circle. Unity for him means ‘’to be at the centre,’’
from which every part of circumference is equidistant. The further from the centre one
wanders towards the circumference, the less united and, the poorer one becomes.

And this destroys our potential for creativity, though we can effectively parrot
occidental ideas, but we, in fact, totally lack inner unity and are always controlled by
outside pressures. This is why many of our playboy intellectuals today are diligent but
not creative.

Dr. Kaunda in Humanist in Africa graphically put it:’’..Educational

institutions, too, tend to be strictly utilitarian in scope, turning out streams of technical,
professional and scientific people required in central areas of national building….yet the
nation that lacks a firm cultural structure is jelly-built and though the people have title
deeds to the property and the key to the front door in their pockets, they are still
homeless.’’

The unavoidable, but sad reality is that though one can run away from one’s own
culture, but he can never hide from it. And when we abandon our cultural heritage for
other ‘’civilized cultures,’’ we destroy our own life-foundation and we immediately split
our personality which leads to schizophrenia.

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 And in this respect, Professor Georges Balandier in his book The Sociology of Black
Africa: Dynamics in Central Africa talks of ‘’the psychology of colonization,’’ which sets
the Europeanized African into a transformation of the whole mentality as he enters the
heart of western logic and the role of imitation which occurs in a variety of
manifestations and the apparent duplicity leads to mental conflict of being ‘’like an actor
playing two parts.’’ And another sociologist D.L. Summer says, ‘’the conflict produces
doubt and fogginess of mind, resulting in lack of balance and reasoning.’’

The above stress that we cannot duplicate the logical pressures of a Ngoni
tribesman or grasp the value system that underlies his thought-patterns. The point is that
Ngoni logic and values do differ radically from others. So whenever a Ngoni begins to
speak to a white man, he has first to shift mental gears, so to speak. And if he
immediately turns to speak to his fellow Ngoni, he unconsciously quickly shifts back into
his Ngoni gear.

In his book The Japanese Mind, Mr. Robert Christopher talks about the same
thing: ‘’The late Hideki Yakawa, a Japanese __ a noble Laureante in physics, admitted
that whenever he did his scientific work, he thought in English because he could think
things in English that it was impossible for him to think in Japanese.’’

The Power of Culture.

How can people find their personal sense of destiny and identity? To whom can they
turn in the search for identity and direction in life? Where can the answers to these
important questions be found? The truth is that hints and clues can be found hidden in the
history of a tribe. What is therefore the key to oneself? It has rightly been said, ‘’Anyone
who has a quarrel with the past, loses the present and risks to lose the future as well.’’ The
past must live side by side with the present, while the future is the continuation of the
past. It’s only and until when we begin to seriously look back into the so-called
‘’primitive’’ past, our future as individuals and as a nation is doomed. It’s the past that
unlocks the future. Futurists like economists and demographers look at data, detect trends
and extrapolate them to forecast changes.

Life involves our growing upwards and downwards like a tree, which is able to
stretch out its branches to the sky because it also sends its roots into the nourishing earth.
Man or tree with no proper roots will fall. And the immutable truth is that cultural
heritage cannot be magicked away in the twinkle of an eye or eliminated with a snap of
one’s fingers. It will live for many a day and be a continual source of weariness and
frustration. It is something that can be blocked and thwarted, but cannot be got rid off.
Even the western aristocratic education can never drown cultural heritage, because while
logic can convince one’s reasoning, it cannot, however, overcome the inertia of dualistic
thinking. Intellect may comprehend the oneness of things, but thinking will still continue
in dualism.
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 The Law of Generation states: ‘’We are all linked to previous generations behind us.
Our ancestors are in our genes, in our bones, in our marrow, in our physiological and
emotional make-up. We, in turn, will be written into the children who come after us.’’

Mr. Booker Washington (1856- 1915) was the first national spokesman for the
Black Americans. In his book Up from Slavery, he wrote: ‘’…notwithstanding the cruelty
and moral wrong of slavery, the millions of Negroes inhabiting this country, who
themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a
stronger and more hopeful conditions, materially, intellectually, morally and religiously,
than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.’’

On the other hand, two Black Americans, Messrs. Stokely Carmichael and Charles
Hamilton in Black Power: The Politics and Liberation in America made this noteworthy
observation on the ‘’power of culture’’: ‘’Black power is an entirely healthy
development, encouraging the Negro to escape from defeatism and passivity instilled by
centuries of exploitation by the white man….however, the extent to which Black
Americans can and do to trace their roots to Africa, to that extent only will they be
able to be more effective on the political scene and not cave in whenever ‘the man’
barks..’’(emphasis mine).

I suppose this makes it loud and clear to those with uncultured African location or
compound mentality who have shamelessly been trying to paint the Black man as inferior
in the hierarchy of human development. It is our inner life which determines the way we
perceive the world and react to it.

In this respect, Dr. Katele Kalumba wrote: ‘’……primordially, it is only that hero
without identity who comes to destroy other people’s tradition. When you have identity
problems, you become a destroyer.’’ (The Post 8th November 2004).

Chairman Mao Tse-tung wrote: ‘’The specific content of patriotism is determined

by historic conditions.’’ (Selected Works Vol. II). Zambia at the time of independence in
1964 had about one hundred (100) university graduates; about one thousand and five
hundred (1,500) persons with full secondary school education i.e., equivalent to Grade
XII and about six thousand (6,000) persons with two years at secondary school i.e., grade
IX. (Statistics quoted by Mr. John Hatch in False Start in Africa). And as already alluded
to Zambia’s independence was fought for and achieved by people with highly fortified
cultural backgrounds, rather than those with exaggerated occidental and artificial
accumulated book knowledge.

Mr. Simeo Siame in his article Who Owns Zambia? wrote: ’’In 1965, when I landed at
Lusaka airstrip, I and the rest of the people of Zambia who I found then were bubbling
with self-confidence and self-assertion. You would never have hesitated to declare just
who owned Zambia then. The question simply never arose, since ownership was as

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distinct as the break of dawn. Alas, this fervent spirit of ownership appears to have
evaporated. We have a generation of Zambians who do not even know their country. They
have no passion for it…… A Zambian can no longer identify himself or herself to
what Zambia was in twenty to forty years ago. Most of our people have no history.’’
(Sunday Post [Lifestyle] 30th April 2006) (Emphasis mine).

And which ‘’history’’ is Mr. Siame referring to if not ‘’cultural heritage?’’ And as
I have already stated, ‘’ man or tree with no proper roots will fall.’’ And here is what
Professor Ferdinand Akuffo, whom I understand comes from Ghana sadly wrote: ‘’…..in
1964 Dr. Kaunda and many other great heroes fought so hard for Zambia to be
independent. They had visions and it’s unfortunate that forty-three years later, a more
subtle form of colonialism is taking place. Foreigners are disguising themselves and
making Zambians believe that they have their best interests and yet they are wolves in
sheep’s clothing. They are slowly but surely taking control of Zambia by taking what
gives Zambians power. Most of the companies, shops etc are being run by them…’’ (The
Post 24th September 2007).

But why are we in such a deplorable state of affairs both economically and politically
in spite of so many Zambians having obtained such highly impressive academic and
professional qualifications in various disciplines? Remember Dr. Kaunda’s penetrating
insight: ‘’…the nation that lacks a firm cultural structure is jelly-built and though the
people have title deeds to the property and the key to the front door in their pockets, they
are still homeless.

Cultural Incompatibility.

Cultural incompatibility is one of the major obstacles that has greatly contributed to
underdevelopment in rural areas in Africa and it is unfortunate that even our leaders have
fallen prey to the theory that treats Africa as a homogeneous entity with similar
conditions. On the contrary, it is essential to look to history for guidance as a proper
approach to the analysis of how structures function because it is usually considered that
social structures must be studied in action through time in order to assess the relative
interdependence of their components. Its only and until when we begin to discover the
gaps that exist between the ‘’official’’ view of society and ‘’social practice,’’ we are far
off the mark in trying to bring meaningful development in rural areas.

As I have already pointed out, it is impossible for a person to flee out of his culture
as he would walk out of a political party. Every culture has its own knowledge and
philosophy and in different characteristics of various cultures also lie peculiar solutions to
most complications that may arise within each particular tribe.

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 Reverend James Massey wrote in Concerning Christian Unity; ‘’There is something
to be said for human groupings. There are strengths in common tradition and common
culture, which make a people one culture. Each group has ‘intelligible actions’ which
grow out of its own tradition and those meanings have an inner significance from which
strength for life can be derived. Each human grouping has had distinctives not
available elsewhere in just the same way. All human groupings have distinctives that
they should preserve, distinctives which give meaning to the group as its members review
their ‘story’ in the drama of life.’’ (emphasis mine)

The truth is that rural developmental programs must take into account the real and
latent possibilities of traditional involvement for carrying out new tasks laid before the
rural communities. But according to the report compiled for the United Nations, the
opposite often arises: ‘’In general, however, development programmes would appear to
have proceeded on the assumption that traditional values and practices constitute
obstacles to growth. In any case, little effort has been made to provide within these
programmes mechanisms to identify and utilize the potentially positive traditional
factors, although public reference is often made to the importance of traditional
values…’’(United Nations (1965) Report on the World Social Situation).

Mr. Xavier Flores wrote: ‘’We must allude to the real and latent possibilities of
the traditional sector which has not always been adequately studied or fully appreciated.
Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the whole concept of technical
cooperation needs a radical revision. At present, the idea behind technical assistance is
that new techniques should sweep all before them. This rationalist attitude may be
theoretically sound, but in practice it comes up against unexpected obstacles ____
tradition, customs and even superstition ____ which are not purely negative in that they
do not signify a blunt refusal to contemplate progress as we conceive it, but are on the
contrary, highly significant positive cultural attitudes…..but this positive aspects has been
overlooked and many organizations have foundered almost as they have been launched.’’
(Agricultural Organization and Economic and Social Development in Rural Areas).

The World Bank programmes in Africa have foundered because of cultural

incompatibility and here is what Dr. David Morgan wrote: ‘’To acknowledge that some
previously African development policies may have been a mistake is not a familiar
experience…. The first major international organization to be forced into repudiation of
some of its key strategies was the World Bank, which admitted that some of its support
projects had been ill-judged and environmentally unsustainable and no longer an
accepted price to pay for development. The World Bank now expressed doubt that some
of the aid policies it had promoted may be substantially flawed and may have even
inflicted more damage to the drive for development than success in providing tangible
assistance and permanent benefits…. There is overwhelming evidence that the rate of
development in most of Africa is perilously below that which is required to serve its
rapidly growing population and alleviate poverty of its people.’’ (London based African
Farming magazine of September 1998) (emphasis mine)
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 This admission is a clear indication that ideas imposed upon docile Africans are too
closely based on European experience and have failed to transplant successfully in
Africa. The destiny of Africa remains entirely in the hands of Africans themselves. But
unfortunately, African continues to pay for those failed programmes even though it was
not her fault, because she is a testing ground for new economic philosophies.

One of the key problems to Zambia’s rural development is that most urban-born-
officers serving on rural projects carry a deeply ingrained superiority complex, which
makes them carry a tutorial attitude when dealing with chiefs and the peasants. But a
person’s consciousness can only be fully developed in a conducive atmosphere i.e., where
such a person can feel accepted as a normal human being with full senses and not as an
ignorant and inferior person.

Psychologists speak of the ‘’swing of the pendulum’’ in relation to the great

movements of the human thought. And one of the examples of the ‘’swinging’’ of mental
pendulum points to man’s inability to think together truths which appear to be
contradictory. And in this case, ‘’resentment and help.’’ The pertinent question that
generally lingers behind the peasant’s conscious mind is: ‘’How can a person who deeply
resents and despises me at the same time pretend to help me?’’

Mr. Phillip Gatter writing on Agriculture Extension Agents and their Construction
of Rural Luapula in the book Planners and History said: ‘’I will attempt to show that
village and government agency understanding of extension stem from different premises,
so that the models which the Extension Branch of the Department of Agriculture used
remained inadequate to such aims as ‘improving the economic conditions of the masses of
the rural people’; and yet at the same time, they acted as a vehicle for extension of state
power in the rural areas of Zambia

‘’..their aggregated opinions suggest a self-perception, or at least a public self-

portrayal, as heralds of a new age, introducing new, better, more rational methods of
farming. They had been taught an inflexible orthodoxy; they supported the theory, even if
practice did not stand up to scrutiny. Where lack of community response was noted,
workers ascribed it to ‘primitiveness’ and ‘tradition’; tradition being defined as the
antithesis of the outlook of the extension worker..’’

What peasants first and foremost need is to help them to think clearly (and this is
what the politicians do not want them to do), so that they can lay their own structures
according to their individual abilities, interests and desires. Thus helping people to work
out what kind of change they want and how to create it; to enable them to examine the
possible alternative courses of action; to make choices between those alternatives in
keeping with their own propulsions and to be equipped with the ability to translate their
decisions into reality.

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 Man makes himself and it is his ability to act deliberately for self-determined
purposes, which distinguishes him from other animals. For example, a mother does not
‘’give’’ walking or talking to her child; walking and talking are not things which she
‘’has’’ and of which she ‘’gives’’ a portion to the child. Rather, the mother helps the child
to develop its own potential ability to walk and talk. Hence, man’s development centres
on self-reliance. Man certainly cannot be developed by others as is being attempted to be
done in rural areas. Man’s consciousness is developed in the process of doing things,
because development has a purpose of the liberation of man and the whole process is
intensely personal in the sense that it has to be a personal experience; no one can have his
conscience developed by proxy. And this is why both the UNIP and MMD governments
have failed to move the determinants of economic change in the rural areas without
involving chiefs.

The rural peasants are not simply to be seen as passive recipients, but actively
strategizing and interacting with outside institutions and personnel in what might be
called ‘’cross-cultural’’ approach to development. The understanding of agrarian change
is complex and requires working from the very beginning with the concept of
heterogeneity. The chiefs and other local actors can greatly help to shape the outcome of
rural change. Change can never simply be imposed upon docile peasants by the experts
stuffed with occidental ideas, which have no bearing on local cultures.

I do not mean of course, the exclusion of the experts per se, but they would be of
great help to rural development far much more than at present, if they would work in
cooperation with chiefs and not merely look down upon them as witchdoctors, so that
their expertise could be re-interpreted through the cultural mode of the community. The
unavoidable truth is that an active participation of chiefs is the key factor that can take the
breaks off rural development. The current general analysis of rural development reveals
that the orientation, interpretation and language are that of the middle class and foreign
interests as opposed to that of the poor masses. And this is why even though we have kept
on receiving foreign aid, but there has been no significant change, nor does the aid
alleviate the sufferings of those it purports to assist. In whichever way the technocrats
may try to twist the facts, but the truth remains static: no country can ever achieve
economic success that recklessly abandons its cultural foundation.

In the 1930s, Dr. A.I. Richards writing on The Chief’s Leadership in Economic
Enterprises said: ‘’There are two aspects of the chief’s functions as an organizer of the
people in his chiefdom. In the first place there are a number of activities he actually
initiates and co-ordinates, and in the second, his direction of his labour sets the pace for
agricultural enterprise and forms the basis of the whole economic system……Their
knowledge of cultivating processes, soil selection and the best moment for planting is
also considerable. Even the most stupid or beer-sodden rulers seemed to discuss such
matters with authority...

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 ‘’Of their chiefdoms as a whole, the chiefs also know a great deal…..thus his
position at the capital; his specialized knowledge of agriculture and his personal
interest in food-production gives the Bemba ruler opportunity to lead and influence
the agricultural activities of the whole tribe. This fact may well acquire
administrative importance if any new improved system of cultivation is ever
discovered for this area..’’ (Land, Labour and Diet in Zambia: Economic Study of the
Bemba Tribe) (emphasis mine).

What was this social anthropologist actually advising future governments of this
country on rural development? I suppose, she was simply saying, ‘’I have definitely
identified potential ‘even in the most stupid or beer-sodden’ traditional rulers, but simply
give them adequate training, so that they can handle rural development programmes for
themselves.’’

This was exactly what the Chiefs in article 6.2 of their Mulungushi Declaration of
July 2002 talked about: ‘’Recognizing the importance of regular consultations with all
Stakeholders in the country, more especially towards the advancement of good
government, their Royal highnesses demand that the government convenes at least twice
yearly meetings as well as training ground in various fields. This is aimed at enhancing
the capacities and capabilities of all their Royal Highnesses in discharging their
responsibilities and participating in governance.’’ (emphasis mine).

The great problem is that it is strongly believed in the so-called ‘’cultivated circles’’
that chiefs cannot comprehend anything outside witchcraft practices. For example, when
the Members of the House of Chiefs asked the government for car loans for chiefs and
NOT personal-to-holder vehicles, a Zambia Daily Mail reporter, Nigel Mulenga retorted:
‘’….a man who can barely write, let alone sing the national anthem to drive a posh car.’’

And this can be viewed as a conflict of generations. By and large, the tribal society
has been gerontological and this means that the high status and political power have been
the prerogative of the aged i.e., the knowledge of the soil; of the magic to protect oneself
in high office against the manifestations of one’s rivals; of the esoteric mysteries of
chieftaincy and of the village etc., came largely with advance of age. And so, this
apparently means that the Institution of Chief is deemed by the sophiscatees to be
monopolized by old-fashioned madalas totally immersed in the secrets and mysteries of
their long-dead ancestors.

On the other hand, people who gain political power and wealth tend to become
accustomed to being right all the time and generally politicians see themselves to be far
above the collective intelligence of society. There is a firm conviction in the Africa
political scenario that the embodiment of wisdom, knowledge and intellect including
mega-talents and multi-gifts are all confined within the inner circles of each political
party and never elsewhere.

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 This was why Mr. Alexander Bwalya Chikwanda, then a Cabinet Minister in the
UNIP administration identified this deadly fallacy and said: ‘’Let us not think we can
take people for a ride all the time. What I am saying applies to the backbench and the
frontbench alike. Let us all remember that we have no monopoly of wisdom or
intelligence because we are MPs, Ministers, Members of the Central Committee, Prime
Ministers, Secretary-Generals or Presidents.’’ (The Kapwepwe Diaries by Godwin
Mwangilwa).

The ever-momentous notable speech that was delivered by Honorable Gunston

Chola during his parliamentary life-span was when he said, ‘’Let the chiefs not be
obstacles to development. We are elected.’’ (Saturday Post 6th November 2004). Here is a
classic example of the victim of the myth that equates politics with all-round superior
intelligence.

And such politicians being totally ignorant of what is involved in rural

development are the greatest obstacles. In fact, Mr. F.M. McCLoughin has identified
politicians and civil servants as the chief obstacles to rural development: ‘’…..most
striking in East Africa is the difference between politicians’ and civil servants’ views of
problems of the farmers, on the other hand, and the farmers’ interpretations of their own
problems, on the other. For a range of reasons, many if not most of the efforts and
projects, schemes and programmes to develop African farming have been tilting at wrong
windmills. Most efforts have in fact experienced highly limited or very slow success or
failed, because the farmer could no relate the efforts to his own view on what was
needed, his aspirations, his sense of economic viability and his own farm’s resources.
And historically where politicians and civil servants have been involved, there is a wealth
of failure to show that what might be technically possible is not necessarily humanly
possible.’’ (Research and Agricultural Development in East Africa: New York: The
Agricultural Development Council Inc.)

Let us compare the above to what Mr. Phillip Gatter’s research yielded in Luapula
Province: ’’…so that the models which the Extension Branch of the Department of
Agriculture used remained inadequate to such aims as ‘improving the economic
conditions of the masses of the rural people’; yet at the same time, they acted as a vehicle
for extension of state power in the rural areas of Zambia.’’

In fact, development that is not sustainable is not truly development, and

sustainability rests on three pillars i.e., capacities, incentives and pressures. And in order
to combat Bemba arrogance, since we are a difficult people to deal with on anything
outside the political spotlight, so chiefs have throughout history been exerting increasing
pressures on the people through more effective personal supervision. This was why Mr.
V.W. Brelsford, who served as a District Officer in various parts of this country remarked
in his book Tribes of Zambia: ‘’…wherever there was a Bemba chief, there was effective
rule.’’

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 And when politicians talk about ‘’poverty reduction,’’ they simply mean
‘’reduction of bankruptcy’’ among the superior class and nothing more. I say so because
instead of the government working out programmes of incorporating traditional
authorities in rural development based on historic factors, the government had instead
through the National Decentralization Policy totally eliminated them. And hence through
malicious intention of devastating chieftainship, it has destroyed one of the pillars on
which sustainability rests i.e., pressures.

His Royal Highness Senior Chief Mwata Ishindi Kazanda Chanyika III spoke about
the same thing: ‘’…for development policies to come to fruition and benefit many
people, the government should no isolate chiefs from national programmes because it is
chiefs who know and are able to work with communities fostering development….
….the government should involve traditional rulers in order to enhance accountability
among the rural project implementers and contractors as some of them grossly
mismanage project resources due to poor or lack of monitoring.’’ (Zambia Daily Mail 16th
August 2002).

Zambia’s Indigenous Economic Philosophy

It is said that the world is three days; yesterday, today and tomorrow. And if you do
not know yesterday, you will not know what day today is and you will not know what to
do as tomorrow will take you by surprise. It is also said that a driver who ignores to use
the mirror to look back would eventually make a fatal accident.

Mr. Y. Barel wrote: ‘’One manages capital in order to increase it; one manages
cultural heritage in order to pass it on, since it influences not only the economy, but a
larger area which includes family, politics, social consensus and conflict.’’ (Adult
Education and Development: Germany Adult Education Association No. 30, March
1988).

It was in 1991 when Zambians saw the emergence of young intellectuals into the
MMD government and this was viewed with considerable optimism. The political change
that took place was considered positive and promising; the problems of development
were felt to be serious but solvable. The assumption was unquestionable that, because the
MMD was over-flooded with geniuses and philosophers in various disciplines, it
consequently had the capacity to cushion certain economic problems. But very
unfortunately, the cheerful mood and the assumption of the earlier times have vanished
like morning mist. The current situation is clearly revealing frightening depths of total
national bankruptcy of creative and enterprising intellectualism. We only have parrot
geniuses who are always desperately ready to receive pre-packed fully grown ideas from
the capitalist-exploiters.

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 What we first witnessed was the grand sale of our national assets i.e., the supposed
geniuses just went to dismantle and plunder what the supposed less educated had put in
place. The only indigenous economic philosophy that can unquestionably be attributed to
the Chiluba regime is the township or African compound economic principle. In this
respect, David Punabantu wrote: ‘….children were being born in towns and became
compound adults……..but unfortunately the control administration and development
after independence remained in urban Zambia and was defined by urban perceptions and
values of development…’’

This is the type of economy we see in compounds where if a person loses his job
and in order to meet his daily needs, he begins to sell his household goods, like
television, radio, chairs and then goes to sell his children’s beds and mattresses before
entering his own bedroom. And we see such persons daily in locations being eventually
driven into destitution. And this is exactly Zambia’s current economic position.

It was very interesting that Dr. Chiluba himself touched on the subject that we had
expected the supposed geniuses of his regime to have at least successfully tackled when
they stepped into the corridors of power in1991. Dr. Chiluba said, :’’A case has been
argued that the so-called Tigers of East Asia such as Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan etc.,
with insufficient resources at independence have moved from the third to first world.
Singapore did not even have half of Zambia’s resources, but developed so quickly that
you wonder if this tiger was walking or flying. Zambia continues to stagnant such that
not so much can be talked about in terms of development.’’ (The Post 24th October
2004) (emphasis mine).

I have noticed in many government offices’ notice-boards, ‘’Don’t give a person

fish; but teach him how to fish.’’ And yet we receive a great deal of material, financial
etc., aid from Japan, but why haven’t we tried to learn some of the secrets which led them
to such immense economic success?

In The Japanese Mind, Mr. Robert Christopher wrote that there was a strong dose
of cultural-defensiveness involved. And even more important, the Japanese, unlike so
many other Asian and African peoples acquired a vital ability: instead of swallowing
destabilizing and often unsuitable western ideas and institutions whole, they are still
remarkably successful in adapting importations from the west to their own needs and
imperative.

On the other hand, Mr. Leon Trotsky, the Russian genius has described in what he
calls ‘’the revolution of backward countries,’’ how his country with the guiding ideas and
impulses coming from outside ______ from the west and carried by an educated
westernized elite, catapulted Russia to become a superpower nation.

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 Mr. Trotsky in The History of Russian Revolution and writing on what he calls
‘’the law of combined and uneven development’’ said: ‘’A backward country assimilates
the material and intellectual conquests of the advanced countries. It does not reproduce
all the steps of the past……a backward country does not take things in the same order.
This is the privilege of historic backwardness and such a privilege exists……savages
throw their bows and arrows for rifles at once, without travelling the road which lay
between those two weapons in the past. The development as a whole acquires a plan-less,
complex combined character. From the universal law of unevenness thus derives another
law which for lack of a better name, we may call ‘’the law of combined development’’
_____ by which we mean a drawing together of different stages of the journey, a
combination of separate steps, an amalgam of archaic with more contemporary forms.

‘’Arising late, Russian industry did not repeat the development of the advanced
countries, but inserted itself into this development, adapting their latest achievements to
its backwardness. Just as the economic evolution of Russia as a whole, skipped over the
epoch of craft-guilds and manufacture, so also the separate branches of industry made a
series of special leaps over technical productive stages that had been measured in the
west by decades. Thanks to this, the Russian industry developed at certain periods with
extraordinary speed.’’

In the same way, European colonists in America did not begin with industrial
revolution all over again from the beginning. The fact that Germany and the USA have
now economically outstripped England was made possible by the very backwardness of
their capitalistic development.

This was also how Singapore or the so-called Tigers of East Asia managed in Dr.
Chiluba’s words ‘’to develop so quickly you would wonder if this tiger was flying or
walking.’’ But why can’t Zambia be blessed with its backwardness? The first reason is
‘’denial.’’ We have denied ourselves; we tend to deny who we really are. The truth is that
no country can ever achieve economic success that recklessly abandons its own cultural
foundation. You simply can never build anything concrete on a foreign or alien
foundation.

But on the contrary, the Russians and more remarkably the genius himself Mr. Leon
Trotsky whose works of literature are very outstanding even today are proud of their
backward foundation from which they catapulted to become a superpower nation. Trotsky
wrote about the significant role of culture in development: ‘’the possibility of skipping
over intermediate steps is, of course, by no means absolute. Its degree is determined in
the long run by the economic and cultural capacities of the country. The backward nation
moreover, not infrequently debases the achievements borrowed from outside in the
process of adapting them to its own more primitive culture. In this, the very process of
assimilation acquires a self-contradictory character.’’

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 Now with this caveat in mind, we can easily understand that it is a somewhat sort of
an equation where ‘’the law of Generation’’ if properly unified with ‘’the law of
combined and uneven development’ would become equal to ‘’the law of combined
development.’’ This means that success depends upon direct bearing on who we really
are because it is impossible to build permanent structures on an alien foundation, as we
have been desperately trying to do.

Indigenous African Pedagogy.

Let us look again at what Mr. Orde-Brown said, ‘’…..in native villages this would not
be the case, since almost all the tribes have very definite arrangements for training the
young people according to their ideas.’’ In the first place, tribal customs and norms
provide a means where modes of behaviour for each society are fixed. These provide a
mechanism whereby young people cannot be brought up in a higgledy-piggledy manner.

In fact to learn in traditional societies was to become an active participant in the

everyday activities of one’s community. One of its greatest values, from the point of view
of learning, lay in being able to bring individuals face to face with the realities of the
social and physical necessities of life. Such an education was achieved through a variety
of realistic pedagogical situations such as tilling the land, fishing herding, hunting,
building, cooking or home making ____ in short, learning through active participation in
the day-to-day activities of life in the family, lineage, clan or society. In short: school was
society and society was school.

All in all, whether the goal was to learn or master family hereditary skills and
knowledge (as in the case of herbal medicine) or that a highly skilled trade (as in the case
of blacksmithing) or perhaps that of training for leadership (usually involving young men
within the confines of the royal families), the mode of learning in specialized or closed
education ___ learning those phenomena which were useful to certain individuals ____
was prolonged practice interspersed with demonstrations and brief but recurrent formal
instructions.

However, generally, learning in traditional societies concentrated on the essential

facts, skills and attitudes required of individuals to live or function successfully as
children, as youths or as adults. For it was generally recognized that it was not possible or
desirable to learn everything in life ___ hence the emphasis on the acquisition of the
common domain of knowledge. In situations in which both socio-moral and techno-
occupational education took place was during the period of ritual initiations, particularly
pubertal initiations.

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 In Sierra Leone, the authorities have since 1984 been studying the challenges
of intercultural development in education, learning and training. And Mr. T.J.L. Forde
had this to say at the conference on: Conflict and Harmony Between Traditional and
Western Education in Africa: ‘’…..the danger is that if the school-based pattern of
education completely supersedes the more traditional forms of education, Sierra
Leoneans stand to lose many valuable aspects of our cultural heritage. An urgent effort
should be made to preserve as much of their cultural traditions as possible before they
become completely extinct, either through indifference or disuse……we need to carry out
a good deal more research in order to comprehend the total spectrum of indigenous life
and culture, in order to appreciate the conflicts which may arise when Western influences
impinge….

‘’Thus, while accepting that there has been conflict between Western and traditional
forms of education in Sierra Leone, it is now the responsibility of Sierra Leonean
educators, social scientists and anthropologists to discover a new approach to the whole
process of education so as to ensure a more complete harmonization. The crucial question
for Sierra Leone is how to bring about greater cohesion in the educative process.’’ (Adult
Education and Development: Germany Adult Education Association No. 30 March 1988)

I suppose that education should be adapted to the mentality, aptitudes, occupations

and traditions of the various peoples, conserving as far as possible all sound and healthy
elements in the fabric of their social life; adapting them where necessary to changed
circumstances and progressive ideas, as an agent of growth. Its aim should be to render
the individual more efficient in his or her condition of life, whatever may be. However,
the central difficulty in the problem lies in finding ways to improve what is sound in
indigenous tradition, since contact with western civilization __ and even education itself
___ have tended to weaken tribal authority, but it is essential that what is good in the old
beliefs and sanctions should be strengthened and what is defective should be replaced.

GOD BLESS

Senior Chief Mwamba Kapalaula II,

(Henry Kanyanta Sosala),
P.O. Box 410430,
Kasama, Zambia.
e-mail: sosalakapalakasha@Yahoo.com
Cell:+260955 194420.

DATE: 30TH DECEMBER,2008

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