First Time I Saw the Train Part One

by

Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D,

Emeritus Professor of Sociology

Author of the Internationally Acclaimed Romantic Novel: “The Bridge”

President Kenneth Kaunda was young. Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe was young. Munukayumbwa Sipalo was young. Peter Matoka was young. Julia Chikamoneka was young.  Chibesa Kankasa was young. Mutumba Mainga Bull was young. Chieftainess Nkomesha was young. All the chiefs in Zambia were young. The hills, the forest, and the trees in Zambia were young. Cairo Road in Lusaka was young. The Zambezi River, the Luangwa River, and the Kafue River were young. My parents were young. My  three brothers and six  sisters were young. My uncles and my aunts were young. All my friends were young. Zambia was young. The University of Zambia was young. I was young.

My father was a teacher at Kasonjola Primary School in Chief Mkanda’s area north of rural Eastern Province of Zambia along the Chipata Lundazi road. We were living in a small five room teacher’s brick house built in all rural primary schools just after Zambia’s independence from British colonialism in 1964 at the beginning of the sleeping Zambia’s more than twenty-five years of spectacular leap in development and social change.

Molozi steepest slope today on the Chipata Lundazi Road fifty-eight years later.

This is what we always did as a family after supper. This one August evening we sat in our tiny living room on wooden chairs around the dining room table chatting for hours. The younger siblings would already be sleeping having slumped over on the floor in the dark. Something totally unexpected and unusual happened that night.

My father emerged from the bedroom carrying a paraffin hurricane lamp which he had just lit because we were trying to save the paraffin. We often only lit the paraffin lamp if we really thought it was necessary. Some nights we ate dinner outside and chatted in the bright beautiful moon light. My father placed the flickering orange light hurricane lamp in the middle of the table.

“Mwizenge,” my father said sitting down. “After tomorrow we are travelling to Kitwe to the Copperbelt to visit your uncles, aunts, and cousins.”

My eyes popped out as I grinned from ear to ear. The darkness in the room was suddenly bright. I was frozen and speechless with shock.

“Mwanyithu muluta ku walale ku Kitwe na awisemwe, (you our friend are going to Kitwe and line of rail with your father)” my mother added fuel to my excitement and imagination as she

must have seen my wide grin and popping twinkling eyes of sheer rare joyful moment.

“Your mother will help you tomorrow wash the clothes you will be taking with you,” my father said as we all dispersed to go to bed in our rooms.

That night was torture as I could not sleep from sheer excitement and imagination. When I was young living in the village, I had heard so much about Lusaka, Broken Hill (Kabwe), and Kitwe in the then Northern Rhodesia from my uncles who had gone there to work. Some uncles had gone far away to Salisbury (Harare)  in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Johannesburg and Cape town in South Africa. They had exciting experiences and stories but also warned of the dangers of matsotsi or crooks, conmen, and criminals in the cities. There were too many cars, road car accidents, and it was dangerous, the delicious new European or (white man) town foods, and then there was the romance of the train. As I finally drifted to sleep, I wished the journey was right there and then. I did not want to endure one more whole day of torture waiting for this greatest trip of my young life.

On the day of departure, my father rode his bicycle carrying the one large suitcase which had our two blankets and some clothes. I was wearing shorts but barefoot which was common for boys and children my age in rural areas. My father was wearing his normal attire of shoes, pair of trousers, long sleeved shirt and a jacket.

I rode my mother’s bicycle. We arrived at the Molozi bus station at about 1600 hours and promptly rode a lift to Fort Jameson (Chipata) as it was late in the day and the United Bus Company (UBZ) from Lundazi to Chipata had already passed. Molozi was notorious because it had the steepest chikwela or slope on the gravel road on the Chipata Lundazi road. It was so steep that during the rain season we could hear from 5 miles or 8 Kms  away at Kasonjola, trucks and buses painfully moaning up the hill. Many a vehicle simply broke down trying to climb the Molozi Hill.

We arrived in Chipata at Kapata Bus Station at 18:00 hours and reported at a guest house that charged each one of us six pence or six ngwee for the night. We laid down on the cement floor using half of the blanket to lie on and folding the other half as cover. We would be buying the ticket and boarding the Lusaka bus early in the morning.

Book Review – The Zwangendaba Mpezeni Ngoni: History and Migrations, Settlements and Culture.

Yizenge Chondoka, The Zwangendaba Mpezeni Ngoni: History and Migrations, Settlements and Culture, Lusaka, Academic Press, 2017, 148 pages, Hardcover, $32.00 (K411.00)

BOOK REVIEW – in Memory of Dr Yizenge Chondoka

by

Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D

Professor of Sociology

Introduction

At dawn on June 23rd 2019, I boarded a bus in Lusaka. My destination was  Lundazi in the rural remote Eastern Province of Zambia. I was anxious and excited to arrive at the bus station at 15hours or 3:00pm Zambian time. Before my final leg of the journey of a 45-minute minibus ride to visit my relatives to eat nshima with chicken, in my home village near Boyole in the North-Western part of the Lundazi District, I was to meet a man who was going to hand me a special gift.

Book Cover

As soon as I stepped out of the bus, the short man stepped forward. He was grinning ear to ear, had bright eyes with some grey hair. I finally met Mr. Frackson Bota. We shook and pumped hands as we excitedly greeted each other and talked with a mix or English and Tumbuka as we multilingual Zambians do.

“Here is Dr. Chodoka’s book,” Mr. Bota said amid our laughter and excitement.

This is how I finally got possession of a precious gift from the late Dr. Yizenge A. Chondoka’s book: The Zwangendaba Mpezeni Ngoni. He passed awayin May 2017 leaving instructions to Mr. Bota to hand me a copy of the book because of my dedication to and passion for Zambian and African culture. I was flattered to see the message Mr. Bota inscribed in the book.

Whenever I have a book that I know I will enjoy, I don’t read it all at once. I could have read the 13 Chapters and  148 pages in one evening. But like a delicious meal of nshima with best ndiyo, umunani, dende or relish, I wanted to eat it slowly over a few days enjoying a few pages each day while I was in the village sitting under my favorite shady Msoro tree. It is tempting to tell the reader everything that is in the book. But then what are you going to be left to read when you buy the book? There are so many things I found good about the book. I will summarize four of them; who was Nsingo? The Great Shaka King; Mfecane Wars and the debunking of the white or European bogus Hamitic hypothesis, the Bemba-Ngoni Wars, and the significance of Zwangendaba-Ngoni.

Nshima with Chicken

Who was Nsingo?

When I attended Chizongwe Secondary School in Chipata from 1967 to 1971, there were four Halls of Residence; Aggrey, Muleya, Skeva Soko, and Nsingo House. I had heard that Nsingo was a hero in the then Fort Jameson in the late 1800s and now Chipata area. To my great joy, Chapter 12 of the book says Nsingo was a great hero and a martyr in the 1897-8 Anglo-Ngoni War in the Mpezeni Kingdom. You can learn the details of that war in the book.

Shaka Zulu and the Bogus Hamitic Hypothesis

Shaka Zulu and how he ruthlessly ruled and expanded the Zulu Empire is one of the most influential leaders of all time in history. He instigated the Mfecane Wars or wars of chaos and disorder from 1818 to 1828 which affected the entire Southern Africa; Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi up to Southern Tanzania. To understand the falsehood or bogusness that is the European or white Hamitic Hypothesis, you have to understand its origins. In 1758 a Swedish biologist came up with biological classifications of humans. Europeans eventually came up with racial classifications in the 1890s that classified humans into Caucasians, Mongloid and Negroid wrongly creating racism; with Negroid (blacks;Africans)  being the most inferior and Caucasians (Whites) being most superior. The Hamitic Hypothesis is the popular idea which Europeans spread all over the world that Africans could not come up with anything useful or intelligent on their own; there had always somehow had to be a European or White influence.

Yizenge Chondoka Biography

Europeans used the Hamitic Hypothesis in history books to claim that Shaka Zulu was influenced by the Dutch, the British, or the Portuguese because Shaka Zulu could not have created such a powerful empire on his own being of course black and an African. Yizenge Chondoka thoroughly debunks the Hamitic Hypothesis.

“However, recent historical researchers in South Africa have proved beyond doubt that the theory of White Inspiration is false. There was no outside influence to the rise of the Zulu state…..Finally using the available evidence, it is safe to conclude that this theory is indeed false. It was coined to match its counterpart: Hermitic hypothesis, which  basically states that anything good on the Continent of Africa was brought by outsiders, the white people.”(Chondoka, 2017: 8-9)

The Ngoni-Bemba Wars

The Ngoni and Bemba peoples fought many wars when they encountered each other in the Northern province of Zambia. Historians on both sides have tried to determine who won the wars. About this dispute, Chondoka says: “The book is dedicated to the Bemba who have reluctantly ‘agreed’ with the Ngoni that in the Bemba-Ngoni war none of the two was ‘defeated’.  On this point, it is better to agree to disagree to avoid unnecessary arguments that can lead to High Blood Pressure for one group.”(Dedication, p. ii)

Read the book in the village under the shady Msoro tree

Zwangendaba 1815-1848

Another looming and towering figure was the influential Ngoni leader Zwangendaba. He led the Ngoni for 30 years as they moved in the Southern African region conquering many other peoples along the way and incorporating them into the Ngoni Kingdom. Some of his decisions, his death and succession were controversial. This is often the case with larger than life leaders. My father is Ngoni and my late mother was Tumbuka. That intertribal marriage was a Ngoni influence among the Tumbuka in Eastern Zambia and Northern Malawi.

Conclusion

I highly recommend this book if you are among the 17 million Zambians at home and abroad. If you come from the Southern Africa region, there is a chance that Shaka Zulu and the Ngoni influenced your ancestors, language, and culture. I took history in Secondary School and in Universities. That history is heavily Eurocentric some of which Chondoka debunks. The book both taught me and confirmed that as Zambians we created our own history, which we never read, in the Eurocentric history which is often wrongly projected as the only and most accurate history.