by
Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D.
Emeritus Professor of Sociology
Fifty-four years ago, in December 1971 barely 7 years after Zambia obtained independence from British colonialism in 1964, 65 students and I graduated from the then Form V and now Grade 12 from the historic prestigious Chizongwe Secondary School in Chipata in the Eastern Province of Zambia. Each member of that graduating class scattered all over Zambia, Africa, lived in Europe and the rest of the world. There were no periodic class reunions during those 54 years so that we could have found out how the members of class’s lives had turned out. Through word of mouth, some occasional phone calls and letters, random encounters, we kept track of some happy uplifting achievements, training, marriages, job advancements, travel, tragic events in lives, and deaths of members.
After my being a lecturer or Professor at Bridgewater College in the United States for 31 years, I retired as Emeritus Professor of Sociology in 2021. Each time I called my classmate Ben, he kept saying: “Just a few of us of the 65 are still alive today in 2025.” That’s when it hit me: “What would happen if some of the few of us met in Lusaka?” The idea was so thrilling, it kept me awake for weeks.
I had to choose the venue where we could meet. We could have met at one of the restaurants in numerous glamorous shopping malls. But I wanted us to meet at one of the old Lusaka historic venues where some of us had great times during our young days in the 1970s: The Ridgeway Hotel. But I did not know the new name of the hotel until I used my cell phone to book a taxi on the Yango app. Cell phones did not exist in the 1970s. The hotel is now the Southern San Ridgeway. I was so glad they kept part of the old hotel name.
I had so many great but also terrifying fantasies about the meeting. What if the four guys did not show up? What if some of them were ill and in wheelchairs and could barely speak? We were all in our seventies. The moment had finally arrived. It was now Friday March the 7th 2025, two minutes to 11:00 hours rendezvous time as my taxi pulled up to the Ridgeway Hotel.
I had not bothered to make a reservation. I walked through the lobby towards the old cocktail lounge I remembered so well. I was stunned when no one of the hotel staff stopped me to say: “Sir! You cannot go to this side unless you have a reservation.”
“Tuyuni!!!” I said to myself in my Tumbuka mother tongue language. “The Birds!!!!” I said to myself in English.
The nostalgic memories just gushed in my mind. There is a pond with matete river reeds in it with beautiful yellow and black colored noisy mpheta birds weaving nests. This is the cocktail lounge location where I had great times with my friends in the 1970s. I sat down at a table for four on the edge of the pond.
My phone rang. Mike said he was just driving around the corner at the Lusaka Civic Center. I was so happy and relieved. They were coming. Michael Ngulube walked in. I hugged him with a big laugh. Then it was Ben Kalinda, Ruskin Jere, and Kennedy Ngoma. The excitement was over the brim and put us all on cloud nine. We could not stop talking and laughing. It was memory after memory and we existed in timeless moment. The waiters asked if we wanted drinks. I was hardly surprised that none of my classmates asked for beer. To think that we used to drink like fish. The last time I had a beer was maybe 25 years ago in two thousand and I did not even enjoy it. We ate a delicious buffet lunch.
After five hours, we had talked and exchanged so much. Effron Lungu had passed away who had once been Minister of Foreign Affairs in President Sata’s administration. Abdul Munshi had passed away. He was our Zambian classmate of Indian parents. Munshi was a Kwacha Hall or resident roommate of the current Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa in the 1970s when some of our classmates were students at University of Zambia. We talked a great deal about our towering figure Headmaster Mr. J. S Mei who was classified as a colored South African. We greatly admired and respected him. We greatly missed our classmate Charles Kateketa, probably one of the most intelligent, humorous, socially gifted, and witty of our class. Many of the 65 have died.
We did have some time to talk briefly about just some of our great career achievements and especially about challenging and overcoming European anti-African or anti-black racism. We had all passed so many tough major formal examinations during our schooling lives. It was not surprising that all of us achieved great heights in our professions.
· Ben Kalinda was an aircraft maintenance engineer with Zambia Airways in the 1980s. He is currently: “Non-Destructive AirCraft Engineer” who is most qualified in Africa, Asia, and South America.
· Ruskin Jere was Managing Director of Microfin Africa which is a subsidiary of Africa Banking Corporation in Africa. He retired in 2013 and now does some consulting.
· Michael Ngulube was first a “Beer Taster at Zambia Breweries” who ensured quality control of the product. After working at Zambia Breweries for 20 years, he retired as an assessor of “Brewing Raw Material” using his Chemistry technical knowledge.
· Kennedy Ngoma retired after being Ancince Maritime Internationale (A.M.I) Projects Manager; CACITEEX Logistics Zambia Limited Operations Manager. He currently owns his own company as Managing Director Trading and Transport Logistics Company: Sodizam Solutions.
· Mwizenge Tembo is Emeritus Professor of Sociology after teaching or lecturing at Bridgewater College in the United States, at the University of Zambia, being a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Zambia. He has worked in academia and universities for 41 years.
If you were a Zambian among a population of 3.5 million people at independence in 1964, we were very excited, optimistic, and euphoric. Because suddenly we had social equality, freedom of movement, speech, and tremendous economic and educational opportunities became available after we completed From V. Zambia was facing many major problems at independence especially great expectations for development; education, transportation, health, natural resources, agriculture, employment, mining sector, housing, democracy, self-governance, freedom, challenges of tribalism and the country’s political unity, independence for neighboring countries which were still under the oppression of racist white or European colonial rule such as Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Mozambique, Angola, South Africa.
All the five Chizongwe Secondary School graduates were ten to 14 years old at Independence in 1964. There were millions among the 3.5 million who had been born in the 1950s who were 10 to 15 years old. What is the significance of this fact?
The population of Zambia is 19 million. Zambians who were born in 1995 and are younger than 30 years old may be about 70% of the population which is about 13.3 million young girls, boys, women and men. The five Zambian old guards are part of the small remaining population that worked very hard and benefited from Zambia’s original education policies which aimed at filling skilled manpower positions during the first 27 years of development after independence in 1964. There was a severe shortage or lack of Zambian skilled manpower immediately after independence.
And yet those who are over 65 years old are only 2.4% which is only 456,000. Therefore, there are fewer elders and old guards today in Zambia who are the Chizongwe group’s age of 70 years or more to teach younger people about what were some of our and the country’s struggles, challenges, successes and triumphs and experiences during the first 27 years of our independence from British colonialism.