YESTERDAY, we churned out an article emphasizing the need for GBM and other former government officials currently languishing in prison for corruption or indeed pillaging our national resources to remain in prison so as to serve as a bitter lesson to those serving in the current administration that stealing is bad; we ruffled a few feathers, of course. Someone wondered why we should be ‘wasting’ our time writing about high profile prisoners instead of researching and sharing drought resistant crops that can still be planted given the impending drought staring right in our faces!
We must confess we are good listeners……we spent much of the day inspecting people’s fields and engaging our mental faculties for any practical solutions that may be applied to avert critical food shortages in the foreseeable future.
To say the country is suffering yet another drought is not a misnomer…..it’s a reality! Unless you are blind, crop failure is palpable in every direction. What were once acreage of promising maize fields are now a pitiful sight – wilting and dying slowly.
This immediately reminds us one Mundia Sikatana, the legendary and indefatigable Minister of Agriculture during the Mwanawasa regime. Presented with a similar challenge in early 2000s, Sikatana wasn’t one to confine himself to the comfort of his air-conditioned deluxe office drinking copious amounts of tea and enjoying a generous supply of imported cookies.
He immediately discarded his business suits for the not so fanciful work suits and gumboots and went into overdrive overseeing the winter maize project. No one went hungry that year as many of us would attest.
Agriculture minister Hon. Mutolo Phiri, what guarantee are you giving us that we won’t experience a scarcity of our much favourite staple food next year? It would be folly for us to wait for the water to get to our necks before we can act – kneeling before the international community with the proverbial begging bowl in our hands pleading for handouts. We don’t expect the minister to easily fit into Sikatana”s big shoes, but there’s definitely something he ought to be doing to mitigate the possible food crisis glaring at us.
The country is effectively at war with possible hunger. The same way we’d summon the mighty of the military to clean up our cities whenever there’s an outbreak of Cholera, we expect the military, particularly ZNS to come in and help the nation contain hunger.
Phiri must request Gary Nkombo, the Minister of Local Government to engage our traditional leaders to consider surrendering massive tracts of land, particularly in areas where they’ve vast water bodies. Once enough land has been secured, the Agriculture minister must further liaise with the Defence minister, Ambrose Lufuma to beseech the President who is of course the Commander in Chief of armed forces to give ‘marching orders’ to the men and women in uniform to take to the fields without further ado and grow more maize using irrigation methods.
As somebody once observed, during such a calamity such as the one glaring at us, the military shouldn’t just be relaxing in the barracks playing ‘nsolo’; we can always utilise them to wage war against possible starvation.
Salute!
Prince Bill M Kaping’a
Political/Social Analyst
Start by not destroying the wetlands by allowing structures to be built in them
Kabwe is particulary bad I’m told
Soldiers don’t play nsolo in barracks. Your reasoning is very good but don’t ever undermine the services of Soldiers. If there is a department you need to respect is the Army. You were able to write your article in peace because our Soldiers are working not playing nsolo. Am kindly requesting you to retrieve your statement and write an apology to the Zambia Army. Don’t ever play politics with the army because men and women in uniform are not politicians. They are the only true patriots of mother Zambia.
Am not a soldier. Let’s learn to appreciate Zambia Army and all other defense forces.
Imwe naimwe ba banda………
There is freedom of expression……..
Don’t try to militerize the Internet, it won’t work……..
FWD2031
Mr. Banda is very right, soldiers they don’t play isolo and by saying that, that’s being disrespectful to the men and women in uniform. If you don’t have comments better keep quiet. Don’t drag the army into politics. Mr. Kapinga mind the way you write about the army, you have come up with good ideas but you have just made a mistake by alleging that the military just play isolo.
This author has always exhibited signs of an extremely idle mind seeking some recognition but obviously doing it the wrong way
The way forward for Zambia to build resilience into our agricultural production by the creation of more dams and………
cannels to feed water from North to other water starved parts of Zambia………..
But the way Africans think, this is too much hard work , and after all the rain still falls………
FWD2031
I certainly get pissed of off when soldiers are brought in to do agriculture jobs and when huge tracks of land are offered to foreigners to grow crops that we eat. I an a simple villager. But I think that such options do not provide sustainable solutions. Let us simply support those Zambians that have decided to go into farming.