Renowned US based Zambian academic Professor Mwizenge Tembo has proposed that the University of Zambia is faced with numerous challenge that needs concerted efforts to address.
Professor Tembo who is Professor of Sociology and has taught at Bridgewater College in Virginia for twenty years said there is need to get UNZA back to its glory days.
In a paper titled, University of Zambia: Crisis of Problems, Professor Tembo called for more funding to the country’s highest learning institution.
Below is Professor Tembo’s paper.
On a Sunday blue sky afternoon in May 1972, I finally stood on the balcony of the fourth floor of Africa Hall 5 Room 26 as a freshman at the University of Zambia appreciating and surveying the beautiful scenery around and below. The lawn was green with gorgeous flowers and short bushes. Different types of music were booming from record players from many students’ rooms. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and excitement about the better times to come of gaining a University education which my family and I had not even ever dreamed of even just months before in January 1972 when I got an acceptance letter from the University of Zambia.
My room was furnished with brand new wardrobes, book shelf, desk, reading lamp, chair, blankets, clean bed sheets, blankets, and pillows. The bathrooms had good new hot showers, a line of clean wash sinks with shinning mirrors. The hall floor toilets were clean with toilet paper which was replaced virtually every day. These clean toilet facilities were also all over campus classrooms and the library with toilet papers. Hall sweepers cleaned the rooms every day. This was the case in the 5 residences of Africa Hall, Kwacha Hall, Presidents Hall, and International Hall. The women’s was October Hall. Thefts of property on campus were unknown. Supper that evening in the main dining hall was a five course meal of soup or a salad, rice with chicken or beef, custard with cake, fruit, coffee, tea and bread with butter. We had pocket money of K25.00 and an allowance for purchasing text books at the bookstore for our classes.
It was very exciting to sit for the first time in Lecture Theater One and Two for lectures by may lecturers at the time including Professor Robert Serpell and Professor Muyunda Mwanalushi in Psychology and many other courses. We had some of the best professors and lecturers from around the world since we did not have too many indigenous Zambian lecturers yet. The University of Zambia had an enrollment of fifteen hundred. The cost of room, board, and tuition was four hundred Kwacha per year. My father earned K19.00 per month as a primary school teacher with 9 children some of whom he had to pay school fees for. My family could never afford for me to attend the University of Zambia.
The vast majority of Zambians could not afford the cost of sending their sons and daughters to the University of Zambia. The government provided bursaries for everyone because the country needed educated highly skilled labor.
Thousands of Zambians who graduated from University of Zambia will forever love the University of Zambia and will always want the institution to remain alive. All of us graduates are dedicated to do whatever we can to help support the University. This is why the problems that have continued to beset the University of Zambia are always deeply troubling for all graduates, former students or alumni of the University Zambia as well as for all concerned citizens.
University of Zambia Problems
Since the great days of the early 1970s during the last 43 years, the determined men and women of UNZA have proudly continued to graduate students who excel both in Zambia and the international diaspora although the university has faced major challenges that would have made other institutions buckle and disappear. The list of problems is so endless that this article cannot know nor address all of them. These discussions and proposed solutions are not meant to imply that the author has all the solutions but rather to make some very pragmatic suggestions according to this author’s view.
UNZA Alumni-Diaspora and Lecturers
There are 5 possible serious problem areas and proposed possible immediate and long term solutions to some of the deeply embedded problems of the University of Zambia. The first and probably the most serious problem is lack of a culture and an organization that can both coordinate and mediate mutual cooperation and trust between UNZA lecturers and older graduates some of whom are retired and some may be in the diaspora. All the thousands of UNZA graduates all the way back to its inception in 1966 who are in Zambia and especially those in the diaspora are deeply devoted to the institution. Day and night they are proud and would like to help the University of Zambia. But there appears to be lack of a culture and prominent organization to channel this desire to help.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that there may be mutual suspicion about the intentions of the graduates who are in the diaspora and those at UNZA. The same mutual suspicion also applies to national leadership where Zambians who are in the diaspora are regarded with suspicion if they express a desire to participate in the electoral process or seek political electoral office. Although many of the lecturers at UNZA may have been also trained abroad, there is an underlying suspicion that any diaspora graduate coming to UNZA may be looking for a job to displace the indigenous younger faculty or looking to unfairly dominate the institution. Some of the diaspora UNZA graduates may harbor a superiority complex. Both of these attitudes would have to be resolved before any long term plans and actions can be mutually executed to help University of Zambia. We all deeply love the institution and badly want to help it survive and prosper. This potentially may be the most serious problem that may hinder or impede any potential progress initiated by the two wings of the UNZA graduates or alumni.
Capital Expenditure
Since the early 1970s, the University of Zambia has increased its enrollment from 1500 to about 30,000 in 2015 which is an overwhelming increase of 1900%. Has student housing or residence halls, teaching and classroom facilities increased by 1900%? That is probably not the case. According to The Post of 8 May 2015 Page 2, UNZA has deplorable conditions with lecturers having 250, 298, 500 to 1,000 students in a class with some sitting on the floor.
A few years ago during a Presidential election campaign one candidate promised that if elected they would improve the conditions at UNZA such that 19 students would not be sharing one residential hall room. I was stunned but was never able to verify that my room like Africa 5 Room 26 could be occupied by 19 students. During most of the early years at UNZA, there were only 2 students per room.
This is a troubling reality that affects not only UNZA but all public institutions that offer services in Zambia; the demand increases as the population grows but there are never enough resources to accommodate the increasing demand. How can we get the resources to increase capital expenditure? Although government might be the solution, there is much more that alumni or graduates of UNZA can do to build the new, necessary and needed infrastructure to expand the institution.
Lecturers and Workers Conditions
The lecturers should be the best paid since donations and endowed Chairs could account for some of the pay. Some of the best conditions could be arranging for lecturers to take sabbatical leave to institutions where UNZA graduates are teaching and researching in foreign institutions. All UNZA lecturers could have a designated counterpart UNZA graduate lecturer at other institutions abroad to work together for research and exchanging some of the new cutting edge teaching pedagogy. May be we could have lecturers abroad who are UNZA graduates to give live lectures by skype as guest lecturers in one of the current UNZA lecturers’ courses as a donation. The other way round is that current UNZA lecturers can provide guest lectures to University classes abroad where lecturers who are UNZA graduates are teaching at colleges and universities in the diaspora.
Since I began teaching here in America 25 years ago, I tried to use appropriate supplementary textbooks by some of my Zambian colleagues and authors in the courses I taught in the early 1990s. There is a possibility that a live lecture from an UNZA lecturer would provide a valuable source of course material for my students who often cannot afford to fly to Africa or Zambia to attend a lecture at a Zambian or African institution. Many times I took my American students to the University of West Indies Mona Campus in Jamaica where my students attended many lectures by Jamaican lecturers for a fee that was paid to both the lecturers and the University. University of Zambia could to the same today via skype or closed circuit television.
Refurbishing of Residence Hall Rooms
Some of the most passionate desires among all UNZA graduates in Zambia and abroad are to refurbish and paint their dilapidated old rooms in the Halls of residence. The word is that the late President Mwanawasa did refurbish his old room in President Hall. This is one of the easiest tasks that a new organization can arrange. When University of Zambia students are on a break between terms, teams of UNZA graduates with their families, friends, and children would come to campus and paint rooms every year. The best way would be to install plaques in each room listing all the graduates who resided in those rooms since the University opened. This could be a continuing tradition in which every UNZA student upon graduating would be expected to help take care of his or her former room later in their lives.
Library, Classrooms, Equipment, and Landscaping
UNZA needs library resources, adequate classrooms, equipment for teaching and research and landscaping to maintain the beautiful grounds, very modest donations by all former graduates could take care of some of the expenses. For example, if we assume that UNZA had graduated a conservative total of 8600 students over the last 43 years, how could they make donations? If each one of the alumni or the graduates donates K500.00 ($71.00) each, that would yield K4.3 million. If they donated K721.00 ($100) each that would yield K6.2 million. There should be a new approach in which all donors’ names should be recognized on campus by engraving names of each donor in relevant places, buildings, and rooms. Their names should also be put on the UNZA web page.
Vison for the Future
University of Zambia can be stronger even produce better graduates for the future. In order to achieve this, we ought to have a better vision for the future for the institution. Simply doing the same things we have done since 1966 may not be enough. Professor Lameck Goma, the first Zambian Vice-Chancellor of the University game a famous graduation speech in the early 1970s titled: “The Usefulness of the Useless Disciplines”. University of Zambia focused intensely on training students to occupy skilled jobs in the Zambian economy that were under tremendous demand. Disciplines such engineering, medicine, law, computer science, business, education, economics, biology, agriculture, and mathematics were regarded as “useful” disciplines. But disciplines such as the arts, music, philosophy, poetry, anthropology, literature, theater, and dance were regarded as “useless” disciplines because they could not help Zambia provide the technological skills we urgently needed for developing the nation at that time.
Prof. Goma was arguing that we needed knowledge of the arts to lead fuller both personal and intellectual lives as a nation. I agree with Prof. Goma. University of Zambia needs to introduce the arts. How this can be done is subject to proper planning and discussion. For example, University of Zambia should build a state of the art Performing Arts Theater and center. This could be a source of employment, income from the community as all audience attending events would pay for all national and international performances. A performing arts center would also be a training ground for future artists, film makers, creative writers, play wrights, dancers, musicians, ethnomusicologists, opera writers, opera performers, stage and film actors. Virtually all UNZA graduates are good technocrats but very few of us are capable of infusing the arts into our work.
So Sata is really dead! Ma! I thought I was dreaming!
Is he the new chancellor?
He wants to be new chancellor by telling us what we already know that it is lack of funding that is the problem- kaili ni wako ni wako kumawa umodzi through and through. He should have told the PF government how they will have political will to reduce the bloated cabinet, stop corruption, stop unnecessary by-elections, and other wasteful adventures by presidential overseas delegations etc.
Ask Prof.Chirwa PF dont value brains, and way did you say Professor in Sociology? such courses, me i can even get a PhD just at home. iam only scared of Professors in Medicine,Pharmacology and Immunology. chirwa ran away.
PROFFESSOR YOU ARE A LONE VOICE IN THE DESERT.THE PF ARE NOT INTERESTED IN ALL WHAT YUO ARE TALKING ABOUT EXCEPT ENRICHING THEMSELVES.
THEY ARE SITTING ON A TIME BOMB WITH YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT
@Joe uli chikopo
The problem with Zambians as a people is that we never pay it forward. How many people here go back to their former schools and or colleges and help either financially or menially? Before we label this professor as job seeking, senile or nostalgic let us at least think and reflect on what he has brought up!
Professor Tembo is so right. The rush to built new universities is a futile exercise if we can’t maintain and improve our first university, UNZA. It hurts to see that the lawns go without being watered or mowed, instead goats are used as grass cutters. I understand that students live in worse conditions than refugees in their residences. The library and laboratory facilities have remained ancient for decades, in this age of technological advancements. The culture of external examiners and markers is also history at UNZA, am told. This is really sickening – and to see Zambian students flocking to universities in Namibia, Botswana and some formerly Bantustan universities in SA is even more depressing, coz all these countries were looking up to us! Where has our pride in education gone?
Very good insights professor. I like the fact that you are suggesting attainable and practical solutions ideal to the Unza environment.
Dr.Jay, jay you are an ignorant person. So you think a professor in sociology is cheap than pharmacologist?That’s ignorance number one. You are suffering from superiority complex. Tell one pharmacologists anywhere in the world who has risen to be president of a country. Zero.Tell me one physicist who is a President of any country on earth? Zero. I do not down grade other disciplines like you do, but I can tell you that if Sociology was that simple to obtain even if one is a sleep, then there were going to be no departments for such. Stop thinking that or sociologists did not pass maths or science. You will be shocked to learn I beat the chaps in natural science stream hand down, but I love sociology, By the way there is Sociology of medicine. Sociology is the mother of social sciences.
Went to UNZA in 1980 and UNZA was still 80% what professor describes. But by 1984 the situation was dire.
More comments later on this issue as I have work to do in my work place. They do not tolerate time wasting.
This is a great article. Sad to see the state of UNZA. The challenge of the post-colonial African state has always been to maintain standards. Various studies have been done on how to improve UNZA but none of them has ever been implemented, from the Bobby Bwalya Commission to the Mwanalushi Inquiry. Even Prof. Muna Ndulo came up with tangible solutions, so did Kavanga Yambayamba but to no avail. It is not difficult to return UNZA to its past glory days, it needs political will – in this regard Mubanga Kashoki’s paper “The University of Zambia on a Lonely Island” written in the 1970s is apt!
Maybe the old prof is getting senile, but this is a poorly written piece…
@UCT Don,
This kind of dump and run talk must end. Poorly written? Show us yours, bwana. Where are you published so we can stand owe at your writing skill.
I thought so. Nowhere!
Well said.
As former students we need to participate fully than blaming those leading the institution.
I spent one semester at UNZA. Is ok if I be could allowed to
paint just a quarter of TP5/24?
Exsay, does that work in the US ? this is Zambia o !
I would like to add that govt should subside their universities budget by engaging private companies in sponsoring a certain number of students. This can be achieved by contracting these business institutions to committing funds for this project and then get it back from the revenue office as a tax refund. Everybody wins.
The problem of UNZA is certainly not one of lack of money. Come to UNZA today Professor Tembo and see the brand new 4×4 Ford rangers and Isuzus and Toyota Landcruisers being driven by the Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Registrat, Bursar, Business Development Manager, Quality Assuarance Manage, Resident Engineer, 4 Deputy Registrars, Dean of Student Affairs and all the Deans of the Schools and Directors of Units, then you will realise the problem is not lack of money but the use of it. Even if you were to pour in much more there would be little change to the face of UNZA without proper management systems in place. The current Sangwapo scenario of buying off cars only for the current crop of office holders tells you there is wanton greed and waste at UNZA.
This the worst crap i have heard from a Prof. what has he himself done to mitigate the problem. Levy put words into action and painted he former ROOM though a token which solved nothing.
I agree the Prof is senile 25 years done the line.
Its a blessing I do not meet low thinkers like jay jay and those useless negative people. If you do not like what the Prof has written do not bring your foolishness on the blog. People like warrior nimbata.
Mwiponta mukabwela…. i think this professor is tired of living in the Diaspora…he wants to move back to Zambia and hope he can be hooked up at UNZA….i know him he was at Chizongwe secondary and he is such an attention seeker…
Just because you googled him and found out he was at Chizzy doesn’t mean that you know him.
No wonder you assisted Muvi and hh in thinking diagonally not even parallel nor perpendicular to your forehead.
I also know him. He had an English name before he change to Mwizenge. His married to a white bitch
So we can’t mobilise to build a school despite all this borrowing rubb!sh we keep hearing?This mentality of running things to the ground is very shameful. People just like to take, take take all the time. UTH, UNZA KK International all in a sorry state.
The challenges of UNZA include the fact that fees currently are around 45% of the cost! There is need to review the UNZA cost structure, including the wrong and many pension schemes and then charge fees that are cost reflective. Further, Zambia needs to be honest about financing higher education. The current system has not worked and will not work! A student loan system is long overdue! A recent ranking of 50 best universities in Africa showed that UNZA was not among them. Not even CBU. Not even Mulungushi. Not even the many private Universities now existing in Zambia!
This is good stuff
Refreshing from the usual politics of UPND cadres including some Professors, no names mentioned in case the cadres accuse me of tribalism and send me “heavy” insults.
PW Botha said it plainly. A black man can never run anything successfully whether govt or university. The problems highlighted at UNZA are managerial coupled with an inept and inefficient govt run by a BLACKMAN. These problems will continue until the white man comes to put things in order.
The problem is Kaunda has never told the truth about where they got money to build UNZA. They keep saying the big lie,’ women donated tomatoes, goats and chickens to build the university’ my goodness . You never build a nation on lies. There are so many bazimai, street vendors kaponyas etc selling lots of tomatoes, goats and chickens, why cant we build even one room from such donations at Robert Makasa University today. Please Zambians,’ only the truth shall set you free’
I went to my former High School to donate some school stuff (nothing really, quite cheap), and there was a bit of fun fare but a caution that I should let the DC know about anything like this next time. The second time I tried I was besieged by cadres (including school pupils at the recipient school) who accused me of campaigning (not sure for who or what party). I have never donated anything to my former institution ever since this happened. This should tell you how badly the victimized Zambians view help…
Shame is all I can say. There must be a way the diaspora can be brought in in the affairs of the country. Unfortunately the Embassies where we can go to engage in fruitful dialogue are manned by party cadres and talking to such people is a waste of time. The Embassies are suspicious of anything and anybody. The next governmnet will need to depoliticize the diplomatic services. And why are Sata’s relatives still doing in diplomatic services?
#Kalok. What you did is right and educational. Please don’t give up, continue doing it, and don’t worry about the cadres or the DC for that matter. I am sure some of the students that saw you take stuff to the school will emulate you going forward. This is the beginning of a benefiting effort. One Zambia One Nation.
First and foremost I would like to thank the Prof. for taking interest and time to write a very important article about UNZA. However, has he has rightly, mentioned the solutions he has offered to the numerous problems of UNZA, most of which (issues) he hasn’t even mentioned may never work without solving the base problems. In fact most of these answers would just complicate the issues of UNZA then ever before. Before he started listing down issues and suggested solutions to these issues I expected the prof. to have mentioned one of the most serious problems of UNZA- being the architectual and structural problems of the institution. Historically, when this university was being designed and constructed it was somehow at the peak of Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Due to KK’s choice of…
However, Due to KK’s choice of politic…..
The Zambian government open support for Palestinians angered the Israelis and this was the beginning of casting-in-stone the problems of UNZA. Most of the solutions to UNZA should start with addressing political (between Zambia and Israel) and engineering structural issues of the old grey concrete buildings (not the new Agric and animal husbandry school), first. In the conflict the Israeli contractors left with all the structural plans with the building halfway finished. In fact when EL went to Israel I thought this was one of the problems he went to settle with that country. In short, UNZA needs to be demolished and the state-of-the-art university rebuilt on the same site. Tinkering with those compounded problems of UNZA is synonimous to a…
Tinkering with those compounded problems of UNZA is synonimous to creating a blackhole. The water leaks and floadings at UNZA never started yesterday. They have ever been there, it was my wonder why the Prof never discussed it. In fact failing to highlight the origins of these problems is a BIG problem in itself. Our new president must swallow the humble pie and talk to Israeli gov to come and demolish UNZA and construct a newly designed modern university at the site. This project can be done in phase over a period of say five years starting with, “University of Zambia should build a state of the art Performing Arts Theater and center.”. I totally, agree with the author in the last two paragraphs.
The Prof. touched very important faculty issues. In Zambia I don’t know who told us that, “the arts, music, philosophy, poetry, anthropology, literature, theater, and dance were… “useless” disciplines”. It’s in fact time long overdue Zambian universities, colleges and local councils started building, state-of-the art Performing Arts Theaters and centers, as a way of intellectual, entertainment, tourism, cultural, revenue (for universities and councils), even encouraging more visitors to our villages/towns/cities and a country as a whole. Underplaying this intellectual and cultural activities has made Zambians to be shy of even their own cultural heritages and denied Zambia of creative in the area. Zambians wrongly look at cultural performances as for villagers and illiterates.
i will read later but is the chap selling tomatoes or cleaning shoes or selling herbs? i think I need to lend my lawn mower to Unza.
Just to mention that I was in the Sweet ruins Africa 5 room 27 in the early 1990’s. Then it was wasn’t as bad as being portrayed now. I haven’t been there in a long time but I hear that even the common rooms where we used watch the 19:00 hrs news have been converted into student accommodation. My heart bleeds. I’m more than ready to refurbish the room and give it a fresh coat of paint. There is absolutely nothing new about the issues the Professor raised. People have made proposals on how we can help our institution of academic excellency. All it requires is the political will and probably a forum of Alumni to coordinate such activities. We need to be proactive.
The monopoly that unza had in offering university education is long gone. lets not force the poor task payer to keep on funding an institution training demographers. we have so many private universities that can do that. down size. live within your means. use common sense. unza you are no longer as important to Zambia as you used to be.