SISHUWA Sishuwa says the country is ripe for a revolution due to the many inequalities perpetuated by government.
In his reflections on the future leadership Zambia and the rest of the world need, Dr Sishuwa, a historian and lecturer at the University of Zambia, said all over the world, people were not happy with their leaders.
“Zambia is bleeding. It is a country ripe for revolution. Zambians are wounded. Zambia is a tinderbox, a bad drama too sad and too painful to watch. It must explode. Not if, but when it explodes, then perhaps it can be reconstituted. Those in charge are, with great abandon, dragging the country towards an epic economic collapse. Everything is coming to the fore,” he said yesterday. “The tipping point is near, and it might take only a small spark to light the pent-up frustrations and heap of grievances that have accumulated over the last few years. Those in power must be extremely careful. People are angry. Many are yearning for solutions to our collective problems. They are crying for competent leadership and a sense of clear direction. To those in charge of our country, I say please earn your leadership positions by actually leading effectively.”
Dr Sishuwa said what was happening in the US could happen anywhere in the world.
“What is happening in the US is definitely historic. We are caught up in a rare moment in history. But we in Zambia must also draw lessons from there and apply them to our pitiable condition. We must pay particular attention to the structural factors or objective conditions. They are present in nearly all countries. In Zambia we are yet to have our own version of this mass anger against the status quo. It is time to forge a revolutionary leadership before it is too late,” he said. “We are in a world historic moment. There appears to be a pandemic of absence of effective and competent leadership across much of the world. Come to think of it, the problem of the political leadership in the US today is a global one. India has Modi. Brazil has a clown [Jair Bolsonaro]. Tanzania has a sweeper [President John Magufuli]. Zambia has a…my goodness, what do I even call him? Britain has a megalomaniac who is a liar and chauvinistic narrow nationalist. Egypt is back to its generals. Israel has a corrupt murderous populist cringing on to power to escape possible conviction. South Africa has a White Monopoly puppet. And it goes on and on…’’
He said in Zambians needed social revolutions.
Dr Sishuwa cited what he termed senseless killing of citizens in this country as one of the reasons for a revolution.
“There is the pathetic case of Africans starving to death when our feet walk on mineral wealth and our buttocks sleep on well-watered fertile soils while Israel has mastered the trick of desert farming. We, especially those of us in Zambia, need social revolutions. We need real change in our lives which will and must accommodate our continuously evolving power to know and create. That is our challenge,” Dr Sishuwa said. “Note that we have mass unemployment here. We have senseless killings of unarmed citizens by police right here. Remember Frank Mugala, Mapenzi Chibulo, Lawrence Banda, Vespers Shimunzhila, Mark Choongwa, Grazier Matapa and several other innocent citizens who may have died at the hands of political violence or the police while saying ‘I can’t breathe’.’’
He observed that there was also a systematic marginalisation of particular ethnic groupings in the country.
“We have what appears to be the systematic marginalisation and outright discrimination of particular ethnic groupings who are also being retired from public service jobs and denied promotions or ascension to particular jobs in the public sector for the crime of belonging to a particular ethnic group,” Dr Sishuwa said. “We have prolonged power outages and an economy that has shrank so low that it’s literally on the floor now. In short, we have right here in Zambia many of the deeply problematic or underlying factors that we see in the US today.”
He said the high levels of inequalities in the US had led to the current protests that have so far lasted 10 days.
Dr Sishuwa the murder of an African American by US police was just a catalyst to what was brewing among marginalised citizens.
“When you think about it harder, you will realise that with more than 40 million newly unemployed workers on top of the pre-pandemic numbers of the unemployed, the US as the most advanced country in which the contradictions I am talking about are most pronounced is going through its convulsions, right now. The spark is the police public murder of a black man,” Dr Sishuwa said. “The eruption is the volcano that has been building up for a long time, a prelude to the birth of a new world. Note that birth is a bloody painful process, and there is no guarantee about what will be born: it must have equal amounts of evil and good. This dielectric cannot be avoided, escaped. The question will be determined by the quality of leadership of these two forces – forces of evil and forces of good.”
He however warned of a global uprising which could be bloody under clueless leadership.
“Now, I have grave fears of the outcomes of leaderless uprisings. People die, many brutally. The old order organises but on a higher authoritarian and brutal order. Even the few liberties evaporate. You have seen Trump quickly appealing to the army. This is dark stuff,” Dr Sishuwa said. “It is better, in my view, to harness the anger and revolutionary fever by a revolutionary leadership rather than to worship spontaneity – as in the case of the US. When this happens, the masses are usually beaten by the forces of reaction. The question for us in Zambia is simple: what is to be done? Whatever progressive responses we can master cannot work if they are not accompanied by one imperative: sharply raising political awareness about our inhuman conditions and calling for rebellion against these conditions which perpetuate our subhuman existence.”
Dr Sishuwa called for building a leadership that had shared goals with citizens.
He said it was not enough to replace a sitting leader, but it was about who replaced them.
“When we interrogate the question of ‘Who leads Zambia next and why’, we are likely to find that people will be voting against the status quo, not for something more fundamental and lasting, such as progressive ideas that are above ethnic visions. It’s worth noting that people opposed to a particular leader or party often do not think about what could replace them, and then get stuck into the same cycle,” Dr Sishuwa said. “A bad leader is replaced with another bad leader, with little thought given to the underlying problems and issues. South Africans were so desperate to be rid of [Thabo] Mbeki that [Jacob] Zuma came to power. Within a few short years, many were hoping Mbeki would come back. That has been our historic experience. This must change. It is important we fight for something simultaneously as we struggle to rid ourselves of our current enslavement. This must be accompanied by consciously building a core leadership with a shared understanding of where we are coming from, where we are and where we want the struggle to take ourselves to.”
Dr Sishuwa said, “now is a profound moment for the world, and every serious leadership of any country is worried”.
He called for a mass movement with a clearly defined leadership.
“We need a mass movement with a core leadership that is clear about a post-Lungu Zambia. Constructing this core and securing consensus about the key elements of a post Lungu Zambia is where our intellectual energies must be applied. This is tough work, but we must engage in that work if our fate is to change, as it must. A focus on too much politics on some of the most trivial issues is costing us our lives,” said Dr Sishuwa. “I urge people to speak out. Do not be discouraged because you sound like a lone voice: many are reading and thinking about what we say and write. The seeds are being sowed. It is work that requires patience, consistence, determination and above all, great courage. It also, of course, requires leadership. In fact, I would say that as long as the youths do not assume their leadership role in visioning a new totally different Zambia, they are, I am afraid to say, doomed to a life of much misery, wretchedness and squalor.”
