By Evaristo Mupeta
Part 1:A Creation Of Beauty And Bosom Of Minerals
Zambia is your name
You have an identity of a high spiritual connotation:
Zambia the Christian Nation.
We belong, we stand, we walk, we serve
A people liberated:men, women and the children
In this land of our birth and upbringing
The land we are proud of.
This nation our land
The land of awesome physical features
The land far beneath full of copper and other minerals with richness and glowness any daring miner would love.
The land of meandering rivers that flow and gush out water in enthralling loudness like the rhythmic beats of the traditional Zambian drum.
The land of game parks, their brown soils and natural scented tropical vegetation with wild animals that lull and amaze many tourists.
In you Zambia, the sun rising in summer a large orange ball glowing in beauty.
In you Zambia, the sun in its fading moments like a rich weary traveller going to lodge in an inn equal to his noble status.
Zambia, you are truly a creation of irresistible beauty and splendour.
To Zambia, my patriotism and loyalty I reaffirm
To Zambia, my energies to expend on
To Zambia, my sacrifices to sow
To Zambia, my creativity to channel
To Zambia, my toils to toward.
All you that till the land
All you that excavate the minerals Zambia is endowed with
Those in offices as much those in other spheres of life
Great you all are, you are the resource that pulsate the land with life
More of your hard work the land is calling for
The land we love, the land we cherish.
Zambia forward to propel
Prosperity in its distance from Zambia near than the great distances in the land.
Part 2:A Dream Deferred -Poverty And Its Pangs
Now, mother Zambia.
At fifty five:
Your eyes as porous to tears and tension as tumbled borders left to a mass of illegal immigrants
Need I you tell mother the cause of your troubled conscience?
Me, who has now matured to manhood.
At fifty five:
When celebration and acceleration to be the hall marks in the halls of our cities
It is a month of polar contrast-of grief
A time of sorrowfully commemorating
A dream deferred
The dream of what by far should have been.
The woe of poverty must be wiped out of our land
Being indexed as a poor nation
Must not in any way be our permanent and proud status
This is the battle we must viciously fight
As we valiantly fought for political independence.
Oh, mother Zambia
Who of many of your people are not pricked by poverty and its pangs?
Pangs with sharpness equal to the “pangas” in viciousness clenched into the hands of some party cadres during some by elections.
Oh, mother Zambia
The struggles of your people daily encounters and experiences:
Mini bus drivers restlessly swerving their vehicles and hooting repeatedly in congested stations to beat their cash targets
Men, women and youths like high drilled soldiers trooping from compounds at dawn for their legal and illegal points to transact until evening.
Many conditioned to labour: they laboured yesterday, they labour today, they may labour tomorrow.
Oh, mother Zambia
I now tell tales of your residents of proximity to shopping malls
The malls are to them monsters to mauling their existence.
Too close to the mega shops
Too poor to purchase from there.
At fifty five:
Mother, you who was born a victor
They have thrust you into the victim hood of load shedding
One moment there is power, the next there is none
Subjected to waiting that is frustrating and seemingly long as though the clock set back to the medieval ages
Affected are all persons and plans.
The barber shops, the hair saloons, the restaurants – many other informal businesses
Indispensable businesses the owners cherish like their own hearts.
The mining industry-the main foreign exchange, adversely affected
The agricultural, manufacturing and other key economic sectors, adversely affected
The projected economic growth , adversely affected.
Now,
Less energy.
Less income.
No money in people’s pockets.
At fifty five:
I have yet many things to tell you
Mother, now you have become the best than before in the art of borrowing
Begging with a bowl in your hands for huge sums of money from rich nations your routine, your relief
You fear the sharks in the oceans than you fear the loan sharks with their debasing and devouring conditions
Oh mother Zambia, some loans could be two things in one: buttered bread and a doubled edged sword
Oh, mother Zambia, I dread being cumbered with more debts as I dread the chilly winter season of Lusaka
I fear the future generations being in perpetual bondage to debts
As I fear being recolonised by those you owe the much money
Mother, watch out, lest our land, this our land,
be taken away by those you owe moneys by the gross
But of groceries few Zambians can afford.
Our land, this land, her soul and resources controlled from other capital cities
Oh, mother Zambia, do not auction our sovereignty, our pride, our destiny, just like that.
At fifty five:
See now the dangers you are now in, deeper than the depth of the Zambezi River
Always with shoe string budgets
The budgets of recurrent expenditures and consumption
Huge amounts on public workers’ salaries and servicing the huge external debt
Little on development and the welfare of the majority.
I have said to you mother before, in whispers and loudness
This gullibility of yours , often deceived by some of those who promise they can salvage you
To make the people savour every of your moment;
Some of those you tell to serve and save you
Theirs are motives of insincerity
The charlatans ,the corrupt
They have wormed their way into your great space
Some only after plundering the vast wealth beneath your ground.
Do you not discern mother?
Do you not see mother?
At fifty five:
I will listen to their rhetoric at the arenas they have arranged for us to be addressed
We the common who take seats that expose us to October’s scorching heat
I will listen out of patriotism-and because I am a good listener.
You seem not to have any more plans for economic correctness
Your words to me like chaff or puffs of thick white smoke blown from a tobacco pipe
Slowly coiling up, forming rings and disappearing in the air
Your speeches and flattery I know.
So I ask again: where from here do we go?
Part 3:God My Truth And Trust
Have I not spoken? Have I not seen?
Me who sees everything in the CBD from the floors of the city’s tallest buildings
From the tower I can see the Kulima Tower bus terminal
I am profound, prophetic and poetic
I see and perceive with prayers and precision
The energy, the expectations of the people
People burdened, people who do not know where their next meal, even without tomato sauce, to source.
Yet, their faces gleaming with joy and laughter characteristic of the godly and good Zambia spirit
Yes, the people have the inalienable and great yearning:
In you Zambia to live better than the struggles and squalor daily they go through
In you mother Zambia.
At fifty five:
I have another thing to tell you.
Transience every person’s friend ;leaders come and go
Today in power; tomorrow gone, gloriously or ingloriously
This mother you must inculcate into them
Do not just include them on the programme for no purpose
In Zambia the Christian Nation
Faith evoked in me as in numerous others
Of the nation’s possibilities of earth shaking victories
Only in God my entire trust I place.
To the mountains as varied, valleyed, and valued in Zambia
As in other parts of the world mine eyes I raise
Where shall my deliverance come from?
Only from God my whole salvation comes
Not in the lies and purposes of men and women
Mother Zambia, in you I still believe as when in you I was gracefully birthed
I am a patriot of your whole being.
Zambia, my mother Zambia.
