Ta- Lakata by Zindaba Nyirenda - A contra positive to Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid.

Book Review - Part 1

In this book Ta Lakata (we are dying) Zindaba Nyirenda expresses at times painfully, what many Africans belabor, the quest for self-identity, personal conflicts with modernity and our collective anguish and inability to prevent the loss of so many lives to disease and poverty.

Using her native tongue Tumbuka, where English fails to give full meaning, she explains her lineage and personalizes Zambia’s fate under both colonial and post independence governance. What emerges is picture endemic in all of Africa, that the colonizers, as do multi national investors now, only needed the collusion of a few rulers to gain unfettered access to Africa’s wealth of natural resources.

But rather than outline Zambia’s decent through the prism of poor Zambians in urban settings, she unlike Dambisa Moyo (Zindaba’s cousin, contemporary- author of Dead aid) takes the reader to rural Zambia, remembering her roots and her past in a village setting. She paints a graphic mosaic of life in Lundazi, a poor part of the eastern province where she and Dambisa Moyo trace their family trees; it is representative of most of rural Zambia. Now as then, it lacks in clean water, basic shelter, adequate health centers, schools, and roads.

The lives of rural Zambians have in large part been the melting pot of  the conflict between western ideals and local interests; dating back to a time when colonial masters imposed head taxes on poor villagers, to force them into mining labor.

The central question now, as then is -

What is the best way to bring their daily lives within the norms of 21^st century livelihood?

That is at the heart of this book and “Dead Aid” by Dambisa Moyo -  is the answer simply curbing exploitation by western entities or a complete stemming of theft and waste of public funds by corrupt governments?

Zindaba would like to start from the genesis of western involvement in Africa, she wants a meeting or indaba with agents of the principals from the 1884 Berlin meeting.  The outcome of that meeting  set in motion the colonization of Africa. She would like to call back the hand of time and  reset the terms of western engagements in Africa ; demand restitution for plundered resources. 

She takes particular aim, at the Rhodes scholarship, which was started with proceeds from Cecil Rhodes estate, yet less than a hundred  Zambians  have been granted scholarships since it was started in 1902.

She contends that, since the Rhodes scholarship fund consists of proceeds from mineral resource exploitation from Northern Rhodesia (named after Cecil Rhodes), it should therefore benefit more Zambians. By contrast, more than a hundred Americans have received Rhodes scholarships. Though Cecil Rhodes intended recipients to meet the highest academic requirements, applicants from southern Africa should have a comparative advantage over other regions whose resources were spared by his untimely death; Cecil Rhodes is said to have once remarked. 

“I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race...If there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible...”

In regard to current Western entities in Zambia's mining sector, Zindaba  bemoans the poisoning of rivers and the pollution of air as a result of poorly regulated mining activity since the 1920’s. She attributes the high incidence of respiratory diseases on the copper belt to polluted air and poisonous metals dumped into the Kafue River. To redress this, she calls upon educated Zambians to return from Diaspora, to oversee environmental intervention programs, monitoring and restoration of water systems.  To help the Zambian government develop an effective regulatory framework to enforce environmental protections and monitor pollution  of public resources like water and air.

To turn a leaf - Does climate impact innovation?

This is for Kashikulu is a life long quest and I will tread very, very carefully least I vilify or justify ill intent or injustice. But I have wondered why people of color all around the world never quite seem to turn the leaf on poverty and underdevelopment.
From the Aborigines in mainland Australia, the vast population in Africa, the inhabitants of the slim islands of the Caribbean to some of the inner cities of North and Latin America- people of color generally experience a life of poverty or underdevelopment.

The Bemba have a proverb uulwele pamala uwolwa necibi (necessity is the mother of invention).
In researching whether climate has an impact in motivating innovation, I found that except in limited instances of coercion or scarcity of land, people of African descent live in fairly favorable climatic conditions. Robert W. July in his book - The history of the African people notes that -

"The history of mankind has always shown the deep mark of environment; put another way, man’s development can be seen as a struggle for freedom from the limitations of man’s surrounding, that might control and direct his environment rather than suffer its restraints…
The geographic location of Africa has contributed to its tropical climate which is warm but extreme only in certain locations and which lacks the violent fluctuations in temperature found for example, in North America. More significantly, Africa’s geographic position affects the pattern of rainfall which in turn has a profound influence on African ecology and history."

Is it possible therefore, that the climatic conditions in Africa, Australia and the tropical islands of the Caribbean served as a lesser motivation for the innovation to develop the means to alleviate living conditions such as better housing, agriculture, transport etc. in pre colonial Africa and Australia or even free Haiti (first independent black republic in the Caribbean that gained independence in 1804).
The earliest history available on Sub Saharan Africa shows its prominent figure Shaka Zulu pillaging with primitive weaponry at the same time that, Beethoven is composing his best symphonies in Europe. On the other hand, the Africans forcibly removed from Africa into North America; through slavery are the cornerstones of mankind’s most invaluable innovations such as the clothes dryer by G.T. Sampson in 1892, first open heart surgery by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams in 1893, automatic traffic lights by Garret A. Morgan in 1923 etc.
And so, with the majority of people of color in Africa, Australia and the Caribbean yet to have a clothes dryer in most homes, a surgeon for every 100 people or a traffic light at every intersection, Kashikulu continues to wonder, would a hostile climate in these places have changed anything?

"Educating for a sustainabe future?"

The ancestors of Africa are angry….it is as if the ancestors had pronounced the
curse of cultural sabotage. This generation of Africans is hearing the ancestral
voice in no uncertain terms proclaiming….

Warriors will fight
scribes for the control of your institutions; wild bush will conquer your roads
and pathways; your land will yield less and less while your offspring multiply;
your houses will leak from floods and your soil will crack from drought; your
sons will refuse to pick up the hoe and prefer to wander in the wilds; you shall
learn ways of cheating and you will poison the cola nuts you serve your own
friends. Yes things will fall apart. (The Africans – A triple heritage by Ali A. Mazrui).


How ironic therefore, that the call and validation for returning to a natural coexistence with nature in Africa should come from western society; from whence comes also, the horde of tourists and plunderers that have turned Africa’s ecological balance on its head.


The Africa-America Institute's 23rd annual awards Gala (New York) paid tribute to the People of Tanzania for the East African nation's significant progress in education, environmental conservation, and in creating a business-friendly environment for entrepreneurs and investment. (AllAfrica.com)

And so while, we congratulate the Tanzanian government for soothing the wrath of our ancestors a little; the Zambian government must take heed and give up its unrestrained policy of welcoming all manner of mining explorations, sale of national parks and state land without considering the impact on our culture and natural balance.