They
call
the Third World the
lazy man’s
purview; the
sluggishly slothful
and languorous
prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore
indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute,
poverty-stricken, disfavored, and
impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it,
there are hardly any discoveries, inventions,
and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that
flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope,
but an approaching train. And because
countless keep waiting in the way of the train,
millions die and many more remain
decapitated by the day. “It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch
yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get
up and do something about it.” Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely
eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first
discovered I was going to spend my New
Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue
flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-
ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are
racist.

“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand as
soon as I settled in my seat.
I told him mine with a precautious smile.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Zambia.”
“Zambia!” he exclaimed, “Kaunda’s country.” “Yes,” I said, “Now Sata’s.”
“But of course,” he responded. “You just
elected King Cobra as your president.” My face lit up at the mention of Sata’s moniker.
Walter smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an
amenable fellow, one of those American
highbrows who shuttle between Africa and
the U.S. “I spent three years in Zambia in the 1980s,”
he continued. “I wined and dined with Luke
Mwananshiku, Willa Mungomba, Dr. Siteke
Mwale, and many other highly intelligent
africans.” He lowered his voice. “I was part of
the IMF group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a
million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty
called Kalingalinga. From my patio I saw it all—
the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and
the healthy.”
“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked. “I have since moved to yet another group with
similar intentions. In the next few months my
colleagues and I will be in Lusaka in zambia,abuja in nigeria,tripoli in libya,accra in ghana and other profitable africa countries to hypnotize
the leaders. I work for the broker that has
acquired a chunk of your debt. Your
government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Lusaka to offer
your president a couple of millions and fly
back with a check twenty times greater.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “King Cobra is
incorruptible. He is …”
He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen
for the carrot and stick.”
Quett Masire’s name popped up.
“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he
turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It
was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”late gaddafi too was also smart but fall atlast

At midnight we were airborne. The captain
wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to
watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.
“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking
down.
From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.
“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We
came here on Mayflower and turned Indian
land(indians actually own the land now called america) into a paradise and now the most
powerful nation on earth. We discovered the
bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Zambia.”
I grinned. “There is no Lake Zambia.” He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s
what we call your country. You guys are as
stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in
with our large boats and fish your minerals
and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs.
That’s your staple food, crumbs. That corn- meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia
fish you call Kapenta is crumbs. We the
Bwanas,oyibos (whites) take the cat fish. I am the
Bwana and you are the Muntu,maye,maga ,mugu. I get what I
want and you get what you deserve, crumbs.
That’s what lazy people get—Zambians, Africans, the entire Third World.”
The smile vanished from my face.
“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter said
and lowered his voice. “You are thinking this
Bwana is a racist. That’s how most Zambians
respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin
pigmentations, this black and white crap,
aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference
between you and me?”
“There’s no difference.”
“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that.
It took them thirteen years to determine the
complete sequence of the three billion DNA
subunits. After they were all done it was clear
that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the
same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on
this aircraft are the same.”
I gladly nodded.

“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled
fatalistically. “Every white person on this plane
feels superior to a black person. The white guy
who picks up garbage, the homeless white
trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter
his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean
him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be
crowding around him chanting muzungu,
muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me why
my angry friend.” For a moment I was wordless.
“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the
African Americans do, or colonialism, or some
psychological impact or some kind of
stigmatization. And don’t give me the
brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.” I was thinking.
He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say.
Please do not take offense.”
I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and
prepared for the worst.
“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your
head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You
and other so-called African intellectuals are
damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not
those poor starving people, who is the reason
Africa is in such a deplorable state.” “That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested. He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it
again, you are lazy. Poor and uneducated
Africans are the most hardworking people on
earth. I saw them in the Lusaka markets and
on the street selling merchandise. I saw them
in villages toiling away. I saw women on Kafue Road crushing stones for sell and I wept. I said
to myself where are the Zambian intellectuals?
Are the Zambian engineers so imperceptive
they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a
simple water filter to purify well water for
those poor villagers? Are you telling me that after thirty-seven years of independence your
university school of engineering has not
produced a scientist or an engineer who can
make simple small machines for mass use?
What is the school there for?” I held my breath.

“Do you know where I found your
intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They
were at the Lusaka Golf Club,accra big wigs club,aso rock inner circle,lagos private beach bar,durban beach,tripoli lounge, Lusaka Central
Club, Lusaka Playhouse, and Lusaka Flying
Club. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of
alcoholic graduates. Zambian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening
drinking. We don’t. We reserve the evening for
brainstorming.” He looked me in the eye.
“And you flying to Boston and all of you
Zambians in the Diaspora are just as lazy and
apathetic to your country. You don’t care
about your country and yet your very own
parents, brothers and sisters are in Mtendere, Chawama, and in villages, all of them living in
squalor. Many have died or are dying of
neglect by you. They are dying of AIDS
because you cannot come up with your own
cure. You are here calling yourselves
graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked
—oh, I have a PhD in this and that—PhD my
foot!”
I was deflated. “Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting
the attention of nearby passengers. “You
should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes,
and diagrams from American manufacturing
factories and sending them to your own
factories. All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be
your country’s treasure. Why do you think the
Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole
our ideas and turned them into their own.
Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them.” He paused. “The Bwana has spoken,” he said
and grinned. “As long as you are dependent
on my plane, I shall feel superior and you my
friend shall remain inferior, how about that?
The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos
are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.” He tempered his voice. “Get over this white
skin syndrome and begin to feel confident.
Become innovative and make your own stuff
for god’s sake.” At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s
Logan International Airport. Walter reached
for my hand.
“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a
damn. I have been to Zambia and have seen
too much poverty.” He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Here, read
this. It was written by a friend.”
He had written only the title: “Lords of
Poverty.” Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I
watched Walter walk through the airport
doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust
devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad
memories of home. I could see Zambia’s literati
—the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had
mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I
remembered some who have since passed—
how they got the highest grades in
mathematics and the sciences and attained the
highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us
with not a single invention or discovery. I
knew some by name and drunk with them at
the Lusaka Playhouse and Central Sports.
Walter is right. It is true that since
independence we have failed to nurture
creativity and collective orientations. We as a
nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave
like 13 million civil servants dependent on a
government pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a
desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging
on the wall. Such a working environment does
not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the
excitement of competition, and the spectacle
of innovative rituals. But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even
mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due to
political circumstances over which they have
had little control. The past governments failed
to create an environment of possibility that
fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. KK, Chiluba,
Mwanawasa, and Banda embraced orthodox
ideas and therefore failed to offer many
opportunities for drawing outside the line. I believe King Cobra’s reset has been cast in
the same faculties as those of his
predecessors. If today I told him that we can
build our own car, he would throw me out. “Naupena? Fuma apa.” (Are you mad? Get out
of here) Knowing well that King Cobra will not embody
innovation at Walter’s level let’s begin to look
for a technologically active-positive leader
who can succeed him after a term or two. That
way we can make our own stone crushers,
water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s dream big and make tractors,
cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever
remain inferior. A fundamental transformation of our country
from what is essentially non-innovative to a
strategic superior African country requires a
bold risk-taking educated leader with a
triumphalist attitude and we have one in YOU.
Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a moment and think about our
country. Our journey from 1964 has been
marked by tears. It has been an emotionally
overwhelming experience. Each one of us has
lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and
disease. The number of graves is catching up with the population. It’s time to change our
political culture. It’s time for Zambian
intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive
progressive movement that will change our
lives forever. Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise
to the challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.
Field Ruwe is a US-based Zambian media
practitioner and author. He is a PhD candidate
with a B.A. in Mass Communication and
Journalism, and an M.A. in History.
Re edited by TOPAZ

front page please

OMO YOU HARSH O.

i am making effort, I am probability the only person, who have done his best to see that millions of nigerian dont die.

Ile-Ife:
OMO YOU HARSH O.

how?lol i think thats the reality,you know for sure

musiwa22: i am making effort, I am probability the only person, who have done his best to see that millions of nigerian dont die.

really?thats amazing can you let us peep into what you actually mean?

Truth doe bitter at hearing but it is still the truth. And i hope one day to lead my country to the promise land

.

Great!!!another long crappy story

Now you know the main reason the west killed GADAFI. Libya was self sustaining even in food supply through local agriculture without owing a dime to the phucking IMF or shitty WOLD BANK. He was indeed the living lion of the african tribe. But what startled me most is the fact that PHD holders who knew all this conspiracy were used to kill him.

Its a shame that as soon as Elections start, nigerians will start selling their future for a plate of rice and ankara.

And later rant on how Nigeria can never be better.
Its even worse when the educated populace refuse to go to the polls to cast their vote, giving lame excuses that "it will all be rigged so why bother?"
The time to Wake Up and Stand up is now!