You Lazy (Intellectual)
African Scum!
So I got this in my email this
morning…
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 Zambians.” 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 to hypnotize the
cobra. 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.”
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 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 (whites) take the
cat fish. I am the Bwana and you
are the Muntu. 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, 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.

That Walter guy felt the pain of Africans or He wouldnt have been such a heart-broken racist. Anywayz, lessons for the so called African interllectuals!