Introduction

Zambia: The Land and Its People

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 196 pages

Publisher: Continental Press (31 May 2010)

ISBN-10: 9987932258

ISBN-13: 9789987932252

Introduction

THIS work is a general introduction to Zambia. It does not pretend to be a scholarly work or an in-depth study of this African country. It's a simple presentation of some basic facts, and some analysis here and there, about one of the most stable and peaceful countries on the continent.

Many people outside Africa don't know about Zambia. You find more people who know about Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa and a few other African countries than they do about Zambia.

One of the main reasons many people don't know about this African country is its history of relative peace and stability since independence almost 50 years ago.

Many African countries have been wracked by violence in varying degrees through the decades. Only a few have been spared this agony on a continent where civil strife is the norm rather than the exception. One of those few exceptions is Zambia.

In fact, it's now part of conventional wisdom to view Africa as a turbulent continent where peace is rare or non-existent. In many cases, this is a stereotype. As Julius Nyerere, president of Tanzania, once said: “The only time you hear about peace in Africa is when it is broken.”

But it is equally true that this stereotypical image of Africa is a reflection of reality in many cases, especially when you look at the number of countries which have been torn by violence through the decades since independence in the sixties. Even as recently as the 1990s, more than 30 African countries – out of 53 – were affected by civil strife, including civil wars, which even destroyed some of them.

Therefore, it is quite an achievement for a few countries such as Zambia to have been able to maintain peace and stability in the midst of chaos for decades since independence.

A number of people, including Africans themselves, have written books about this horrendous tragedy. They include well-known writers such as Wole Soyinka whose blistering attack on the leadership in his home country was given forceful expression in one of his books, The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis; Chinua Achebe, another luminary and literary giant, in his book, The Trouble with Nigeria; and less well-known ones such as George Ayittey, Africa in Chaos; and Godfrey Mwakikagile, Africa is in A Mess: What Went Wrong and What Should be Done.

The first three writers are West Africans. And the last one is an East African, from Tanzania, a country that borders Zambia. Coincidentally, he also comes from a region – Mbeya Region – in southwestern Tanzania which borders Zambia and some of whose people straddle the Tanzanian-Zambian border.

While all these writers have written about the chaos, trials and tribulations which are virtually synonymous with the name of “Africa,” not as many have written about the peace and stability which prevails in a number of countries such as Zambia. Many people have never even heard of Zambia.

I am not an expert on the political dynamics which have shaped Zambia since independence. But I have some knowledge of the country to help members of the general public – who don't know anything or who know very little about Zambia – learn quite a few things about this young and dynamic African nation in the heart of southern Africa.

Therefore members of the general public, including tourists, may find this work to be useful. It may even help some students learn some of the things they don't know about Zambia, but bearing in mind that this work is not an in-depth study of this African country. If it's going to help some people, and if it's going to encourage others to learn more about Zambia, it will have achieved its purpose.

It has its faults, like all works by mere mortals, but at least it does not pretend to be a definitive or a comprehensive – let alone a scholarly – work on Zambia. But I believe it's comprehensive enough as an introductory work on this magnificent land and its people.

Welcome to Zambia.