By Gershom Ndhlovu
It is now very difficult to follow pronouncements coming from the MMD regarding elections to the National Executive Committee at the forthcoming convention. Some NEC members, provincial executive members of various regions and low-level district and constituency officials have at various times stated “their” positions on which positions are to be contested, which ones are preserved for which candidates and, indeed, those that would be contested by a sole candidate.
Notably, the positions of president and vice president have generated a lot of interest. A number of MMD members at all levels have stated, obviously against the party’s constitution, that President Rupiah Banda who is acting party president would not be challenged at the convention while some cadres have indicated their support for Republican Vice President George Kunda for the position of party vice president.
So far, only Nason Msoni has indicated that he would challenge Rupiah Banda but whether his challenge would have an impact or not, is another matter. It is, however, the position of vice president that has attracted a number of candidates including the last elected MMD vice president Enoch Kavindele who has openly declared his interest.
Others who have been mentioned include Mike Mulongoti who is the current chairman for elections and Captain Austin Chewe who contested the same position at the last convention but it was frozen following allegations of serious vote buying among candidates. The MMD has never had a vice president since.
But what has prompted Mulongoti to come out with the statement that all ruling party positions will be open for contest at the convention? First and foremost, this statement should have been made much earlier when junior officials started talking about the Banda’s sole candidacy because these statements sent wrong signals to political observers and MMD sympathisers. Secondly, it appears that Mulongoti was forced to make the statement--not that it is unwelcome--when the George Kunda lobby started gaining ground.
Another very sober statement was that of MMD legal affairs committee chairman, Bwalya Chiti, who said all MMD positions including the presidency have always been contested. Again, Chiti should have clarified just after the low level cadres started calling for Rupiah’s sole candidacy.
“If you look at every election of the MMD, there has always been contestation of all the positions, the presidency included. That is the MMD, okay! So why should you fear? I think people who fear are fearing their own shadows, or it is a creation by candidates who may want to ensure that some people do not participate by creating that fear,” Chiti said.
This is exactly what happened prior to the 2001 convention when all the provincial councils, except Lusaka led then by Dr Boniface Kawimbe, supported the then Republican and MMD president Frederick Chiluba to not only go for the third term as Republican president but for the same as party president. Unfortunately, the party constitution was even amended to allow for it.
It was the Republican constitution that not only proved difficult, but it also undid all the man had stood for in terms of democracy and his other achievements. The person who succeeded him for both positions, Levy Mwanawasa, now late, even removed his presidential immunity and for the next seven who was to frequent courts of law like a common citizen on allegations of plunder of national resources.
I wonder why some people want to liken the MMD to other parties that have not had conventions or have been led by single leaders since their inception. The MMD to a generation that fought Kaunda’s one party rule is as important as UNIP is to those who fought against the colonialists. It would be good if it held aloft the standards and ideals that its founders and interim leaders such as Akashambatwa Mbikusita-Lewanika, Mbita Chitala, Arthur Wina, Humphrey Mulemba and even Chiluba set out with.
If the MMD was to easily morph into what UNIP had been before it, where no one was allowed to challenge President Kaunda, Zambians could have as well allowed UNIP and Kaunda to continue in power. But the irony here is that President Rupiah Banda comes from the UNIP background, a party whose membership he has never officially denounced. With him, is another UNIP stalwart William Banda who only joined the ruling MMD less than six years ago.
Perhaps with more and more sober and wiser voices of people who know the MMD constitution start rising up in the party, people who have been put off by undemocratic tendencies supported even by some of the most educated people within, will start cheering it once again.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Friday, 31 December 2010
RIKKI’S RE-MASTERED MUSIC, MEMORIES AND NEED FOR CULTURAL REVIVAL
By GERSHOM NDHLOVU
During the gift-buying frenzy period a few days to Christmas, I did not know what gift I was going to buy my brother who was supposed to come from London to the little town I live in, to the south west of the British capital. I trawled the shops and websites but couldn’t come up with any idea until I saw a re-mastered CD of Rikki Ililonga and the Musi-O-Tunya entitled Dark Sunrise.
I placed an order hoping that it would turn up in time for its wrapping and placing it under the Christmas tree. However, in the days before Christmas it snowed very heavily disrupting the delivery of post which in turn delayed the arrival of the CD. As it also turned out, my brother and his wife could also not come.
The CD arrived two days before New Year. A day passed before I could unwrap it from its cellophane and, of course, the first disc of this two-disc set I played was the Musi-O-Tunya one. The reason is simply that anybody my age remembers this group particularly its song Wings of Africa.
I know that competent people have already reviewed the CDs and it is therefore not my mission to do so. It is the memories that listening to these songs bring to me. The songs transport me right up to my place of birth in Kitwe, where I did my primary and secondary schools. But most importantly, I am transported back in time to the neighbourhood I grew up in Kwacha township.
Older boys who were my elder brothers’ peers, used to play these songs on their Philips mono record players whose speakers they used to put in gourds to boost speakers. And because our neighbourhood did not have electricity then, they used batteries which they could put out in the sun to recharge them. We also used to listen to these songs on Livingstone-assembled two band ITT radios.
But it also reminds of the numerous songs we used to listen to blaring from the juke box at the nearby Mukwae Tavern, ranging from solo Zambian musicians such as Nashil Pitchen Kazembe, Peter Tsotsi Juma, Smokey Hangala to groups such as Super Vina, the Witch, Mulemena Boys and many more. Newer groups like Juligzya Band, Serenje Kalindula Band, Makishi, Masiye, etc, also emerged.
When I went to the University of Zambia while frequenting Chibuku taverns in Kalingalinga, Mutendere, Kaunda Square and other Lusaka townships, there I listened to a lot more Zambian music most of which has now disappeared from the public domain. And when I briefly worked on Radio Mulungushi, now Radio 4 of the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation in 1989, I was exposed to a lot of Zambian music.
Sadly, this music in private hands was on vinyl which was largely forgotten, even gotten rid of because compact cassettes replaced record players and later CDs came on the scene. But sadder still, most of these bands fazed out of the scene either through economic circumstances and also that most of these musicians died from AIDS. In some cases, entire band members were wiped out.
This music has largely disappeared from the public domain and there is no way of laying hands on it. Music is a bigger component of a nation’s culture. Zambian music is no exception. The re-mastering of Rikki Ililonga and Musi-O-Tunya’s music should be extended to other musicians and other bands for its preservation and diffusion to wider audiences. The market for such music would not be lacking as the voracious consumption of CDs such as Zambiance, attests to this yawning market.
If anything, a Malawian on Facebook was asking for the music of the Burning Youth, a band that created a storm on the Zambian music scene in the mid-1990s.
I mourn this loss of Zambian music the same way I mourn the loss of art works of one artist by the name of Donald Ndalachani Chisanga who could qualify as the Zambian version of Banksy, the elusive British artist who paints on public walls under cover of darkness. Chisanga painted the walls of taverns in the Lusaka townships I have mentioned above.
One memorable painting of Chisanga’s was a wall mural we referred to as “Ninali Kumaliro Mbuya” depicting a monkey telling a mouse how he is never seen on paydays and when he reappears, he is always asking for beer from friends.
This is probably why Zambia needs a ministry seriously dedicated to cultural issues so that the country does not only renew what has already been created, but promote the creation of new cultural artefacts of all forms, not excluding music.
During the gift-buying frenzy period a few days to Christmas, I did not know what gift I was going to buy my brother who was supposed to come from London to the little town I live in, to the south west of the British capital. I trawled the shops and websites but couldn’t come up with any idea until I saw a re-mastered CD of Rikki Ililonga and the Musi-O-Tunya entitled Dark Sunrise.
I placed an order hoping that it would turn up in time for its wrapping and placing it under the Christmas tree. However, in the days before Christmas it snowed very heavily disrupting the delivery of post which in turn delayed the arrival of the CD. As it also turned out, my brother and his wife could also not come.
The CD arrived two days before New Year. A day passed before I could unwrap it from its cellophane and, of course, the first disc of this two-disc set I played was the Musi-O-Tunya one. The reason is simply that anybody my age remembers this group particularly its song Wings of Africa.
I know that competent people have already reviewed the CDs and it is therefore not my mission to do so. It is the memories that listening to these songs bring to me. The songs transport me right up to my place of birth in Kitwe, where I did my primary and secondary schools. But most importantly, I am transported back in time to the neighbourhood I grew up in Kwacha township.
Older boys who were my elder brothers’ peers, used to play these songs on their Philips mono record players whose speakers they used to put in gourds to boost speakers. And because our neighbourhood did not have electricity then, they used batteries which they could put out in the sun to recharge them. We also used to listen to these songs on Livingstone-assembled two band ITT radios.
But it also reminds of the numerous songs we used to listen to blaring from the juke box at the nearby Mukwae Tavern, ranging from solo Zambian musicians such as Nashil Pitchen Kazembe, Peter Tsotsi Juma, Smokey Hangala to groups such as Super Vina, the Witch, Mulemena Boys and many more. Newer groups like Juligzya Band, Serenje Kalindula Band, Makishi, Masiye, etc, also emerged.
When I went to the University of Zambia while frequenting Chibuku taverns in Kalingalinga, Mutendere, Kaunda Square and other Lusaka townships, there I listened to a lot more Zambian music most of which has now disappeared from the public domain. And when I briefly worked on Radio Mulungushi, now Radio 4 of the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation in 1989, I was exposed to a lot of Zambian music.
Sadly, this music in private hands was on vinyl which was largely forgotten, even gotten rid of because compact cassettes replaced record players and later CDs came on the scene. But sadder still, most of these bands fazed out of the scene either through economic circumstances and also that most of these musicians died from AIDS. In some cases, entire band members were wiped out.
This music has largely disappeared from the public domain and there is no way of laying hands on it. Music is a bigger component of a nation’s culture. Zambian music is no exception. The re-mastering of Rikki Ililonga and Musi-O-Tunya’s music should be extended to other musicians and other bands for its preservation and diffusion to wider audiences. The market for such music would not be lacking as the voracious consumption of CDs such as Zambiance, attests to this yawning market.
If anything, a Malawian on Facebook was asking for the music of the Burning Youth, a band that created a storm on the Zambian music scene in the mid-1990s.
I mourn this loss of Zambian music the same way I mourn the loss of art works of one artist by the name of Donald Ndalachani Chisanga who could qualify as the Zambian version of Banksy, the elusive British artist who paints on public walls under cover of darkness. Chisanga painted the walls of taverns in the Lusaka townships I have mentioned above.
One memorable painting of Chisanga’s was a wall mural we referred to as “Ninali Kumaliro Mbuya” depicting a monkey telling a mouse how he is never seen on paydays and when he reappears, he is always asking for beer from friends.
This is probably why Zambia needs a ministry seriously dedicated to cultural issues so that the country does not only renew what has already been created, but promote the creation of new cultural artefacts of all forms, not excluding music.
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