SOME ISSUES SURROUNDING STAGE OF ADOPTION IN CONSTITUTION MAKING AND ITS RELEVANCE TO ENSURING THAT A CONSTITUTION “STANDS THE TEST OF TIME": A ZAMBIAN TOWER OF BARBEL ?

KATELE KALUMBA

This paper critically discusses the proposition that in the constitution making process, the stage of adoption is usually the most fundamental in ensuring the coming up with a constitution that would stand the test of time. This has become a central theme in any constitutional review process in Zambia. Underlying this proposition are assumptions about the technical and political significance of various stages of constitution making as a process and the endurance of constitutions. The paper critically discusses the view that while some process variables may protect the textual acceptability of a constitution, or its endogenous validity, constitutions are vulnerable from many internal design and external legal and political challenges to which the entire process of constitution making must do well to anticipate. Drawing on global experience, the paper suggests that whatever little evidence is available points to negation of prevailing optimistic view of constitution endurance.

CONSTITUTION MAKING AS A STAGED PROCESS

The quest for a popular ‘people-driven’ constitution has historically been both laborious and elusive for Zambia. According to Professor Hansungule, the country has one of the highest turnovers of constitution reviews in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, with six constitutional phases in its history since independence in 1964. It is contended that these six constitutional phases mostly lacked popular support and by extension popular legitimacy, making the nexus between constitution-making and civic participation especially at the adoption stage come under greater review in academic writing and popular media.[1]

It may be useful to clarify two concepts used in this issue at hand and found in a text by Mulenga Besa (2011)[2] when he writes, “The process of constitutional-making largely hinges on the mode used to adopt the draft constitution. It is this stage that determines whether a country would indeed have a constitution that would be accepted and stand the test of time…” A stage of adoption is more correctly understood as ‘regionally bounded episodes’.[3] The stage of adoption is accessible conceptually therefore, when we put in "a time-frame” contextuality as episodic characterization. Episodes are sequences of change having a specifiable opening, trend of events and outcomes. This distinguishes it from “mode” of adoption, which refers to a systematization of action and understood generally as rule-resource sets of transformation/mediation as in the Latin formulation of modus procedendi [4] or manner of proceeding. Thus, the mode of adoption will refer to the manner of proceeding with the adoption. In constitution making terms, adoption in this regard refers to approval of any acts deemed relevant to the process including proposed provisions in the draft constitution.[5]

Against this conceptual background, Besa has observed that the constituent assembly is one of the modes of adoption and writes, “A constituent assembly may be acclaimed to be the most democratic mode of adopting a constitution which would stand the test of time”.  This acclamation rests on its composition by   “independent people” and on “ownership and loyalty” to initial submissions the same people made. Suspending the inherent subjectivity in such a process,   Besa further contrasts this with the National Constitution Conference (NCC) used in handling the Mung’omba draft constitution[6]. The NCC forms an interesting case study of the process given its contested history and its contrast to Zambia’s current, equally contested CRC process.

The NCC process followed the aborted Third Term bid and concern on the lack of inclusiveness in the 1996 Constitution that many believed had been highjacked by Chiluba’s regime. It had a number of critical benchmarks. In December 2006, President Mwanawasa presented a 14-step roadmap for constitutional reform spreading over 258 weeks. However, in April 2007, following contentious debates, Civil Society headed by the Oasis Forum presented an alternative roadmap spreading over 71 weeks and by this act, created a deadlock in the process. In order to overcome this, political parties both inside and outside Parliament working under an independent platform, The Zambia Centre for Interparty Dialogue, proposed and started internal political consultations on the constitution impasse with the aim of establishing a compromise solution with the rank-and-file in the provinces. They proposed a Summit of Party Presidents, which took place on June 23, 2007. The Summit agreed to a work out a compromise roadmap under the ZCID auspices that government accepted. In July 2007, the Minister of Justice presented a draft NCC bill to stakeholders for input and by September 2007, Parliament enacted the NCC Act. On December 19 2007, Members of Parliament, representatives of political parties, local councilors, NGOs, professional bodies, traditional leaders, special individuals, the judiciary, state institutions, and the civil service were sworn in as members of the NCC. In April 2008, political parties jointly organized regional consultative platforms to discuss contentious issues. On August 19 2008, President Mwanawasa died and in September 2009, stakeholders pressured President Banda to extend the NCC mandate so that the 2011 elections would be conducted under the new constitution. He heavily resisted the pressure but when the Draft constitution without the Bill of Rights was taken to Parliament in 2010, it was defeated and therefore was unavailable for 2011 elections.

It is notable that Parliament accepted a draft bill prepared according to the ZCID proposal consisting of all political parties and presented to elected representatives of the people where the ruling party had no significant numerical dominance. At this point of the constitution making process, it would be debatable as to whether a popular will was not invested in the process of negotiating a roadmap and institutional modality for handling adoption. The possible answer would be that notwithstanding the role of Parliament, the Inquiries Act, used to trigger CRCs gives the President and his Cabinet undue influence in the process of constitution making.[7] The NCC did not have legislative mandate and therefore its adopted Constitution document was either to be submitted to Parliament if no Bill of Rights articles were involved or taken to the referendum in part or in whole. The Catholic Church and later the NGOCC, a coalition of elite civil society organizations in Lusaka, nevertheless rejected this facility for adoption. Progressively, one opposition party, the Patriotic Front also withdrew its participation from the NCC process provoking a loss of political consensus that followed the initial Mulungushi Summit of all heads of political parties.[8] The failure of amendments in Parliament, it could appear, did not prejudice the reluctant MMD government.

The NCC has been faulted based on the criteria for selecting membership to the Constitution Conference that was incorporated in the NCC Act of 2007. Besa writes about the NCC of 2007, “For purposes of adopting a constitution that would be accepted by the people as their document, the mode would be a perfect one. However, the biggest compromise in adopting a constitution in this way is its composition”.[9] The NCC debates clearly brought out the position that rather than being the question solely of representativeness, uncertainty of bargain outcomes on substantive issues of constitution bargains such as the “Christian nation clause”; gender rights; sexual rights of minority groups; the electoral clause of 50+1 and reproductive rights such as abortion might have fractured the initial celebrated consensus.[10] 

In contrast to the NCC, we can briefly examine Zambia’s sixth Constitution Review process.[11]  In 2011, a slightly different process called the National Constitution Convention, which was a culmination of a multi-stage consultative process, and a better comparison than the NCC to the American Philadelphia Convention was undertaken. It used a new Draft Constitution compiled from previous proposed or actual constitutions. Most of the so-called contentious issues were clearly addressed and lobbied for at the lower level stages of District consultations and the PF government positions were challenged or easily defeated at Provincial Conventions by NGOs such as Caritas Zambia. Yet the working Draft used at the National Constitution Convention was not revised to reflect submission at earlier stages nor was there a systematic way of handling provincial-wide adoptions. Thus, almost five years later, uncertainty still lingers as the Grand Constitution Coalition of NGOs has challenged the PF government’s handling of the adoption process.[12] Heated debates continue about roadmaps and the constitution making process, which started with nominated District convention delegates, and elected Provincial delegates who went to the National Constitution Convention appear to have suffered the same fate as the NCC. Two different processes appear to have given rise to similar outcomes. If not fundamentally the stage of adoption what other factors then can give rise to a legitimate and durable constitution?

WHAT MAKES A CONSTITUTION DURABLE?

Simson Mwale^[13] has argued the position that in matters of constitution making, process always protects content. The question is indeed, what aspects of the process may have relevance to the internal validity of the constitution, if by validity we mean that constitutions are designed to achieve their intended societal objectives? Considerable literature exists to address the question of the role of “originating power” in constitution making process.[14] There are two major contentions. The first is one that allows a State government to originate and control the process of constitution making. Usually, this becomes inevitable where there already exists a constitution that, for various reasons, has become unacceptable or unworkable. The other argues for a “people-driven” constitution. Going by the Zambian example, this dialectic is relevant.[15] The question is, who has the power to make a constitution and how does this affect process and durability?

 On the power to make a constitution, the Nigerian constitutional lawyer B. O. Nwabueze has specifically said, “It is a power to constitute a frame of Government for a Community, and a Constitution is the means by which this is done. It is a primordial power, the ultimate mark of a people’s sovereignty”.^[16] The idea of a “people’s sovereignty” points to the view that the power to make a constitution lies with the people. The American constitution heralds this by its first sentence: “We the people”. The Philadelphia Convention was an assembly of delegates from twelve out of the thirteen states who were ready to form a federal union after the Independence Declaration of July 4, 1776. They subjected the constitution they had so carefully negotiated to a novel way of forming a government through consent of the governed. All the states had to ratify the new model of government.^[17] By this device of ratification, a people’s will was invested in a document that was principally written and negotiated by fifty-five state delegates and secured its veneration.

Hence, once the question of whose power it is to ‘create’ government is resolved, the first question revolves around the preferred way to form governments. In the American case, the Federalist papers argue, “it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question,  societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”^[18] Two possibilities flow from this complex statement by the Federalist. It is either government can come into being by “reflection and choice”— that is, by some individuals consciously making a plan to which the people consent—or government can come into being by “accident and force”—that is, by chance and without consent.

While it has been taken for granted today that governments can only come into being by “making a plan to which people consent”, it was not always so and history since 1789 has not vindicated this view very much. Edmund Burke observed in contrast to the American “constitution plan” that “the English system was not formed upon a regular plan or with any unity of design . . .[It developed] in a great length of time and by a great variety of accidents . . .[Its parts] gradually, and almost insensibly accommodated themselves to each other. . . The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror.”^[19] Burke saw the English system as an organic model. This is also the model on what is known to be the manner of development in biology.^[20] Nothing is planned, yet the result fits. Applying this idea by analogy to the formation of government, a political system evolves slowly by accidents and incremental adjustments, with customs and habits developing to support it. The people come to appreciate the resulting heritage or tradition, which adds another prop to preserve the system.

It is arguable whether the English organic or traditionalist model or the American rationalist model is preferred. The old age debate about rigid versus flexible constitutions, constitution reverence or not turns upon this distinction in constitution paradigms. What is at issue here is a dispute about doctrines. A doctrine is a firm conclusion put forward publicly as a rule intended to influence the course of events. It is a political instrument. The organic model probably rests on the logic that because so much destruction and fanaticism have resulted from attempts to remake government, it is best to promote the doctrine that good government results from accident. The synthetic or rationalist model counters with the logic that because so much folly, ignorance, and superstition embedded in tradition, it is best to support the doctrine that good government is established by reflection.

Reconciling these doctrines in the formulation of the terms of reference for constitution commissions has not been part of the elements that have been adequately addressed, for instance in the Zambian case. How for instance, can there be veneration to a constitution that has no appreciation of the founding of a nation or of founders? How can there be founding and founders without founders leaving behind an enduring fundamental law of the land? These questions are troubling and perhaps go to the core of the constitution problematic in Zambia. Our so-called Independence Freedom fighters left us with no enlightened doctrine of their struggle such that for children today, Zambia is just trying to become in existence, as the fundamental bargains that may have been reached in 1964 have no clear account. The Barotse issue is as fresh today as it was in 1964! Where then was Zambia’s founding?

We turn to the technical questions of durability. Assuming Zambia gets a “people-driven” constitution, what will ensure its durability? How relevant is the stage of adoption to durability? Thomas Ginsburg, Elkin Zachary and James Melton (2015)[21] of the Universities of Chicago and Illinois have studied world constitutions examining the question of durability. They have observed that, “a successful constitution serves as a coordination device that renders its underlying political bargains self-enforcing, meaning that it must create a stage of equilibrium from which no party has an incentive to deviate.”^[22] Unlike a contract, there is no external guarantor to enforce a constitution. Ginsburg et al further observe that while constitution bargains inevitably results in winners and losers, the integrity of the equilibrium a constitution guarantees must be such that it will endure because the losers: (a) believe they are better off within the current constitution bargain than in taking a new chance in negotiating a new one and  (b) are unable to overthrow existing constitutional order by means other than constitutional. At least four variables appear relevant to constitution design and endurance.  Ginsburg et al point at the variable of specificity of the constitution document in anticipating relevant sources of pressures and dealing with them in the constitution text more fully. Specificity refers to the comprehensiveness and clarity with which the constitution document covers key issues that touch upon stakeholders in society within its text. This overcomes the problem of hidden agenda in the constitution bargain. It minimizes the problems of strategic behavior and one might anticipate that specificity would promote constitution durability. Specificity in a general manner involves not only the detail in the participation terms but also in the scope of the type of events, the constitution covers.

The second variable is that of inclusion. This addresses the reciprocal relationship between legitimacy of the constitution document and the system it gives rise to and constitution survival or durability. A hypothetical proposition would be that a constitution whose provisions are known and accepted will more likely be self-enforcing based on the importance of common knowledge. Inclusion in the entire process of producing a constitution will help ensure enforcement by national stakeholders. Survival according to Ginsburg et al view increases with public inclusion during both drafting and approval stages.

The third variable in examining constitution durability is adaptability. The proposition is that exogenous change puts pressure on constitution bargains. The ability of a constitution system to adapt to changes in its environment will determine whether it remains in equilibrium. The primary mechanism for adaptation involves provisions for formal amendment to the text. Secondary mechanisms involve informal amendments that results from interpretive changes of courts. Optimal adaptation results from the interaction of provision for formal amendment, some degree of rigidity and possibility of re-interpretation of the constitution.

The last and fourth variable Ginsburg et al identify is what they call structural attributes. This refers to those provisions that give rise to institutional capacity to promote stability by mitigating internal conflict amongst groups in society.    

In their survey of world constitutions since 1789, Ginsburg et al have come up with startling findings, which largely unravel many myths related specifically to constitution design and constitution making in general. According to Ginsburg et al^[23], on average, constitutions the world over since 1789, have had a mean lifespan of only 17 years! Ginsburg et al empirically show that one-half of the world constitutions are likely to be dead by age 18 and by age, 50 only 19% of global constitutions will survive. In Africa, the durability mean is only 10.2 years and 12.4 in Latin America and 15 % of Latin American and African constitution perish in the first year. In Europe, the mean is 32 years and 19 years in Asia. The American and a few European cases are thus exceptional to the high mortality rate of constitutions the world over. Ginsburg et al further show that the life span of constitution globally is declining from an average of 21 years before World War I to 12 years after the WW1. The Zambian constitution that is well over 18 years is in injury time. No doubt the calls for another, completely new constitution, is a clarion call within civil society organizations. On the variables examined, the Chicago researchers found that inclusion through participation in referenda for ratification do have effect on constitution endurance in democracies and not in dictatorships. They have observed that “This is intuitive: referenda in dictatorships do not genuinely confer legitimacy or facilitate collective enforcement of constitutional terms”. However, even in democracies, inclusion requires other intervening variables. They observed, “We find that constitutions written in democratizing times are more resilient when precipitating events are included in the model”. What then accounts for much of the incidence of constitution durability? The researchers isolated as “influential variables”, the devices of constitutional review and the ease of the amendment process, as significant variables in decreasing constitution mortality. This is in contrast to Zambian civil society sentiments. The inclination in to entrench as many rights as possible and make theme justiciable. Yet the Chicago researchers also observe that, “Adaptability, it appears, is crucial for constitutional survival”. It is a profound finding that in the case of amendment ease, for example, an easily amended constitution (one whose probability of amendment is one standard deviation above the mean) has a 70 percent chance of lasting until age 50 versus 13 percent for those whose amendment probability is estimated at one standard deviation below the mean.

 What does this finding by researchers say about assumption underlying the doctrine of a constitution standing a test of time? Simply put, it says, unless you build in constitutions a degree of relative flexibility that does not undermine the integrity of whole constitution, the chance is high that such a constitution will collapse. It is an interesting point to note that despite a relative degree of rigidity in the American Constitution, there is only one sub-clause in Article 5 of the US constitution dealing with state suffrage and senatorial representation in Congress by states to which strict limitation of amendment apply.[24] Finally, the US researchers found that constitutions that cover more topics are more durable than shorter ones, suggesting that specificity matters, although length of constitution alone does not seem to increase endurance. It appears that it is the qualitative nature of the provisions that count in specificity. Therefore, lumping a constitution with all and any conceivable right and entrenching this in a manner that avoids amendment would contradict the quest for “standing the test of time”.

CONCLUSION

In simple terms, many process issues could be relevant in the constitution making process. How fundamental the adoption stage is in relation to a constitution making and the constitution itself standing the test of time (endurance) should be assessed against the background of knowledge of the relative value of various technical design issues of specificity, inclusion, adaptability and structural mediation at different stages in constitution making as a process. This paper seems to suggest that, adoption is an activity that is recursive. What is adopted in the initial stage, including questions of what form the constitution making process is going to take, that is whether it will be by way of a full or partial constitution review resulting into a completely new constitution or amendments to an existing constitution are a significant part of the various stages in the constitution making process. In practice, the mode of adoption of a constitution just as the mode of amendment of an existing constitution are substantive issues in constitution making upon which popular opinion may be canvassed. It is important that constitution doctrines in the formulation of a constitution making process be clarified through a deliberative process. This would give rise to fundamental constitutional principles with which the process would be guided. Without a clear notion of constitution doctrine, the process that may follow would be haphazard and progressively fatal to constitution endurance. Zambians need to reflect deeply on this point.

Chiengi, April 2015

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[1] Hasungule, Michelo (2004), “Experiences at constitution-making in SADC: The Zambian

Experience,” in Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, Edition 4, Issue 3, November, pp. 28-

32. see also

[2] Besa M (2011) Constitution, Governance and Democracy Ndola: Mission Press p10-11

[3] Giddens, A (1984) The Constitution of Society Berkeley and Los Ageles: University of California Press p121-122

[4] Garner, B.A [ed] (2014) Black’s Law Dictionary, Thomson Reuters p1157

[5] M Brandt, J Cottrell, Y Ghai and A Regan, (2011) Constitution-making and reform: options for the process, Interpeace.

[6]To be sure, the NCC process was designed by the Zambia Centre for Interparty Dialogue (ZCID). This author chaired ZCID.

[7] Motsamai, D (2014)

[8] This summit was highly celebrated as a break through against existing impasse in the Zambian media.

[9] Besa, M (2011) op cit p15

[10] Motsamai op cit

[11] The Justice Silungwe Technical Committee for Drafting a New Constitution was appointed by President Sata in 2011.

[12] Statement made by a consortium of CSOs at the public assembly on the Constitution held at the Freedom Statue, 4 October 2013.

[13] Mwale, S. (2006) Constitution Review: The Zambian search for an Ideal Constitution. JCTR Bulletin. www.jctr.org.zm  retrieval April 15,2015

[14]  Elster, Jon. 1995. “Forces and Mechanisms in the Constitution-making Process.” Duke Law

Journal 45 (1995): 364–96.

[15] See L. Habasonda. Presidentialism and constitutionalism in Africa: ‘Third Term’ phenomenon/extension of tenure; the Zambian experience, at http://www.zesn.org.zw/docs/Presidentialism%20 and%20Constitutionalism%20in%20Africa%20_lee%20 Habasonda.ppt (last accessed Jan 27 2015).

[16] Nwabueze, B. O. 1974. Presidentialism in Commonwealth Africa. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 

[17] Ceasar, J.W. (2014) The Constitution as Political Theory: Between Rationalism and Reverence. 2014 Berns Walter Constitutional Day Lecture. Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute. p3

[18]Hamilton, A. Madison, J.and Jay, J. (2003), The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter , New York: Signet Classic, 25.

[19]  Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm.

[20] Dubos, R. (1965) Man Adapting New Haven: Yale University Press. P 6-7

[21] Ginsburg, T, Zachary,E and  Melton,J. (2015) The Life Span of Written Constitutions, (Cambridge U Press) at www.constitutionmaking.org. retrieved on 19^th April 2015 

[22] Ginsburg et al pp 6-7

[23] Ginsburg et al pp7-8

[24] Linder, D (2014) WHAT IN THE CONSTITUTION CANNOT BE AMENDED. 23 Arizona Law Review 717 retrieved 19 April 2015.

Effects of  Social Media on Communication, Culture, Personal Relations and Private Life in Zambia

Katele Kalumba

Social media has become an instrument of social transformation. Social media refers to “websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or participate in social networking” (www.oxforddictionaries.com, undated). Ivy Wigmore, in an article posted by Margaret Rouse (www.whatis.com, July 2014), adds that “Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content sharing and collaboration” through “forums, micro-blogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation and wikis”. Each of these terms denote certain activities that take place on social media with specific significance on communication, culture, personal relations and private life in Zambia.

If one studied all the major  websites whose examples include Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Reddit and Pinterest, and to which the concept of social media may be closely applied, we realize that we are dealing  with a complex field of human living that could be constructed in myriad ways. The technology, upon which this social media rests, is not value neutral. We need to understand its fundamental elements and their impact upon modern living under the new digital culture in Zambia.

Social media however understood, is unarguably a product of what many experts in the electronic sector would dub as a “digital revolution”. From a scientific perspective, all such revolutions, including political ones, start with the basic question: “Does it have to be this way?”

From the 1960s self-actualization movements with their emphasis on “connecting with one’s inner self”, emerged a 21st century individuation and progressively, a broad search for meaning in life and knowledge of other cultures. By 1993, when the World Wide Web came into being, the disconnectedness of life had become too much to bear. People needed new ways of connecting not just to self, but to others (William J. Mitchell (1999:12).  The reproduction of the New “Post-Corporate Society” (Korten, David C., 1999) required penetrative capacity for a new “global” social system reproduction based on at least four factors. The first is the means of access actors have to knowledge in virtue of their location. The second involve the modes of articulation of knowledge. The third are the circumstances relating to the validity of the belief claims taken as “knowledge” (a sort of vision of a new global village). And the fourth are those factors to do with the means of dissemination of available knowledge. The Silicon Valley provided all these conditions to the world through a spark ignited by the World Wide Web.

The bounded nature of physical space, forced the need to create “virtual communities” such as those on Facebook. In these spaces, “persons” interact with the presumption of intimate knowing of each other. And yet, we know, as marketing chat rooms reveal, the “John” who enters the chat room to answer your questions about buying a used Japanese car, is a robot! The human experience of communication has changed. Two separately married people in the same room with others can have a private and intimate conversation on Chat or Whatsapp, which may be in violation of sexual and fidelity norms  of our Zambian society.

Social media is big business in Zambia’s digital revolution. It started with the University of Zambia’s sponsored Zamnet Ltd as an internet provider around 1994. The ingredients of this ‘incendiary brew’, as described by Mitchell, include “digital information storage, transmission, networking, and processing hardware, together with the associated software and interface capabilities” (Mitchell, 1999:13). Mitchell says, the key element in this digital revolution which is information “has become dematerialized and disembodied; it is now whizzing round the world at warp speed, and in cortex–crackling quantities, through computer networks” (Mitchell, 1999:13). In Zambia, experts have emerged in this industry who were never there before to harness this digital technology as IT (Information Technology) business.

Indeed, the dematerialization and disembodiment of information, has led to the emasculation of identities of the users of this information. We can illustrate this by studying the changing profiles of users of Facebook and LinkedIn. The same person can take two quite different descriptions. Fr. Jonah Lynch and Michelle K. Boras (2012) in a book entitled, Technology and New Evangelization Criteria for Discernment (p7-11) touch upon this point. They observe that in the digital world, “we become what we think, what we see, what we read and what we do”. In Mitchell’s vision of what he calls  “E-Topia”, he challenges us to think of brains in this digital world “as a kernel surrounded by successive electronic shells operating as sensory organs, to transfer information back and forth across the carbon silicon” ( Mitchell, 200:66). Smart phones, now in vogue in Zambia and other “wear ware”, have transformed us into bodynets of information storage and retrieval. With the use of “touch or swipe” gadgets including cellular tablets, you can copy information with your finger by touching the sentence, word or phrase and paste it by pressing the same finger on another  section or page in the same application even two days or so later. That information is retrievable as bits from our own bodies.

More Zambians are imaging themselves according to the mores projected on social network communities to which they belong.  This has profound impact on culture, the invisible organizing fields of society. Language forms, used on these social media platforms apply new codes of signification. These are filtering through everyday language of the young generation with significant impact on human communication and cultural behavior (Korten, 1999:33, Lynch and Boras, 2012).

Our digital experience through which we are “wired” together by platforms such as social media, is an imaged world which can modify us, for better and for worse, creating or strengthening new social connections, weakening or eliminating others (like in “unfriending” someone on Facebook). Social media form us in “the image of our actions, thoughts, desires, and tools” (Lynch and Boras, 2012:11).

Dating on social media with “friends” we encounter while surfing the Web is common in Zambia. There have been stories of Zambian women travelling to meet their Facebook dates in Europe who looked like film stars on “profiles” just to find wheel-chaired, funny looking nerds!

Privacy, that feature constructed by the physiognomy of space (Hall, T., Edward, 1969) has been fractured by gadgets like Smartphones which both reveal your location and do more. This information is retrievable. States big and small, like corporations, are busy tapping into this cyber world for multiple reasons from marketing to tracking terrorism. A sort of colonization of mass culture is taking place. Privacy on a social media platform like Facebook is technically untenable.

In conclusion, social media, so indispensable to our lives now, dictates its own language form or codes. Competent users easily adopt this digital jargon. Most messages are in codes. In this practice, a kind of secrecy is maintained in relationships which breakdown the mores of social control that for instance, parents exercised over friends of their children. This transformation of family relations has far-reaching cultural implications including, alas, communication which social media is supposed to celebrate.

Culture, that invisible organizing field of society is being so dramatically reconfigured that we become fast communicators of low quality information to our social media friends or communities. As easily as we can connect with these communities, we can also disconnect or “unfriend” them. The concept of intimacy in human “friending” has been disfigured by the absence of co-presencing in human interaction (Giddens, 1984:64; Goffman, E., 1959:1) As Giddens writes, “The social characteristics of co-presence are anchored in the spatiality of the body, in orientation to others and to the experiencing self” (Gideens,1984:64). In virtual communities created by social media, space has been fractured into digital broadband. We enter into Chat rooms with another person whose body language we cannot read. Consequently, because language is beyond the written sign, the meaning of our communication is gravely syncopated. The “general text” of social media is “virtual reality”, imaged truth only understood perhaps by interactionists thinkers like Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, the authors of The Construction of Reality (1967) and by Derridian students of Deconstruction (Culler, J. 1982). The human need for real communion as Lynch and Boras (2012) observe, is sabotaged or rather modified. In today’s world, we need many friends with whom we share less of us.

References

Berger, P., and Luckmann, T. (1967). The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday/Anchor.

Culler, J., (1982). On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul.

Giddens, A., (1984). The Constitution of Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Goffman, E., (1959). The Presentation Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.

Hall, T. E., (1969) The Hidden Dimension. New York: Anchor Books

Korten, David C., (1999).  The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism. San Francisco: Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Lynch, J., and M.K. Boras (2012) Technology and the New Evangelization: Criteria for Discernment. San Francisco: Knights of Columbus.

Mitchell, J. M., (1999). E-Topia: “Urban Life, Jim-but not as we know it”. London: The MIT Press.

Oxford Dictionaries (undated). Social media. http:// www.oxforddictionaries.com, retrieved, January 28, 2015.

Rouse, M., (2014).  Social media, Wigmore I., (ed). http://www.whatis.com, (posted July 2014) retrieved Jan 28, 2015.

Chiengi, January 2015

The Politics of Disinformation in Zambia

OUR POLITICS OF DISINFORMATION IN ZAMBIA SAYS MORE THAN WE INTEND…

Katele Kalumba,

The concept of disinformation is generally applied in American English to refer to propaganda.  Propaganda is politically speaking , State –sponsored false or deliberately misleading information. The case of Saddam Hussein of Iraq stocking Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) was a classic example of disinformation. We may be driven to conclude that disinformation is rested upon some grand illusion, often power. Facts cannot dismiss illusions of power. The illusion, the power of America, becomes a privileged premise, immune to evidence. The world believed in American Intelligence capabilities. When these were proving questionable, new definitions of threats were piled upon the original disinformation to justify a war. Disinformation passes for eternal truth marshaled up by presentation of a patriotic passion which creates idiots out of those who appear to stand in the way.

The Germans refer to political numbness  as “Verdrossenheit”, It is a disconnection from politics arising out of disinformation such as the how you manage information about the health of a sitting President in Zambia. It is not peculiar to Zambia. It is public knowledge now that J.F.Kennedy’s back pain or whatever it was was carefully managed. Political power and traditional structures of representation are  brought into question in practices of disinformation. Electorates, as shown by the just ended January 20 2015, registered “voter discontent” in Zambia evidencing the fact that they are at best uninterested and at worst sullenly hostile to those in power or in fact, perhaps have no choices even among those who seek power. This “apathy” is happening amidst a flurry of political parties, NGOs and the media.

The fugitive politics of our NGOs and media illuminate nothing, only rendering public life, as a theatre of catatonic experiences of an infantile kind. The fanciful labels of the mushrooming NGOs like Anti-Voter Apathy, new Rainbow Political Party among many others names attached to misrepresented phenomenon, take no account of the circumstances in which those “bored sick” electorates live. The image disinformation produces is like the stupefied existence of our African City, daily swelling in size like a disgusting poster of an African politician. Each crafted word of “virtual truth” about voter apathy like our many poverties, is superimposed upon the inner turbulence of individual personalities creating a numbness and torture in John Ryan classical “Blame the Victim”. These are industries of blame, that manage us like golems, through a failure of will by those that have the possibilities open to them to earnestly work together to empower the sprawling images of the poor, helping them to rise  above basic want. This means respecting what they know already about the mess, our system of government has created.

CHIENGI,

March 2015

SHARING COMMON GOALS, UNDERMINED BY CONTENTIOUS MEANS: THE CHALLENGES OF FOREIGN DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE AT CHIEFDOM LEVEL IN ZAMBIA

SHARING COMMON GOALS, UNDERMINED BY CONTENTIOUS MEANS: THE CHALLENGES OF FOREIGN DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE AT CHIEFDOM LEVEL IN ZAMBIA

Katele Kalumba, PhD (Toronto)

ABSTRACT:  This paper was written as a contribution to a Workshop organized by a USAID-supported program called SHARe/ZAMBIA for some members of their Royal Highness from across the country. It came at the end of SHARe II program that helped selected chiefdoms, including my Bwile Chiefdom in Luapula under Senior Chief Puta VIII Kasoma II Tefwetefwe in Chienge District, develop three year Strategic Development Plans using participatory methodologies and essentially piggy-bagged on fighting HIV?. While grassroots based development strategies appear appealing in intellectual circles, they often lack the resource justifications for a sustainable implementation program in donor countries and provoke curious political interest by central authorities in recipient countries, which deprive them both of local resourcing and political support. The author suggests that part of the limitations relate to failure to talk transparently about the tangible and intangible exchanges involved in development assistance [1]

INTRODUCTION TO SHARe II/ZAMBIA CHIEFDOM STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT

From the South to the North, the East to the West, a program called SHARe/Zambia, supported by USAID and PEPFAR (which has an interesting motto on their log “Zambians and Americans in partnership to fight HIV/AIDS”) engaged Chiefdoms in a sophisticated but participatory strategic planning for development. The idea was a simple one. In order to fight HIV/AIDS in a holistic manner, communities needed to address structural issues that limit their mobilization of resources for a sustainable approach to both prevention, management and care tasks for HIV/AIDS.

The Planning process involved a five-step approach using PESTELI and SWOT analyses. The first module was self-assessment. The Chiefdom participants from a broad spectrum of chiefs, headmen, elected councilors, senior citizens and chiefdom advisers, women’s groups, government workers, church and other civil society organizations, special sector groups like fishermen associations called VMCs, Farmers cooperatives etc were used to answer the question : “Who are we as Bwile Chiefdom?  This question required the Bwile Chiefdom to identify the essential qualities that define it, including its fundamental commitments i.e. vision, mission, core values, and mandates. The second module question asked, “Where are we in terms of Development?” This demanded that the Bwile Chiefdom critically analyses itself and the internal and external environments, and clearly outlines the development challenges it currently faces, as a springboard for defining its development roadmap.

A Third module required answering the question “Where do we want to go in terms of development?” This clearly required defining goals, objectives and strategic issues toward which or on which it should work over a period of five years of the Plan. A fourth question was “How can we get there?” This called upon the Chiefdom to articulate the strategies and actions needed to reach identified developmental goals and milestones, and /or to resolve the identified strategic issues. Lastly, the fifth module was to answer, “How will we know we have arrived?” This required the Chiefdom to define a simplified framework for assessing progress in the implementation of its strategic plan and in achieving set goals and milestones. In summary, this was as good as any logical framework planning methodology can be. The process was interactive and highly critical in terms of analyzing what was factual on the ground and what goals could be attainable.  A Bwile Chiefdom Development Strategic Plan 2013-1017 was colorfully launched during the annual Builile Ceremony by the then Minister of Traditional and Chiefs’ Affairs, Professor Nkandu Luo of the PF government. It included a well-researched brief history of the Bwile people in terms of the historical movements and settlement in the now Republic of Zambia. This approach was replicated in all the chiefdoms the program targeted. After this successful planning story, the project of SHARe II/Zambia was facing certain death. Advocacy for continuing appeared necessary and workshop seemed necessary to justify more USA funding. Washington appeared less than enthusiastic. How do we understand these forms of development assistance, the so-called capacity-building type without tangible results other than a document in form of Strategic Plan? There is an old Soul Music song during the Vietnam times, “There is something going on out here”!

 NOW START “ON AND ON” JACK!

Development partnership is a journey. Metaphorically, one can walk the journey by your side, in front of you or behind you. It is inconceivable, even in multi-dimensional terms to think of someone walking on top of you or under you. But if we entertain for even a slight second, Niccolo Machiavellian logic, it is perfectly thinkable that walking on top of you would amount to suppression while walking under you may amount to exactly what it says, undermining you.

Unless we are clear about the nature and purpose of development partnership, which walk to talk about, we may find ourselves, not in Joseph Heller’s most popular creative scenario of Catch 22 but in his more realistic account of chapters five and six  of Now and Then. The two chapters share a common theme, “On and On”.

IDEAS WE ALREADY KNOW JACK, TELL US ABOUT HOW?

At this point, I dare anyone to challenge the insight of a great American Development Assistance leader in USAID, Brian Atwood when he said these words:

           

”Building on the base of strong Agency experience, we have a new grasp of the importance of attacking development challenges at the grassroots, by strengthening local capacity. The central idea in our New Partnership Initiative (NPI) –that development can be energized by linking local business, indigenous NGOs and local governments—reflects a new understanding of the forces of change that are embedded at the roots of society. Few dispute the development theory behind NPI; now it is time to unleash that powerful idea” J. Brian Atwood (Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid “The Future of Foreign AID” Washington D.C. March 12, 1996 pp 4)

Brian Atwood added, a not so much “by- the- way” comment for anyone to appreciate, (If such a person has once been a number one diplomat for his country), he said:

“ I recognize that any new vision for our foreign aid program must be built on public understanding of the link between security at home and security abroad” (Atwood, ibid pp 8)

If anyone doubts the significance of this virtually clear premonition, then perhaps that person has a simple lesson to learn from a French philosopher, who observed,

“He fails to see what lies before his feet” Montaigne remarks on Thales from The Complete Essays as translated by   M.A. Screech, 1991. 

Development partnership is not a one-way street. There are tangibles and intangibles are exchanged, as countries try to walk together, one country capacitating another to walk freely and ably. This walk is made the more difficult because the exchange invariably involves change. That is it! Who has to change? Is it the one being capacitated or the enabler? I dare say both. An enabler who comes with a ready-made, Cantonese chow mien, risks the possibility of wasted dishes in a restaurant  full of Bwile Bantu[2] to whom a meal means a plate of nshima  or what Swahilis call “ugari” and some fresh cooked  fish especially Catfish or bream. Equally, a patient who wants to tell a doctor what prescription is best for him (not what she is allergic to), is often labeled a “difficult” patient.

Common goals can help the walk. How do you discover and share these common goals if the project design in the first place, has nothing to do with prospective development partners? In a digital world where everything gets outdated by the minute, we forget ideas too quickly. We confuse “googling” for ideas with ideas. We are looking for the next idea, we fail to see, that which is under our feet. A world well-known development thinker Ibrahim Helmi Abdel Rahman, contributing to a discussion in a book entitled, “Partners in Tomorrow”[3] wrote:

                        “Everybody wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die.”

It is a profound thought and really, our paradox. We agree that poverty stinks. It puts a moral, if not a security burden on the rich. We agree as well that working with poor countries from the grassroots is the most effective strategy in development work. The problem, it is precisely the rich in these poor countries who are most able to attract the attention of foreign governments because of the needs of their own rich investors. The rich anywhere are astute, nay effective, at putting greatest pressures on their governments to come up with policies and even laws that favor and protect their interests. Rich governments succumb to them for reasons not just of economy but the VOTE, poor countries depend on them for rent seeking (the economic terminology for corruption), and for “good works”, including financing their campaigns. Where is the recipe for the real thing of development? Well, Heller’s old age creativity gave us this portrait:

“Call me Gene. I am a mean Gene…spiteful…malevolent and sneaky too. I gorge myself on the spleen. I keep my real self hidden…” (p110). “And there was a dominating compulsion to let go and talk dirty and say shitty things in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House….Oh, the things I could tell you, if I could only talk. But I can’t talk, so I can’t tell.

 I can only smell. Smell things, not give off odors…I can smell a rat for you and I can smell bullshit too. And there is more than enough, more than I want to smell.” (p116)[4]

Heller’s main character Eugene Pota in the novel Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man suffers a common development experience. A consolation of inadequacy as per Montaigne! If one proposal is rejected, just work a little harder and write another one. In Pota’s case, while everyone he consulted had ideas about what could be the subject of his final novel, no one offered any real answers. It is something catatonic. The world of the developed West and Africa in particular, appear to be spaced on different planets. When you read  Montaigne description of doctors’ medical prescription in Europe in 1500 and (not 2015 Africa), they included : urine of  a lizard, the droppings of an elephant, the liver of a mole, blood drawn from under the right wing of white pigeon, and for those with colic paroxysms, triturated rat shit![5] Now in my village, in 2015 by the Roman calendar, these pretty much stays close to ingredients in “medical prescriptions” by our “Ng’angas” or traditional healers (Please do not call them witch doctors, Europe called them doctors in 1500). Are we in a time warp, where we cannot perceive reality the same way? Do we mean the same things when we speak about development in the West and in Africa?

 Rahman (1978:5) was wrong in his paper to equate political timidity or lack of will for rational development or what today is called “lack of governance” as the “real answer” to a state of relations where no answer is never real enough! Why is it, we may ask, that goals towards development are always so clear and easily agreeable and yet talk about means is always so contentious? Europe, America and yes Asia, were once where we are today. Why cannot they talk about what works and what does not work in clear bankable terms with us, the poor?

I think Heller’s Spleen, the mean Gene, who keeps the real, self-hidden, could help us develop some insights. Can development dialogue be a little more transparent in terms of the stakes involved?  Can we open up the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House as Congress, USAID, State Department and our own miniaturized versions interact on issues of development assistance? Let us suppose for a moment: that there were no hidden agendas; no corrupt intent or acts; real will to redistributive thinking; positive terms of trade; clear and fair contractual terms with no hidden or small unreadable letters; a common human enterprise to fight poverty everywhere, a heaven of sorts, who would be willing to die for it? I think the most intelligent response would be, “that is too idyllic!”  If the good clean world is a fantasy, what is the practical, achievable world? What development pimples can we accept when we come face to face, the rich and the poor?

WHAT ABOUT SHARE III JACK, COME BACK TO SHARE!

The acronyms we use in Development Assistance reveal as much as they conceal. SHARE has such a tempting conception of a redistributive doctrine that reminds one of a history class on the American Marshall Plan on Europe. Yet, it smells so farfetched to contemplate that. We in Africa (I can generalize with some license) have the naivety to think that we can appeal to the emotional sensibility of our donor partners instead of our mutual interests. We should ask: why should American taxpayers spend their hard-earned dollars on chiefdoms development capacities in Africa? Is the idea itself  not repugnant to the very democratic ideals that makes America different and which are deeply enshrined in its Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, more so perhaps than in its own Constitution? Can these chiefdoms secure the blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness better  than their elected councilors, Members of Parliament, their appointed Cabinets and  well our own somewhat elected Presidents, (assuming electoral imperfections are limited to poor countries alone)?

If we were to answer these questions based on our Zambian historical experience, contrary to popular democratic idealism, the answer would be a resounding YES! In affirming this position, I am committed to a project that reconciles Cicero’s objections to Aristotle’s obsession with means in harmonizing the pursuit of happiness, through justice and virtue in an organic context. Cicero’s fourth alternative of constitutionalism is only usefully accessed in terms of natural and unyielding principles that guide moderate human conduct Why because Augustine of Hippo was right, “lex inuista non est lex” (Unjust constitutions, unjust laws, are no laws, period),[6]

 It is a fact, (even granting the limitations imposed by the colonial relations) that our Native Authorities performed better than our modern Local Councils on the index of “Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. Why we may ask? By “accident”, because they were organically embedded in the social structural properties that existed “to work” for the people and were adaptive to internal and external challenges. Traditional authorities had lived through ivory trade, slave trade, colonial rule and survived by challenge and adaptation. Our people were able to understand the legitimacy or illegitimacy of works demanded of them by their traditional institutions. They knew the boundaries of authority of chiefs and headmen. They petitioned for their rights as in a chi-Bemba folk song (one-liner) “Kuteke Mbwa, mano, wabula mano atekele mbwa mu chipwu yaya”. (The essential meaning is that without wisdom, good leadership and intellect, a chief can lose his people. They are note bonded). There is also the notion of the “consent and presencing of the governed” under chiefdom management. For instance, in the petition song “Aka kamana ukupoma, nipa mabwe, ne mfumu ukutangala, nipa bantu” (For this river to thunder like a waterfall there must be stones and for the chief to rule, there must be people…people do not accept bad rulers period!). When were villagers called to Council chambers to petition any claim of right? These modern rulers speak to themselves; even petitioning Parliament can infringe the Zambian Public Order Act and attract brutal force. Whom can you petition freely in modern institutions of governance without retribution? Chiefs are still petitioned by their villagers and headmen even today!

Democracy can only take root when it evolves organically. In the same manner, that Africa’s development plans have collapsed so have its “democratic” constitutions. The act of planning just as the act of constitution making has become an end in itself, like a disgusting overblown portrait of an African politician! One does not need to be acerbic to confront that which lies under our feet. We know little about what ensures constitutional endurance nor indeed how Malaysia, for instance, could turn around a disastrous economic performance into an admirable economic success using endogenous thinking. We do not even have a sense of our own national founding and thus celebrating it becomes a contentious issue. It is notable that what made America hold together in a Union, were fundamental compromises made at State (local) levels earlier in its moment of “founding”. It was a spirit of starting afresh as much as progressive dissolution of those traditions that contradicted common aspirations, including Slavery. Our independence constitution was written for us in England and the forms and numbers of compromises reached are up to this day, contentious or simply unknown. We continue with searching for a real constitutional answer like Heller’s Pota.  In my old age learning experience, I have come to some startling revelation that a Global average life span of a written constitution since 1789 is only 17 years. For Africa, this figure is 10, 2 years! At 18 years, Zambia’s constitution is in dying time.[7]   

Development has to evolve organically, in both cultural and, specifically knowledge terms. Start with what the people know. Knowledge is a critical element in building institutional capacity. This is no insult to our intelligence. It is cognitive reality. Please read this and I shall quote at length (without malice from Armstrong) and you are free to disagree with Karen Armstrong but I shall make my point:

 As a child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in God…I believed implicitly in the existence of God; I also believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of the sacraments, the prospect of eternal damnation…The Roman Catholicism of my childhood was a rather frightening creed…I listened to my share of hell-fire sermons. In fact Hell seemed a more potent reality than God. …When I was eight years old, I had to memorise this catechism answer to the question, ‘What is God?’: ‘God is the Supreme Spirit, Who alone exists of Himself and is infinite in all perfections.’…It has always seemed a singularly arid, pompous, and arrogant definition. Since writing this book, however, I have come to believe that it is also incorrect… As I grew up, I realized that there was more to religion than fear”[8]

Karen Armstrong reveals a cognitive dissonance that most of us experience as we make important choices, such as exerting effort to understand things or in fact, achieve certain goals about either politics or development. This concept of cognitive dissonance  is simply that the ‘simultaneous existence of cognitions which one way or another do not fit together (dissonance) leads to effort on the part of a person to somehow make them fit better (dissonance reduction).”[9] What does not fit with what people know or feel, sets them off to reconcile it. We are brought up to believe, behave, critically think and we actually live in certain ways. When you are told, in a three-day workshop, that what your people do is wrong and must change to alternatives that are celebrated with all pomp and ceremony as “civilized” or “developed”, it is a sort of dissonance we face. Karen Armstrong took a learned, life long process, right into her mature age to discover, not only that her childhood religious doctrines were incorrect but also that religion is more than fear.

It is not either the argument advanced here that Karen Armstrong’s conclusions are right or that the strategy of chiefdom development should take the lifespan of Karen Armstrong to bear fruit! Yet, it is an informed opinion that short-term development strategies are not only ineffective but also wasteful. Worse, they create a culture of “development recipients” in a manner that kills the human spirit for self-realization in the same manner food relief destroys a farmer’s spirit to grow food. SHARE II in Zambia inspired a good number of Chiefdoms to believe in their capacity to think through the planning process. This is laudable. But let us learn from what we know already. I wish to observe, the challenges to Central Government has never been a dearth of plans. Zambia’s history of development planning is one giant success industry![10] It is the failure to implement the many plans. If this culture were going to be transferred to primary organs of governance in Zambia such as chiefdoms, then the SHARE Initiative would have done greater harm that benefit. No success story, in any development initiative, is measured by the volume of papers partners collectively produce. There are some intangibles and definitely some tangible goods. At this point, my friend Jack may want to ask, What do you people really “need”? That could be an honest question.

HIT THE ROAD JACK, WHY NOT SHARE III?

SHARE II program in Zambia taught us, in the words of Mu-ANZA Nkulu Puta VIII Kasoma II Tefwetefwe of the Bwile, in Luapula Province of Zambia “I believe that the survival of the modern chiefdoms will depend on how well they balance their push for development while maintaining their cultural identity” [11] This is a powerful insight. It suggests clearly that there are many forces at play, most of which cannot be identified in a planning document nor even anticipated in a chiefdom’s “balancing act” There is the issue of what type of partners are acceptable to those authorities whose mandates exceed those of the chiefdom. There are questions regarding whether chiefdom policy to make choices, for example, to grow more cassava as a local staple would contradict national policy for growing more maize to reduce prices for urban dwellers[12]. We can plan, Oh yes we can. Can we do it? A Beatles Song comes to mind with its line “I get by with a little help from my friends”. The forces that real implementation would unleash for and against chiefdoms could create necessary chaos and possible bifurcations in terms of key nodes of power in our society. Chiefdom development should do well to be a mentored, through a stage-wise process to avoid political tsunamis from the centre. Equally, it would be necessary to manage the temptation on their Royal Highnesses to “de-link” from central development processes as part of the power-holding scenario. It is a delicate stage.

JACK, WHAT IS THE BOTTOM LINE FOR AMERICA?

Atwood was right. He will always be right if more people in the US Congress do not heed his call. In simple terms, there is much more for America: safeguarding life, liberty and happiness! A St. Louis Brentwood neighborhood friend would say “Give me a break, just say you need some bread”. Yes and no! America needs a break from many wars that are raging everywhere including Darfur. American citizens are dying to prevent global forces of anarchy and terror. Apart from periodic Great Lakes Region Vesuvius-like eruptions, this region has been relatively calm. It is the traditions of peacemaking and mediation rooted within our Bantu cultures that have resolved major tensions on the ground. We cannot quantify these in “justifications” section of project proposals. We are all too aware that our political capitals are often noisy, confusing, and even directionless but the structures of traditional governance have held us all together. Oh, this affirmation includes those in the Cities! They each have a root in some chiefdom. The cost of strengthening and stabilizing chiefdoms is far outstripped relative to costs of sending jets, drones and young men and women to overcome disasters caused by failing states. There is something else, and one can only touch upon it as an intuitive thought. There is a greater crisis of global natural resources looming on the horizon. Some countries have already started penetrating the villages looking for Africa’s untapped resources. It appears uneconomic now for other countries. But that time shall come, when intelligent exchange rather than scramble would be the scenario for tapping into Africa’s resources. Wars may be a means of course but there is a moral hazard. Have we forgotten Blood diamonds? Smart partnerships are possible in future built upon a progressive evolution of people-to-people relations at levels such as chiefdoms. As of today, I can honestly say, as a product of American and Canadian education, China knows more about Africa at the grassroots than the USA. Perhaps, it doesn’t matter now, but it will in future. In the language of diplomats, this may sound “quite interesting but not so convincing”.  That is always where we miss each other. Western scenarios for development assistance whether in Iraq or Afghanistan are always backed by a John Perkins’ “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”  spiced with language of William J Mitchell “E-Topia” describing Roger Lewin’s Complexity if they have to be awakened. Can someone put some bankable numbers on this presentation for my American audience?

Chiengi, Monday, June 29, 2015

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[1] This paper neither represents the consensus view of the traditional leadership of the Bwile to which I belong nor does it reflect any official position of those parties who participated in the SHARE II/Zambia. The author is Sub Chief Natende WA Lushiba of the Bwile people, however the views herein are solely his own. He has vast experience as a Health Systems and Policy Researcher, and Public Policy Leadership at country and International level.

[2] Muntu (singular) is person or human being, Bantu (plural), Bwile is a Zambian ethnic group

[3] Anthony J. Dolman and Jan van Ettinger (1978) Partners in Tomorrow. A Sunrise Book, E.P. Dutton, New York pp4

[4] Heller, Joseph (2000) Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, Simon and Schuster, London

[5] De Botton, Alain (2000) Consolation of Philosophy,  London: Hamish Hamilton  Chap IV p119

[6] For the interested, let me call upon the Dutch Hugo Grotius and the British John Locke to take up the debate from here.

[7] Ginsburg, T, Zachary, E and  Melton, J. (2015) The Life Span of Written Constitutions, (Cambridge U Press) at www.constitutionmaking.org. retrieved on 19^th April 2015

[8] Armstrong, Karen (1993) A History of God. London: Mandarin Paperback p1

[9] Festinger, Leon and E. Aronson (1968) in D. Cartwright and A. Zander (ed) GROUP DYNAMICS: Research and Theory. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers pp125

[10] Kalumba, K. and Paul Freund (1989) The Eclipse of Idealism: Health Planning in Zambia, Journal of Health Policy Planning, Oxford U Press.

[11]  Bwile Development Trust (2013) Bwile Chiefdom, Development Strategic Plan, 2013-2017, , under funding by USAID, PEPFAR and SHARe II/Zambia

[12] If these questions sound like straw men, a read of my account of a French Volunteer Group (BAM or Frères des homes) experience entitled Working with the Rural Poor, Katele Kalumba ( 1982) Institute For African Studies, Community Health Unit/School of Humanities and Social Sciences,, Lusaka, UNZA, monograph,  would be revealing