AT the end of the first round of group matches, things were not looking too good for African teams. Only Ivory Coast managed to win, with Algeria, Cameroun and Ghana beaten and Nigeria held to a draw.
Let me categorically reiterate, the reason Africa disappoints at the World Cup is not the lack of talent but the lack of youth development.
Did you know that on average, an African player only starts to play organised football at the age of 16?
This means that up to this point an average young African has been playing as an individual and only start playing in a team setup in their late teens.
This is the reason why most African teams lack cohesion and tactical discipline.
Look at how a young Netherlands team shocked the current World champions, Spain, which had an enormous amount of confidence and serenity?
Going into the match Friday, experience was on Spain’s side with several players in the line-up who had won the World Cup four years ago.
While Spanish coach Vicente del Bosque has gone with experience for this tournament, his Dutch counterpart chose to go with a very young squad supporting the veterans Robin Van Persie, Arjen Robben, Wesley Sneijder and Nigel de Jong.
The same can be said about other teams like England and France.  2010 saw Fabio Capello take England’s oldest ever squad to the World Cup – now Roy Hodgson has put his faith in youth.
For their French counterparts, only a small group remains from France’s squad at the 2010 World Cup.
But look at how they performed in their opening match.
African teams need to realise that you don’t win the World Cup by experience or luck but through tactics, technique and teamwork.
There is need for better infrastructure at the grass-root level which would contribute to a more competitive domestic set up.

KAMPA SENKWE,
Kitwe

Do Zambian docs have professional sovereignty?

ONE wonders how much professional and intellectual sovereignty Zambian doctors will have to give up to the World Health Organisation for them to perform to our expectations.
In the same vein, one would like to know what equilibrium have our doctors and medics in general set between effectual intellect and common sense.
Common sense in the sense that it is so disheartening  to wait for the media to highlight medical problems in our communities before  our medical doctors can act.
The medical fraternity would remember that the World Health Organisation used the Nairobi ICASA as a platform to launch the programme that would see three million Aids patients access anti-retroviral treatment by the year 2005.
At the ICASA conference a meeting was organised between representatives of the Zambian Government and representatives from WHO. In attendance we had among other policy makers Hon Nyirongo(MP for Kabwe), Mr Xavier Chishimba (An Aids Activist before he became MP for Kasama Central), Dr Chipimo ( A reproductive health specialist with CBOH) and me (The yYouth representative on the reproductive health sub-commitee, a consortium of UN agencies, Government ministries, reproductive health non-governmental organisations and youth organisations)
In a closed-door meeting with the WHO delegation,  I re-emphasised the need for the 3 by 5 initiative to benefit the youth on the basis of the fact that the youth were the most affected by the Aids pandemic.
A few years after the launch of the 3 by 5 initiative, I was again privileged to be a  member of the Treatment Advocacy and Literature Campaign(TALC) where I noticed several of our members and friends who were HIV-positive and on anti-retroviral treatment started complaining of numbness in their toes and fingers (Peripheral Neuro-pathy).
What was saddening about the situation was that we could not get any satisfactory answers from our doctors through the Ministry of Health as to what was causing the pain and what could be done about it.
Privately I consulted a friend, Howard Armistead whom I have known to be one of the longest survivors of Aids in the world (Howard was infected in 1982) and the only one that I knew had the longest and widest experience with Aids treatments dating back to 1987. Howards experience on treatments ranged from AZT, NFKB’s, reverse transcriptors, proterse inhibitors, fusions and a nutritional supplement, selenium.
Howard told me that there is a likely-hood patients in Zambia are being overdosed with Trimune 40 which was a combination of three drugs namely, stavudine. lamivudine and nevirapine and he suggested that the Ministry of Health needed to change the regimen to Trimune 30.
What was saddening is that it took the Ministry of Health three years to make a statement about the subject through its acting spokesperson then, Dr Mukonka. And this statement only came after making consultations with the World Health Organisation.
The question is how many ARV users were affected with Peripheral Neuro-pathy and other related complications before our doctors could act?
In the same vein, I read in the Zambia Daily Mail a fortnight ago where there is heated debate as to whether and when the government in Kenya should roll out the Option B programme where people with CD4 counts of less than 350 should be put on anti-retroviral treatment as well.
I do not know how far that discussion has gone in Zambia or maybe we are still waiting for guidelines from our `gods` in Geneva to give us the green light.
Allow me to conclude by stating that our parents used to join the medical profession because it was a calling from God but nowadays we see so many wrong people in the medical profession and that is why service in our hospitals both public and private leaves much to be desired.

John Noel Lungu

HH must find better campaign message

WHILE, I acknowledge that UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema has seen a lot of poverty in the country and he is confrontationally challenging president Sata to see it for himself, this should not be his campaign message.
Acknowledging someone’s troubles is one thing; doing something for him or teaching him to be out of troubles is another.
When PF was campaigning on the need to eradicate poverty in Zambia, that did not mean that our men and women would receive free manna from heaven.
Let Hakainde or any politician trying to ride on PF alleged failures not cheat people that when we vote for our leaders, we expect them to feed us.
Most Zambians are inherently lazy and they spend most of their time drinking beer as early 06:00 hours in the morning.
It is a trend that greedy politicians use these people with self-inflicted suffering on their bodies-use them for their selfish means. And they buy them beer on some of their rallies!
when power-hungry people are voted into office, most of those  who voted for them expect to be given free money; or they expect to be given jobs.
When they are not given what they wanted, they turn around and start sneering at the ones they voted.
They go to an extent of forming political parties out of frustrations. So it is campaign for the belly, not for mother Zambia.
Others normally go to political rallies not because they love to hear something from those rallies but because they want free food; free manna from heaven.
Let us teach our people to be hard working, not to be habitually begging from our ministers or MPs as Hichilema want us to believe.
Let Hakainde not be cheating people to be overly dependent on elected leaders for their survival.
Mainly we vote for people who need to refrain from abusing public resources and there is nothing to suggest that PF government has done that.

Gilbert Chikumba

Farming is the key

FARMING is the solution to Zambia’s economic ills. For example, and as Vice-president Guy Scott has rightly advised, if our farmers become commercial in their thinking, maize exports will help government to boost currency.
Food surplus will also make food in the country cheap and hence affordable. With farming, overdependence on copper will be lessened.
And agriculture alone will help create employment to thousands of our people.
Why should food be this expensive in a land blessed with good soil, water, and climate? Why should we be recording high levels of malnutrition?
Why should our people fail to buy beef for families in a country so blessed with animals?
Why should we fail to increase food exports to countries even as near and demanding as Congo? We are sitting on a gold mine!
Appreciating our context and economic strength amidst other global economies should make us utilize what is readily available in our context and strength. What we can’t do now, we can’t do.
But we can do farming very well and with very little supervision. We may not match with other powers in space science but we can use our available technology to boost agriculture.
Mining is wasting much of our land forever, and yet this land can be wisely spared for agriculture and preserved for generations to come without wasting away.
The Government’s political will to channel more money, technology, and agriculture infra-structure into the agriculture sector must be supported and strengthened.
Investors and NGOs coming with agriculture technologies ( like the Germans) must be embraced. Zambia can heal itself.

Rev. WILLIE NYENDWA
Ndola

A voice in silent winds

In your eye, your ear,
I will sing, I will not dance.
My drum beat, a net at a glance.
In the arena, your realm,
For big fish and nothing small.
You have it in abundance.
Why pretend to be in a trance?

When your presence will no longer be the case,
That wealth will disappear from your face.
With the poor, share it now!
With the widow, share it now!
With the orphan, share it now!
With the needy, share it now!
I’m a voice in silent winds.

………………………………………
CHRIS MULENGA – chrismulenga@yahoo.com/0955787910