If my memory serves me right, President Edgar Lungu recently made history as the first Republican President to travel by road between Mufulira and Ndola and see for himself the extent to which this important artery has been destroyed due to many years of neglect.
As a frequent traveller between Ndola and Mufulira I, like many motorists and transporters was delighted to learn that this route will soon be reconstructed at the instruction of the President.
Instead of flying, as his predecessors had probably done in the past, President Lungu deliberately decided to drive to Mufulira in a convoy for what turned out to be an on-the-spot-inspection of this vital link that passes near Sakania, the Zambia-Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) border post, which lies some 30km north of Ndola.
(This area in the late 1970s and 80s actually witnessed intense smuggling of mealie-meal into neighbouring Zaire as shortages of essential commodities in general started to bite so much that the Zambian Government was compelled to mount not less than a dozen military check-posts along the 42km stretch to curb the scourge).
President Lungu, who had travelled to Mufulira in his capacity as Commander-In-Chief of the Zambia National Defence Force (ZNDF) to launch the newly constructed housing units for soldiers, was thus able to see ‘everything’ for himself rather than depend on second-hand information from government engineers and other concerned stakeholders.
When in tip top condition, travel by road between Ndola and Mufulira in the past often took less than 40 minutes, but now it takes three to four hours because it has become so dilapidated that it is virtually impassable.
For many sections of this road – the shortest to Luapula Province via Mokambo on the Pedicle Road in the DRC – have either been washed away or developed huge potholes, some the size of craters, due to lack of routine maintenance and soil erosion during successive rainy seasons.
Disgusted at what he experienced, the President announced that the road has been so badly damaged that it would require ‘not rehabilitation’ but a ‘complete overhauling’ (under the Link Zambia 8000km Project under which Government is revamping the country’s infrastructure).
However, most roads, particularly those in residential areas, need overhauling – and not rehabilitation – because they are in such a poor state of disrepair that their potholes have become death traps and breeding grounds for mosquitoes and waterborne killer diseases like cholera.
In the Federal days  (1953– 1963) and even immediately after Independence in 1964, district councils and other local authorities across the country used to undertake regular maintenance of roads and other infrastructure in their areas of jurisdiction.
But sadly the picture changed around 1980 (seven years after Zambia was declared a ‘One-party State’ under the United National Independence Party administration) when the country’s economy started showing signs of ailing, culminating in food riots in 1986.
Hard pressed for cash to pay salaries and wages, the ‘party and its government’ –through its Ministry of Local Government and Housing – took over total control of the previously semi-autonomous town and city councils, replacing mayors with political appointees, the District Governors,  as chief executive officers (CEOs).
As a result, governors, who previously operated from the BOMAs, moved to district council offices, from where they were calling all the shots much to the frustration of qualified staff members like city engineers and town planners.
Former Ndola City Council (NCC) Town Clerk, Dr Julius Sakala, who also at some stage served as Mayor of Ndola before he resigned to go into private legal practice, revealed in a discussion I had with him that the work of district councils thereafter became extremely perilous because they had ‘to find money to pay not only governors but other Central Government workers now attached to councils ‘who had not initially been budgeted for’. This is when things started to fall apart.
When council administrative chiefs complained of inadequate financial resources to meet the fresh challenges, the Ministry of Local Government and Housing in Lusaka  simply told them to ‘be innovative’ and find alternative ways of ‘raising funds’ to sustain their operations, which most failed to do.
Indeed, Zambia’s support for the Southern African liberation struggle coupled with its decision to implement in full the United Nations (UN) mandatory economic sanctions imposed on the rebel Southern Rhodesian regime of Premier Ian Smith (after his 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence) had by the mid-80s taken their toll on Zambia’s mono-economy.
Life became extremely hard for everyone, including institutions like district councils which were expected to be ‘resourceful’ enough to find money from somewhere to pay workers and keep township infrastructure like roads and health centres in tip-top condition all-year-round. It was no easy task.
To survive, Ndola City Council, for instance, decided to get more frugal with its recurrent expenditure, carefully identifying what ‘strategic’ roads needed to be maintained and which areas deserved to be serviced at regular intervals and yet remain within budget.
As a result of this approach, which seems to have been adopted my other councils, many roads in towns and cities went un-serviced for a long time with disastrous consequences that are still evident everywhere in Zambia.
Dr Sakala believes the deterioration of internal roads particularly in Ndola, for example, started in 1980 when governors took over the role of mayors and started operating from council chambers.
Ndola City Council did no have much financial resources; so township road maintenance was one of the major casualties of the directives issued to all councils by the Ministry of Local Government Headquarters in Lusaka.
As if that were not enough, councils suffered another major body-blow when second Republican President Frederick Titus Chiluba (FTJ) ordered councils to sell council houses to sitting-tenants literally at give-away prices of K10,000 irrespective of the size and value of such property.
With rented houses sold, councils lost their only regular source of income before water and electricity tariffs were taken away from them and given to quasi- government institutions like Zambia Electricity Corporation (ZESCO) and water utility corporations in the country.
Again when councils complained to the ministry, they were told by Lusaka to be ‘innovative’ and find even better ways of keeping councils ticking.
As pressure mounted, the Central Government, acting in pursuit of its socialist philosophy of Humanism, told council to let the ‘haves’ pay for the ‘have-nots’ by increasing the rates paid by property owners in up-market residential areas like Itawa, Kansenshi and Northrise in Ndola, etc. It sounded unfair and undemocratic but made sound economic sense; so councils went ahead and hiked rates in the low density areas some by more than 300 per cent.
However, despite these desperate measures adopted  by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) which came to power in 1991 with a promise to eliminate the potholes it inherited from the ‘hated’ UNIP regime, councils do not seem to have fully recovered because most roads are still in a terrible state.
It is for this reason that most people will always salute the late President Michael Chilufya Sata and his Patriotic Front (PF) party for embarking upon an ambitious road and bridge building and rehabilitation programme across the nation. Who can deny that the programme is already paying handsome dividends?
Travel to places like Chipata in the Eastern Province, which in the old days of ‘Ta pumulumuka’ used to last four to fives days from Lusaka now takes a matter of hours – four to six hours at the most because of a better road network. The story is the same for travellers to Mongu in Western Province or Nakonde in Muchinga Province.
When work on the vital artery linking Chingola and Solwezi in Zambia’s new Copperbelt of Northwestern Province is completed travel time to places like Mwinilunga, which used to take weeks, will be reduced considerably. Delays in the delivery of essential machinery for the booming mining industry in the province will also become a thing of the past once the Solwezi highway is converted into a dual-carriageway.
Finally, I would like to believe that while in Mufulira, President Lungu must have noticed how plots have been allocated to various developers (who have put up mansions complete in violation of Country and Town Planning regulations) and put his foot down otherwise Zambia is developing urban slums.
Roads in these newly established residential zones are always reduced to streams of running flood-water whenever it rains because developers appear interested only in building their houses but do not care about the state of the infrastructure. They don’t even work as a team and come up with strategies on how they will have streetlights installed, not to mention tarred roads in their respective areas where houses are built so close to each other that there is no room for what we (Africans) used to call ‘Santoloti’ – a prostitution of the English word ‘Sanitary road’.
These were lanes between houses that council vehicles used as they moved from house-to-house, collecting refuse for disposal at designated points on the outskirts of the town or city.
I also believe that improved road networks to places like Mufulira and elsewhere in the country must be accompanied by proper care of the environment, especially sanitation facilities in densely populated townships and at bus stations; otherwise we would be building on sand. This is no April Fools’ Day joke.

Comment: alfredmulenga777@gmail.com