AFTER almost 25 years out of the country and Ndola in particular,  I recently found myself walking down Buteko Avenue – from the Bank of Zambia (BoZ) building adjacent to what we previously knew as the Market Square Branch of Barclays Bank Zambia – and surveying ‘how things have changed’ in the quarter of a century.
One thing noticeable is the city which had at onestage been reduced to a ghost town, is teeming with life once again. Most shops owned by Indian traders are now run by Zambians selling anything from exercise books, pens and pencils, belts, watches, cellphones, secondhand clothes, motor vehicle spare parts, radios and television sets.
Everyone seems in a race to get rich quickly after many decades in the economic doldrums.
In fact, nearly every Zambian is now a proud owner of a motor vehicle or two, which is why the Ndola Central Business District (CBD) is jam-packed with vehicles of all shapes and sizes, thanks in part, to former Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) chairman-general Frederick Titus Jacob Chiluba, who liberalised the Zambian economy when he assumed power as the country’s second Republican president in 1991.
At the stroke of a pen, Chiluba literallyopened the floodgates for Japanese second-hand cars to flow into Zambia unhindered after he ended former Kenneth David Kaunda’s One-party State that he (KK) had introduced in 1973.
As I strolledpast the Bank of Zambia edifice,on the left side of Buteko Avenue, towards what we used to call the MC’s Offices (Member of the Central Committee for the Copperbelt Province building) I remembered my last meeting with Raphael Kunkwa, a friend I first met in Lusaka in the mid-1960’s as a student at the Evelyn Hone College of Further Education, as it was called then.
Kunkwa had been promoted and sent from Lusaka to Ndola as the central bank’s chief security officeron the Copperbelt.
I had gone upstairs to his office to say ‘hi’ and later went into BoZ banking hall to exchange the Botswana Pula I had for the local currency, the Zambian Kwacha.
A few years later, Kunkwa, a former Zambia Police Force prosecutor and human rights advocate, collapsed on the tennis courts as he played his favourite game at the Ndola Lawn Tennis Club of which he had been a member for many years.
I was informed that he had been rushed to the Ndola Central Hospital (NCH) by fellow tennis players but was pronounced dead on arrival.
Unfortunately, I cannot remember the exact year but it must have been around 1994-95.
I was in Gaborone at the time and did not know anything until I ran into his widow during one of my routine Christmas holidays in Zambia some two years ago.
I was astounded to say the least. For Kunkwa was a giant of a man. He was full of life and as fit as a fiddle.
With tears in her eyes, Mrs Kunkwa, who has since died as well, related what had transpired as we sat in one of the restaurants in the now teeming Ndola CBD.
As a senior central bank employee Kunkwa and his familylived in an institutional house inItawa Suburb, but she told me they had since moved to their family house in Mupundu Road, Northrise, which is not very far from the Central Hospital.
I learnt of her death from their son who recognised me as he walked down Mwata Kazembe Crescent on his way to visit his sister who resides within the Kansenshi area early this year.
As I proceeded along the busy street, I looked across the road and recalled an incident that happened inside the Barclays Bank’s banking hall where I found former Zambia All-Africa and Commonwealth Games Association (ZOCAGA) secretary-general, Andrew Green in a long queue waiting to be served by one of four tellers manning the counter.
As a Times of Zambia reporter, nearly everyone seemed to know me so that when I entered the bank, the security guard on duty immediately ushered me to the counter to be served ahead of other customers, including the ‘muzungu’.
In the colonial days such things were unthinkable, which is why Green, who served under former Minister of Education Wesley Nyirenda, who was the ZOCAGA president in the 1970’s and early 80’s, shook his head in utter disbelief at this ‘flagrant disregard’ for protocol.
However, Green, as affable as ever, remarked amid much laughter by everyone on the queue: “Alfred you found us here and you are leaving us here; lucky boy you are – yes you are.”
Aware I had been accorded an unsolicited favour by the security guards and the teller, I simply waved goodbye at Mr Green a man, who like FAZ president Tom Mtine and others, always gave me exclusive sports stories in my formative years as a journalist.
Without much ado, I quickly dashed out of the bank, whistling all the way back to Times Newspapers Limited offices in Kabelenga Avenue, which was called Monterey Avenue at the time.
As I moved further up the road, I reached Bambo House and felt nostalgic about my regular visits to what used to be the British Council Library (BCL), which was closed many years ago because most Zambian and other readers seem to have lost all interest in reading. (The American Library in Lusaka, of which I was a member for many years, was also shut for similar reasons though I understand it was later converted into a video library at some stage.
Is it any wonder we keep on recording poor results in our schools these days? The young generation would rather spend their time on the cellphone, computer games, the Internet, Facebook and Twitter instead of reading in the libraries. Despite the technological advances, I believe nothing will ever replace hard copy. In fact a library without books on the shelves is not a library at all but a cinema. In our days, we loved reading novels by D.H. Lawrence, James Hardly Chase, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare to mention but a few.
The section of the building that used to house the British Council Library is now home to a bakery, Zamtel office and many other thriving businesses – a clear sign that the reading culture for which most young Zambian students from institutions of higher learning like Chiwala Secondary School and Kansenji (Kansenshi) Secondary School and many others were renowned for, has died and may never rise again. Great pity, I thought.
Across the road – and directly opposite the BCL – still stands a lone white-house, which was once former Zambia Mail regional editor for Copperbelt Mr Vincent Mijoni’s residence.
But it has since been turned into a little corner-shop selling all sorts of ware, including motor vehicle spare parts.
I once served under Mr Mijoni as a college intern from Evelyn Hone in Lusaka between 1966 and 1968.
The Zambia Mail (which later became the Zambia Daily Mail) offices in Ndola were then in Collett House.
It was in Collett House that I met people like now the proud owner of The Nation newspaper, Richard Sakala who used to come on attachment from Petauke as editor of the Petauke Secondary School magazine.
Others included Francis Musonda, Dunstan Chapema and photographer Lewis Musonda.
Of course the late Robinson Makayi, Winter Lemba, Maynard Chama and I, were collegemates.
Mr MIjoni often sent us on what he called ‘Township checks’ – the idea being to monitor developments in areas where the people – the vast majority – were the paper could come out with latest news stories.
Finally, as I approached Government offices, I met former Home Affairs  minister Cosmas Chibanda and immediately recalled how he was ‘fairly’ or ‘unfairly’ sacked by president Kaunda at one of his dreaded press conferences that he often held outside State House in Lusaka.
Dismissing his former Cabinet minister, Dr Kaunda described him as ‘a man who had fallen in love with the bottle’.
So I could not resist laughing to myself immediately I saw him as he prepared to cross Buteko Avenue from the shop opposite the MC’s offices, which he must have frequented many times in his hey-day as an active UNIP militant and Cabinet Minister in the 1970’s.
I extended my hand unhesitatingly, saying: “Mr Chibanda, how are you? It has been such a long time. I am sure you do remember me.”
“Nimwe banani?” (meaning: who are you?) he asked in response as he tried to reflect on the past and figure out exactly who the stranger that had accosted him on a busy street was.
‘Alfred Mulenga,formerly of the Times of Zambia,’ I replied, upon which he said, “Yes, of course, I do remember you. Where are you now?” he asked me as he flashed his trademark broad smile that no doubt endeared him to many people from across the tribal spectrum before he sank into oblivion following his dismissal.
After I explained my ‘adventures’ to him, it was my time to enquire from him where he was and what he had been doing since his ‘untimely’ retirement from public service?
Mr Chibanda said he had been trying to become a farmer under very challenging conditions in Ndola Rural – Mpongwe to be specific.
“But we are trying hard,” he added calmly though with a great sense of resignation. We parted and went our separate ways.
Apparently,  Dr Kaunda had introduced a strict‘Leadership Code’ under which no leader was expected to accumulate any wealth because, as he used to put it, he did not want to ‘create capitalists out of Zambians to replace the former ‘exploitative white capitalists.
Those found to have broken the rule (even on the basis of unproven allegations – like former Home Affairs minister Aaron Milner – were summarily fired or demoted and sent into the diplomatic service to far away countries like Canada and China.
According to Beatwell Chisala’s book, The Downfall of President Kaunda, Mr Milner was, by the way, deported and went to settle in his native Zimbabwe, but he keeps on coming back to Zambia because he still believes he had been victimised.
But one remarkable thing I observed about Mr Chibanda is that he has not lost much weight despite his advanced age and seemed (to me at least) to harbour no ill feelings toward anyone despite the way he had been treated by the system.
That is the spirit of reconciliation required of our politicians as the nation braces for the August 11, 2016 elections. Those fomenting violence must never go unpunished.
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