By Margaret Mangani –
JUNE 18, this year was observed as the fifth memorial day of the passing on of Zambia’s second republican president Frederick Titus Jacob Chiluba.
His memorial day goes silently without any form of rememberance to his name for his great achievements.
Like other former presidents of Zambia, he has not been lucky enough to be named after any road, bridge or infrastructure as a sort of monument, yet it is on record that he impacted positively on some many people’s lives in various ways regardless of the turbulence that his tenure of office may have faced.
However, there are one or two schools in Luapula Province named after him.
Since the demise of the former leader, there has been an out-cry from concerned citizens that the man had never been remembered in anyway despite the good works that he did during his tenure in office compared to other republican leaders who have lived in plot one.
As a listening person and heeding to what many readers might desire, I am obliged to follow suit and do the same on the late President popularly known as ‘kafupi’ due to his height who arguably has been Zambia’s best oratory president.
As per custom I will give a bit of life history of the man that spent most of his early public life days as an accomplished trade unionist championing the cause of Zambian workers.
Late President Chiluba was born Frederick Jacob Titus Chiluba on April 30, 1943 in Kitwe’s mining Township of Wusakile to Jacob Titus Chiluba Nkonde and Diana Kaimba.
Chiluba did his secondary education at Kawambwa Secondary School in Kawambwa District of Luapula Province, were he was expelled in the second year for involving himself in politics.
He then went to Tanzania to work as a clerk  on a sisal plantation at the age of 19, that was in 1962.
It is also believed that he worked as a bus conductor.
Chiluba returned to Zambia a few years later and began working as a book keeper at a Swedish company called Atlas Copco in Ndola in 1966.
He rose through the ranks to become credit manager before he joined full time politics.
During his working career as an accounts person he managed to do A and O Level courses and an accounting course.
It was during his time at Atlas Copco that Chiluba joined the Union representing workers‘ rights.
He became a strong activist for workers’ rights, better pay and conditions of work.
In 1974 he was elected as Zambia Congress of Trade Union (ZCTU) president and was very influential.
As president of ZCTU he became very vocal and powerful that the governing United National Independence Party (UNIP) regarded him as a threat to their rule.
In order to quench his venom former republican president Kenneth Kaunda offered him a job as a Member of the Central Committee (MCC) in the UNIP government in 1979 but Dr Chiluba refused.
He, together with his general secretary Newstead Zimba and other labour leaders such as Chitalu Sampa for example, were arrested during the 1980s by the UNIP government for allegedly inciting workers to go on a countrywide strike.
It was during his arrest that Chiluba became a born again Christian.
Chiluba as a unionist championed the cause of workers and the labour movement was not easily shaken by the government of the day as Chiluba’s command was so strong and impacted many workers then.
When Chiluba was elected President of Zambia under the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) ticket in 1991, Zambia’s economy was on its knees.
Many Zambians lived in abject poverty and the country’s infrastructure was so deplorable and looked like a country that had been at war.
Tarred roads where almost non-existent, hospitals and schools were so deplorable, the transport sector was in shambles and so were the unemployment levels that were so high.
Chiluba’s achievements can be itemised under the following headings;

Christian Nation
Zambia became one of the very few countries in the world to declare
itself as a Christian nation.
President Chiluba declared Zambia as a Christian nation in December 1991 on the grounds of State House in Lusaka.
This legacy lives on to this day and is cherished world over.

Transport
Zambia’s transport system was in shambles that it took days to travel
from one town to the other as buses were few.
People had to spend nights at bus stations to board  abus.
Chiluba’s government waived import duty on buses and this saw the flooding of buses on the Zambian roads.
Most of the buses were painted in the famous sky blue colour and white.
With flooding of bus passenger transport business which became lucrative, today one can commute from the Copperbelt to Lusaka the same day and come back.
Local travel within cities or towns has tremendously eased.
The transport sector has no doubt been boosted such that reaching the most remote part of Zambia is no big deal nowadays.

Roads

Most roads before 1991, were in a deplorable state such that it was a nightmare to drive locally between cities or towns and buying of shocks, relevant spare parts and new tyres really was such a headache.
But this had been worked on and most roads were tarred and given a new lease of life, thanks be to the Chiluba government.

Grocery and essential foods
Before the attainment of the third republic basic food was scarce in Zambia not to mention essential foods like cooking oil and sugar.
Things like apples were a luxury so was Coca-Cola.
The liberalisation of the economy led to more international shops being set up in Zambia and also local shops managed to bring in foodstuffs, clothing and furniture that were a preserve of the lucky few.

Foreign Exchange
Foreign Exchange was not easy to access in the pre-Chiluba’s time.
People had to apply to the Bank of Zambia to get forex which would run out so quickly and find itself on the black market.
In those days forex was auctioned every Friday and the rate was approximately K4.01 to US$1.
However, this was eased when the Chiluba government adopted the free market policy. Entrepreneurship

Chiluba has been credited forencouraging Zambians to adopt the spirit of entrepreneurship that today we see many Zambians engage in their own small scale businesses thus easing or reducing the levels of unemployment among the citizenry.

Housing
During the 1996 pre-elections President Chiluba sold almost all council and government houses to sitting tenants in order to empower Zambians for as cheap as K10,000 (unrebased) in Kabushi in Ndola, Buchi, Kamitondo and Kwacha in Kitwe, for example, as well as other houses built in the 1950s and 60s in Lusaka.
These houses were sold on the cheap side and to enable many Zambians benefit from the home empowerment scheme.
Many today boast of being title deed owners or landlords within a twinkle of an eye.
He also introduced the Presidential Housing Initiative (PHI) to help those that did not benefit from the sitting tenant home empowerment scheme.

Education
Chiluba embarked on building basic schools across the country with the help of Japanese International Cooperation Agency( JICA).
Today we see many basic schools in almost all townships this was as a result of Chiluba’s government.

Health
Chiluba’s government also embarked on providing health facilities at the doorstep, this saw the up-grading and building of clinics in townships to provide quality health care as close to the family as possible and providing professional doctors at these institutions which was a rare privilege before this initiative came into being.
Liberalisation and Privatisation of the economy
Pre-MMD Zambia adopted a mixed economy but one that was more inclined to a command economy.
This meant that government was running commercial entities that actively participated in the economic activities of the country thus creating a distortion of what was the true sense of the economy as market forces were not at play.
Also as a result of this, parastatal companies operated at a loss and were a strain to government coffers which meant that government could not provide social services at its best.
Chiluba’s government reversed this to release finances and channel them to social services.
This also brought about private businesses that offered better ways of doing business and the revival of the mines.
Milling companies that were nationalised during the Kaunda era were handed back to the rightful owners and this saw production of mealie- meal improve tremendously.
Zambia had to go through a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) so as to meet the challenges of a free market economy.
These included the setting up of the Lusaka Stock Exchange (Luse) and Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA), restructuring the duties of the Bank of Zambia (BOZ) and putting in place legislature that would support a liberal economy.

Foreign Debt
At the time of his ascending to power, Zambia was heavily indebted to the tune of US$7.1 Billion.
Chiluba and his government embarked on reducing this debt by adopting many policies that the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and cooperating partners had set for Zambia in order to achieve the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) status so that the debt could be written off.
This was finally reached under his predecessor the late Levy Patrick Mwanawasa.

Foreign Policy
Chiluba brokered peace deals in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
He brought together Angolan President Edwardo Dos Santos and Jonas Savimbi to meet and make peace.
He did the same for the DRC when he managed to end the war in that country by brokering a peace deal between the late Joseph Desire Kabila and the warring factions of the DRC.
Freedoms
During Chiluba’s tenure of presidency people freely associated and expressed themselves without the fear of being haunted by state agents.
The press was also free to criticise him without them getting reprisals.
It is also during his time that we saw many media organisations set up.
Many of the late Dr Chiluba’s good side could have been left out but one thing that is for sure, he has a fair share of Zambia’s successes that can be attributed to him though he is regarded as a villain by some.
So goes the saying that no man is perfect except the son of the Living God Jesus Christ.
He certainly had his flaws and short-comings but we cannot remove his successes which are imprinted on the Zambian fabric. Chiluba also gave us a President in Levy Patrick Mwanawasa that most people have acclaimed as the best ever Zambian President.
Chiluba died on June 18, 2011.
Therein,lies the son of the soil.
He is buried in Lusaka at the presidential memorial park near cabinet office.