TRIBUTE TO MY LATE GREAT MOTHER

By Chanda Chisala

My mother was the greatest woman that ever lived on planet earth. I am very sure that no son or daughter with a very loving mother will agree with me there!

As I listened to the speeches made at her funeral, from my two uncles, from the pastor and from the republican president, I noticed that none of them mentioned that most expected of words on such occasions: “selfless”. I was glad they did not mention that word even though they were probably very tempted to use it, simply because I do not believe that such great people as my mother are as good as they are because of “selflessness”. They are not selfless, in the sense that this word generally implies – not interested in or motivated by one’s own needs or gains. They are actually very self-interested, and sometimes this self-interest can be so intense that it looks like selflessness to other unperceptive people.

What do I mean? My mother loved her children so much that we could all feel it wherever we were. But this does not mean that love is selfless. True love is not selfless but very selfish, if we can permit that stigmatised word to be used in place of “self interested” rather than as a synonym for silly greed. In short, she loved her children so much because they made her happy and proud. She felt deep pride at the fact that none of her nine children had rebelled against her, for example. They all were very close to her, and all of them treasured her words and her presence like nothing else. My sisters abroad would spend hours on the phone whenever they rang her because they treasured her wisdom so much. They would sometimes have fights among themselves, and each of them would phone her (from different cities) and spend so much time with her because they all thought she was on their side – she was the only person I knew who could take both sides of a fight without taking any side! Perhaps this can be credited to her political career!

My mother’s illustrious political career started almost at the top: her first political job was that of Member of Parliament (in Mufulira). She then became a deputy minister in the Ministry of Energy and Water Development, thus becoming the first woman from the Copperbelt Province to hold a ministerial portfolio. For some reason, the women who have held ministerial positions in both the Kaunda and Chiluba government had been residents of Lusaka, almost exclusively, whereas men have been more evenly spread out. Perhaps this is reflective of the general unfairness of our political system with respect to women.

My mother’s greatest passion in politics was the promotion of women to positions of leadership. It was thus fitting that her last position within her party (the MMD) was that of Chairperson for Women in Development Committee. As the president recounted at her funeral, she was always insistent that more women should be involved in leadership positions and she always used to remind the president whenever he announced a list of names for anything that he was supposed to include more women. In fact, she would almost interrupt him during their NEC meetings as he read out names of any committee or assignment with women’s names conspicuously absent. The president would then apologise and ask for names of women to be included on his list.

The issue of women empowerment was one that she and I slightly disagreed on. I agreed with her that laws that were discriminatory against women needed to be changed so that they have completely equal opportunities with men. However, I did not and still do not agree that whenever someone is giving assignments or jobs to people, they should be conscious of “gender balance”. What I believe in (and I could be wrong) is a pure meritocracy – where people are given jobs purely on merit. My mother believed that parliament should have a certain number of places reserved for women and the rest of the places competed for by both men and women. I do not think this is productive, but of course my position is greatly outnumbered in our donor-sponsored liberal intellectual society. I think a society develops because it has devised a way of allowing the best minds to rise to the top, irrespective of gender, race, religion, tribe, or even age.

Whenever I gave this point, my mother responded by saying that the current system, although theoretically democratic, does not in fact give equal opportunity to women, which is why they should be granted those positions of leadership by direct governmental affirmative action. During general election campaigns, for example, women face the disadvantage of almost always having less money than men since our culture is structured in such a way that men find it easier to make money in other ways – especially as the putative breadwinners of homes. It’s a good point and one that is difficult to argue against.   My position is that all such anomalies can be corrected from the root rather than from the top because we only compound the problem by trying to correct it through “women empowerment”. We could, for example, concentrate on ensuring that the individual with more money has no advantage over others, by simply strengthening the rules against vote buying and by making the monitoring process during elections much more efficient. Simply going to awarding women automatic places in parliament will make us forget that the problem is still existent even for men who might have the right intelligence but have less money. If we take the direct empowerment approach, we will have more people claiming the right to have automatic places in parliament just as long as they can prove their existentially disadvantageous position at the polls. The youth will say they need 20 per cent automatic places, the blind will also claim a percentage, and so on. In South Africa, the black skinned citizens believe they have the right to demand positions even in private companies, which of course is even more absurd, no matter what the historical arguments are.

My mother was not a radical capitalist like myself so it was inevitable that we should disagree on some points. However, what I found so refreshing in her was her willingness to accommodate an opposing view, as long as it could be argued logically. She was thus convinced on some of my points concerning some capitalist ideas, like privatisation itself. But she was never moved when it came to her women empowerment position.   Perhaps this was because she had experienced firsthand some of the disadvantages of being a woman in politics. During the parliamentary by-election campaign in Mufulira that she lost to a Patriotic Front candidate, for example, she was so verbally abused by the campaign team of Mr. Michael Sata that she regretted being in the race even before the voting day. They knew that to demoralise a woman just required saying a lot of demeaning things in songs and speeches since women are by nature more proud of their dignity and moral authenticity. But again, the solution against such nonsense is simply to make the campaign rules more strict and the monitoring process more efficient. The monitoring teams could, for example, produce video evidence of such abuse to the electoral commission, but all they give are their own eyewitness testimonies even if this goes to court, thus making their case weak. The solution is not affirmative action per se, but rather more intelligent systems of regulation and observation during elections.

My mother’s last assignment in her party was appropriately as one of the commissioners in the tribunal investigating corruption in her own party. She took this assignment very passionately and very personally since she knew that corruption of voters is one of the main reasons that women are unable to make it to elected positions of leadership in the first place. It was during these meetings, after she had given a passionate speech, that she soon collapsed and was rushed to the University Teaching Hospital. She died of high blood pressure a few days later.

At the news of her death, I did not know whether to blame president Mwanawasa for putting her on that tireless commission or whether I should blame her for working so hard. As I thought about it more, it was almost like she was whispering in my ear from heaven to look at the whole issue differently. It was as if she wanted me to thank these people for having given her an opportunity to give herself completely to a job that she loved so passionately. There was really no better way for her to die than to die while doing what she truly loved and while fighting for a cause that she truly and honestly believed in. This slight change of perspective gave me peace and even appreciation for her life and the way it ended.

Every person must indeed give themselves completely to a career (or cause) that they love passionately instead of doing jobs that they do not love, but which they do just for the sake of money. Every human being should quickly step into that career that will always keep their juices flowing, for this will make them truly happy. To pursue money independent of this important consideration is psychological suicide. Or as Jesus said, “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

But the greatest lesson that my great mother gave me during her adventurous lifetime was the importance of independent thinking. The reason I still differ with her on the issue of women empowerment (instead of agreeing with her in honour of her death, as might be expected of me) is because she encouraged me to always find my own position and never to put emotional or social considerations above intellectual honesty.

At one time people were telling me that my articles at Zambia Online (and in the public newspapers) were hindering my mother from advancing in her political career because the government leaders were not happy that I was sometimes very critical of them. I was told that even her promotion to a ministerial position had taken long because these leaders wanted her to control my writing. Of course I do not believe that my articles were even read by them, but anyway, I still asked her what I should do in light of these rumours. I was willing to stop writing for her sake. But she said to me, “just follow your own path and write what you believe in; if these people do not promote me because of your articles, then they are useless hypocrites and I do not need their job; after all, we have said that we stand for freedom of speech and expression as a party.” Thus, I continued to write articles against Mr. Chiluba and the MMD government even when my mother was a deputy minister in the Chiluba government. We still remained as close as ever in spite of this, simply because of the things she valued – personal and intellectual independence being primary among them.

If heaven exists, my mother exists in heaven right now. And if she exists in heaven right now, I too want to go to heaven one day.

THE END.

Mrs Irene Chisala died on 17 th May, 2005. She was the National Women’s Chairperson in the National Executive Committee of the MMD, and a commissioner on the tribunal investigating corruption in the MMD. The author is the founder of Zambia Online.

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