By Patrick Sikana
I am angry at two women. Stella and Stella. In case you
missed it, I will tell you why. A group of 6 harmless, jobless
graduates from the University of Zambia staged a peaceful
demonstration to express their wish to be employed. One
Stella, the police IG, sent a group of excited bat-wielding
police officers to savage their freedoms of expression and
assembly, and lock them up. In solidarity with that high-
handed tantrum, another Stella, this time the daughter of a
former president, with savage eloquence and polished
sarcasm, taunted the jobless6 (as they are colloquially
known) on her Facebook wall, urging them to shut up, feed
their placards to the fire and proceed to the market to sell
tomatoes.
In case you’re wondering why it took me this long to react, I
have struggled valiantly to resist the temptation of joining
the swirl of the ongoing debate that ensued from this
unhappy episode because, having gotten my first job 19
days before graduating, I have never experienced what the
jobless6 are experiencing. What moral right do I have to
comment on their predicament? None. But then I stumbled
on Stella Sata’s ridiculous ‘I was misquoted’ crocodile-tear
apology. My nonsense detectors smelt a rotting rat.
In ways both unintended and unimagined, the arrest of the 6
and the polarized debate that resulted have revealed a
tragic civil cancer in Zambia: we are expected to expect less
and less of our government. One day soon, it will be illegal
to expect anything from our government. There is a reason
for all this. We have recently been so whipsawed between
mediocre leadership and no leadership that now our
expectations on those in high positions are worse than
humble. Our sense of entitlement has been so battered out
of shape that our expectations of government sound like a
list of groveling apologies. How unconscionably dilatory!
Little wonder we are now being admonished it’s not
government’s job to make sure I have a job. It’s my duty to
sell tomatoes (and there is nothing metaphorical about this)
at the market. What a pernicious frame of mind! Isn't this
why Paul once asked a mindless community: O foolish
Galatians, who has bewitched you?
Let me put perspective to this. I raised the money for my
wedding from selling toy drinks and fritters. But heck I had a
job! A full time formal job that gave me the capital. We go to
school so that we can have choices in life – options! Selling
fritters and toy drinks was, for me, a result of choice, not
lack of it. I still do other side hustles. But I am not pushed to
do them, I am pulled.
We elect governments so that they can safe guard our right
to choice. No, governments can’t employ everyone. But don’t
be fooled, they must provide an environment for job
creation and, imposing a senseless employment freeze is
inimical to that environment. No insult to the trade, but I’m
not sending my children to school so that they can wind up
selling tomatoes at Soweto market. That’s poor parenting in
the first place, and bad economics in the second.
Nothing undignified about selling tomatoes. Everything
undignified about spending 4 Siwela years (I don’t know the
name of the current UNZA Vice Chancellor) gaining skills in
order to end up in a vocation that does not require ANY of
those skills. We all have a right to live our lives, not just to
exist, and formal employment is an important part of that
mix.
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