University of Zambia Lecturer Sishuwa Sishuwa has described the state of infrastructure at UNZA as an eyesore.
Mr Sishuwa said both the Great East Road and Ridgeway campus have suffered many years of neglect.
In a series of Tweets, Mr Sishuwa said UNZA today looks like a fossil.
“Each time l enter University of Zambia, l can’t help noticing the contempt with which our present rulers regard what should be an institution that takes pride of place in our hearts. UNZA today looks like a fossil or bombing survivor: forlorn, abandoned, dilapidated, an eyesore.”
He added, “Like Zambia today, our main university is a dream in ruins. UNZA has a rich history. I hope that, one day, we will get a national leadership that will complete building this site of making critical knowledge, rebuild and restore it onto its right place and status in the country.”
“We have a long way to go to get to a better future, but we must go there! Most importantly, the provision of mass and quality education has to be a central feature of our imagined better future. We have work to do, lots of work, if we are to change who we are today.”
Mr Sishuwa charged that Zambians are not serious.
“How can we embark on building new universities when we can’t maintain existing ones? We expend an astonishing amount of effort and energy on trivial issues, ignoring major and pressing questions of national importance: education, health, housing and transport.”
He said, “The whole place is a mess. Many buildings that form the University of Zambia, both at Great East Road and Ridgeway campuses, look to be on the verge of collapse while some are engulfed by raw sewage from the institution’s long broken and effectively dysfunctional toilet system.”
“We all must do what we can to, in the end, rebel against the pitiful state of our sub-human existence.”
Dr Sishuwa said UNZA does not qualify to be called a university.
“It’s discretionary to continue calling the institution a university and miraculous that there is anything left to see at all. How sad to see what our main public university, which at one time was one of the leading higher education institutions in the region, has been reduced to.”
He also charged that the East Park in which UNZA entered into a long term lease agreement with private developers to construct a shopping mall on university land is a scam.
“The EastPark project is, simply put, a scam, one that demonstrates the frightening mediocrity of our leadership, both at university and national levels, and a unique kind of poverty: the poverty of vision.”
What dilapidation are you talking about wena mushukulumbwe?
Yunza ki Yunza, sha…
Indeed what dilapidation.The university structures are fair-faced concrete. By using fair-faced concrete, there is no decoration process as plastering, putty and coating after concrete formed. In short they are not to be painted. It uses the natural texture of concrete surface as decorative surface compared with traditional concrete project. I was at UNZA during their construction and a number of people did not like their appearance when they were being constructed. As for their structural integrity they are very solid structures.
Lungu sends his wife to Redeo Drive in Los Angeles on a US$4 million shopping spree with an entourage of 25 grown men including a private bedroom attendant…ends up airlifting old junked fire trucks valued at US$7000 at a cost of US$11 million dolars…..PF bandits at work and we complaining about climate change….climate change has nothing to do with stealing and neglecting infrastructure
@Senior Engineer you must be 75 years old if you were at UNZA during comstruction in 1966-67
@Habasimbi. You are almost correct. I entered UNZA in 1969 and construction was still ongoing. I am 70 years old.
If it really looks like that, what about the toilets?
Can you please visit University of Namibia and benchmark!
At first glance, i thought it was Ku Chaisa or Kwa George Compound but this called university is in the heart of the so called Lusaka.
The toilets are in a mess. Students are now sheeting at East Park Mall. Quite an inconvinience especially with those with dyriya.
This sounds like Prof. Nkandu Luo? Each one is talking at the same time? It is incredible? It starts with personnel matters. As long as some staff and faculty members were misplaced, then the process of rectification must reckon with resistance. Who is against clean campus? Who is against innovation? Who is against renovation? Who is who?
Zambia is in a hurry to development and that the current government is trying by all means to make it happened, So far so good that the rains have come it is our time to focus on planting maize at the farms, no wasting time on social media let us work. God has given us land, air, energy, and free rains.
fossil Indeed
Those building just need a sand blast out side to clean the years of muck and polution…….sand blasting is the usual practice of a cleaning face wash… .
But Africans in general don’t belive in spending money on regular maintenance…
Spaka…the money spent by corrupt clueless Lungu’s wife on that needless trip to America could’ve been used to facelift UNZA. In developed countries, this university could’ve been closed already and labeled as “not fit for human habitation.” It looks like the walls have terrible toxic mold on them. That mold needs to be blasted with water from a powerful fire hose to remove them from those walls. So tell clueless Lungu to cut down on his needless trips for the next 6 months, and the money saved can be used to do some renovations to UNZA. That’ll be money well spent.
Let us focus on national development by putting our ideas together and making our country develop. Let us put politics aside and love each other for the future generation.
Most African infrastructure actually look worse than in war torn areas of the world. This is why when peace reigns in areas like the Middle East they flourish with opulence and beauty. See why when there is maintenance work on a major Zambian road you see politicians falling over one another to “commission” it as if it is a new project. Therein lies the tale. There is absolutely no plan for maintaining stuff in our country. This is why you see beautiful mansions put up this year and come five short years later the same mansions are unrecognizable for the filth and disrepair. Very, very sad…
THE GREED AMONGST AFRICAN LEADERS, ESPECIALLY THE CURRENT ZAMBIAN CROP IS MINDBOGGLING!
You have J0n@, a greedy visionless drunk, who used Unza, to better himself BUT will never prioritise in his Government policy to fix the same institution that put him where he is now the, the crooked Lawyer.
Instead he steals money, builds himself a Mansion in Esw@t1ni, buys himself an expensive Jet to travel aimlessly whilst conducting suspected N@rc0 transactions, & wastes taxpayers Cash that could renovate U.N.Z.A, to send his spouse @ the cost of over U$D 1 Million, to go on a shopping all expenses paid holiday to the U.S, with a horde of relatives & hangers on from the Ghetto, & in process dupe gullible Zedians, by bringing back scrap from the Junkyard, & have the audacity to shamelessly…
Cont;
& have the audacity to shamelessly claim look what we’ve brought back, we are developing Zed!
HISTORY WILL JUDGE THIS P.F, CANCER AS A PLAGUE WORSE THAN H.I.V /4IDS, MARK MY WORDS!!
You can say that again. Unbelievable!
Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for it. It’s easy to criticize your roots instead of doing something to give back for the great opportunities it has allowed you.
Those opposing Dr Sishuwa’s observation presumably do not know UNZA’s history or haven’t visited the campus lately. His article is spot on. It’s not only the standards that have fallen, but the environment as well, which, for those of you unaware, does affect the learning. Successive govts. have had no respect to the value of education or structures in which that education is to be carried out. UNZA is a reflection of how state institutions have been neglected – at the expense of se;f-aggrandizement for the leaders and also simply a lack of ‘know how’ leaders. Pathetic that some of you accept this mediocrity in a land endowed with plenty resources.
Zambia, awe sure…is this not the same institution which was boasting about the private partnership to help it sustain itself in leasing of land for commercial purposes? I did ask who the beneficiaries were in that article and now this? Maintenance is seen as extravagance in Zambian culture. Just refurbish the place and bring it back to its old glory. Unless someone is looking to make quick cash in pretending to build a new one at inflated costs.
Can we all put our heads together and have a brainstorming session on how to “fix” the problem? I believe as beneficiaries, we can and are able do something. Put politics aside, I believe we can save UNZA from total collapse. We are intelligent enough and collectively, if we chose to, can fix the UNZA woes. I am willing and able to put in 5-10 working days on this as a start. There are many ways to help..let’s do it fellow alumni.
The tragedy we have is useless lecturers like this boy politicking on a daily basis and contributing Zero to the great institutions. If I may ask the poverty brain stricken boy how much his department or indeed his foolish self has raised in terms of consultancy, grants arising from proposals etc, NOTHING!!!! All he knows is to bring down the government so that he can be appointed by his brother. He must have read the Mumpanshya Commission of Inquiry Report very well and seen benefits of having his kind in power.
I blame South Africans.
May be all former students should team up and help restore our national pride!