By Henry Kanyanta Sosala

PART III

Genesis of Cultural Genocide

Sociologists explain the underlying role of culture, family, history etc. Actually to be a member of a tribe means to be involved in a complex set of social relations which centre on the social personalities of the chief, hereditary councilors, village headmen, elders etc. In addition, it means, at least that a man’s behavior will tend to conform to certain type-patterns which are prescribed by the custom and norms of the tribe. These provide a mechanism whereby young people cannot be brought up in a higgledy-piggledy manner. And these norms provide the basis of mutual expectations which are necessary to social intercourse.

On the other hand, I have seen that today’s parents are terrified by their children. They dwell uncomfortably and self-consciously in the all-too-powerful shadows of the adolescent ethos of the new culture with the inability to distinguish between the chaos of immaturity and responsible freedom. This has increased parental sensitivity to the short-term emotional suffering of their children like securing examination leakages for their children, while heightening their fear of damaging their children to a painful and counterproductive degree. However, there are catastrophes lurking at the extremes of every moral continuum. And therefore our society faces the increasing call to deconstruct its stabilizing traditions

In 1927 shafts of mines were sunk on the copper-belt and which marked the beginning of great industrial expansion in this country. And between 1927- 1929, 22,341 Africans from all over the country were employed. In these work situations, people of various tribes were brought together in common tasks and through the wage-economy, they were linked with whites who employed them. They were also bound together with their fellow-workers of various tribes by their common interest in the joint productive tasks in which they were involved and consequently personal friendships developed between people of different tribes. In that new scenario various tribesmen could no longer live and work together on the basis of kinship and affinity as they did in their rural villages and so many of the customs and features of the tribal system fell into desuetude.

The logic of the colonial government rested upon the common assumption that the social ties, the norms and the values which had served to regulate behavior in the tribal societies from which all the new urban dwellers had come, could continue to operate in the different conditions of the industrial community. Implicit in the employment of Tribal Elders and importing of urban court justices from villages, was the view that the dominant ties between Africans in towns were still the ties of the village and the tribe. And against this, Zambian rural culture in the colonial era was seen as the only tool to deal with this cultural genocide that occurred in urban Zambia.

In order to have a clear understanding of this article, I have divided generations in age categories: 1920- 1940, the Pioneer generation; 1944- 1970, the Independence generation; 1980 to-date, the New generation. I have also dubbed the Pioneer generation as the generation of Freedom Fighters. This is the generation which introduced great social changes and which fought for our independence from the British. The youngsters of this generation were brought up when the prospectors began to sink shafts on the mines, later known as copper-belt and this marked the beginning of great mobility of the local population.

However, the then Secretary for African Affairs, R.S. Hudson, had distressingly noted as early as 1930s that ‘’When an African settled in town, he ultimately ceased to belong to a tribe and no longer fitted into the native authority system.’’   In 1932, Orde-Brown sadly wrote: ‘’A disquieting feature of compounds of all kinds is the large juvenile population without occupation or control. Children and adolescents of all ages throng the vicinity, finding amusements as they can and devoid of training or teaching. In native villages this would not be the case, since almost all the tribes have very definite arrangements for training the young people according to their ideas.’’

The World War II broke out and many Zambians were recruited and served overseas. On the all, it was the exposure of these ancients which changed the lives of their kids of the Independence generation and which made an opening to the interactions of various tribes and with peoples of other lands as being witnesses today.

The Pioneer generation gave birth to the Independence generation and it is in this generation where MMD leaders belonged. The traditional tribal cultural package code was previously handed over to each succeeding generation as a pattern of behavior to which all tribesmen adhered to without question. And just in the same way that in a relay race, the outcome depends at the very points that each runner hands over the baton to the other. So the package of traditional norms which the Pioneer generation handed to the Independence generation was a mixture of cultures. The normal pattern is for the preceding generation to chart a clear cultural moral conduct for the next incoming generation.

And in this respect, A.P. Epstein, an anthropologist who carried out a research in Luanshya in the 1950s wrote in ‘’Politics in an Urban African Community’’: ‘’Over the years there has developed amongst Africans on the mine an increasingly complex pattern of social differentiation which is based on such factors as differences in their productive roles, their standards of living, their education and relative degree of sophistication. In general, the process of differentiation has been marked by the emergence of new social groupings and associations which express the nature of the divisions operating within the social system of the mine’’

In this case the Independence generation has handed over absolutely nothing to the Now generation. This generation is being taught contradictory ideas about morality. These contradictions have left them disoriented, confused, uncertain, without guidance and more tragically, deprived of riches they don’t know even exist. And so a generation has been raised untutored in what was once called aptly ‘’practical wisdom,’’ which had guided previous generations.

In this respect, David Punabantu wrote: ‘’In other words, children were being born in towns without any knowledge or concept of village life. These children produced other children ______ compound kids and their concept of development at that time was to follow the white man into shops. Thus it is not surprising that Dr. Kaunda entered a chemist with a group of school children who were learning ‘shopping values.’……these compound kids then, became compound adults and ended up, as street vendors, while others became street adults and kids as seen today.’’ (The Post [supplement] 24^th November 2004)

The Moral Landscape

Aristotle stated that though specific rules, laws and customs differed from place to place, what does not differ is that in all places human beings, by their nature, have a proclivity to make rules, laws and customs. He concluded that all human beings, by some kind of biological endowment, so ineradicably concerned with morality that they create a structure of laws and rules wherever they are. Aristotle concluded that: ’’That human life can be free of moral concerns is a fantasy.’’

Puberty is a stage in a person’s life when they develop from a child into an adult because of changes in their body that make them able to have children. However, in a woman that stage which is known as ‘’virginity’’ is critical and my research especially among the traditionalists and was also confirmed by a Congolese social scientist, it is a deciding factor in a woman’s life. Whatever sex relations may have been allowed during adolescence, the intercourse that takes place after puberty is regarded in a different light. It is said that the way a young girl loses her virginity determines the course of her moral life since virginity is where womanhood hinges. And if she loses her virginity at a disco means she will never be intact again, unless she works very hard at changing her life-style.

One of the greatest strategic functions of every tribe is to prepare girls for womanhood and marriage. In general, all indigenous learning and training in this respect do not greatly differ from each other among the tribes of Zambia. In traditional culture, puberty is a time when a girl enters her first menstrual cycle and she is taken in confinement for a specific period to be taught on cultural aspects of a woman’s life. The main aim is character building with emphasis on the cultivation of a high degree of discipline in the girl. The majority of girls who have undergone this form of training have turned out to be good wives and mothers. Boys as well attend confinement procedures in some Zambian tribes.

Sex drive is very strong in teenagers and sex is something very difficult to be reasonable about. And even the apostle Paul had to warn Timothy, ‘’……. avoid the passions of youth and strive for righteousness (purity)’’ (2 Timothy 2: 22). Every problem has a lost key. In this respect, Reverend James Earl Massey wrote: ‘’There is something to be said for human groupings. There are strengths in common tradition and a common culture, which make a people one culture. Each group has ‘intelligible actions’ which grow out of its own tradition and those meanings have an inner significance from which strength for life can be derived. Each human grouping has had distinctives not available elsewhere in just the same way. All human groupings have distinctives that they should preserve, distinctives which give meaning to the group as its members review their ‘story’ in the drama of life.’’ (Concerning Christian Unity p. 55). (Emphasis mine).

Our ancestors were very much aware of it and hence they made sure that a boy and a girl should never be at close contact with each other and especially in isolation and hence the saying, ‘’Cikwi tapalamana na mulilo’’ i.e., ‘’Don’t put a petrol-soaked cloth near the flames of fire.’’ And to the contrary, in this liberated sexual scenario, we see teenagers publicly kissing each other and they even go out to dances, cinema shows and other entertainments and bring back the girl later in the night and that is now accepted by the girls’ ‘’modern, educated and civilized’’ parents, since this is within the context of Children’s Rights in accordance with the Human Rights Charter. However, there is the problem of peer pressure within the liberated sex scenario because if a boy takes a girl out for three or four nights without any attempt whatsoever to have ‘’ a go,’’ since other ‘’couples’’ are doing it, then the girl might begin to think her partner ‘’is not man enough,’’ and could eventually if it continues be declared impotent.

To Be continued

By Edward Lange

First Quantum Minerals and the Zambian government have been involved in multiple discussions, ranging from the use of dividends by First Quantum Mine (FQM) without prior consent from the state company Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Investment Holdings (ZCCM-IH) with which it is in a joint venture, and threats to cut labour due to changes in the tax regime, to First Quantum bidding to buy ZCCM/IH’s 20% share in Kansanshi mine.

While these discussions are taking place, the impact of First Quantum activities on mining communities presents another front for engagement between the state and the company. A report published by the Southern Africa Resource Watch entitled Living in a Parallel Universe: First Quantum versus the mining communities in Zambia has exposed the inadequacy of First Quantum’s social and environmental interventions.

Contrary to First Quantum claims that it is a responsible company, the report finds that Kansanshi mine’s activities have negatively affected water and land, impacting on agriculture and food security.

This report, which focuses on one of First Quantum’s operations (the Kansanshi mine), reveals a stark contrast between the wealth that First Quantum extracts for export and the poverty levels in the surrounding communities.

Kansanshi Copper and Gold Mine is currently owned by ZCMM/IH and First Quantum, with 20% and 80% of shares respectively. It produces 400,000 tons of copper and more than 120,000 ounces of gold per year. With this production, it is the country’s largest taxpayer. Between 2005 and 2015, the mine contributed more than $3-billion in tax to the Zambian state. That’s where the good story ends.

The SARW report has found that Kansanshi activities are polluting water and land, undermining food security. Mining communities adjacent to the mine are convinced that the hand-pump wells or boreholes donated by First Quantum access heavily contaminated water as a result of the proximity of tailing dams that the company has been extending without prior consultation with the community. People are convinced that underground water, which they rely on for drinking and washing, is polluted.

Members of the community believe that the polluted water could be the source of persistent diarrhoea in the area. One of the main concerns for these affected people, who are incapable of fighting against this powerful company, is the non-availability of alternative land for them. The proximity of the tailing dams has also affected the quality of the air in the villages. There are concerns that the increase in lung diseases could be due to dust from the tailing dams.

First Quantum has failed to consider the environmental effects of its tailings dam expansion on water pollution and the destruction of community farms. Despite its financial and technical capabilities, First Quantum has failed to conclusively demonstrate that its activities are not polluting.

The problem is not just the company. The SARW report has also found that the government is abdicating its responsibility of control and sanctioning bad behaviour by mining companies. Communities have raised the issue of water pollution with the government and with the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA), but the situation has remained unresolved for years. According to people in the community, the local authority and the Department of Water Affairs take samples year after year but have never shared the results with the people directly affected. First Quantum might be the biggest tax contributor to Zambian government revenue, but the environmental and social burden of mining reduces the benefits of this when associated costs are considered.

The people living around Kansanshi mine accuse the company of failing to provide adequate social amenities. According to the company, these communities have received support in different sectors – health, education, entrepreneurship, and housing for displaced people, agricultural support, and water provision – as part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme.

Kansanshi mine prides itself on its social investment model and the positive impact it has on communities. However, the SARW report found that there is a disparity between what is in the company sustainability report and what is found on the ground. First Quantum does provide services to communities, but the report questions the quality of these services. Clearly, the company is doing a number of things in communities, such as building schools and clinics, sinking boreholes, agriculture, and recreational initiatives. The SARW research team was shocked by the poor quality, the inadequate scale, and the flawed philosophy behind these initiatives. These investments are visibly not intended to transform the lives of people, but rather to maintain and perpetuate poverty and underdevelopment.

It is clear from each community we visited that people have hardly benefited from these projects. You need to search hard in each community to find Kansanshi’s investment. All the villages have kept their original character – no running water, no electricity, no tarred roads, and no decent houses. No modernisation. According to the report, if one has not visited Kansanshi’s social projects, and only reads the company’s sustainability reports, one will have the image of a company beyond reproach. This is not true. Behind the shiny sustainability reports with fancy images of happy local children, First Quantum’s rhetoric of poverty alleviation, of community empowerment, is simply not there.

People in the communities that SARW visited feel cursed and abandoned.
In one of the communities (Kabwela), First Quantum built a three-classroom school to accommodate approximately 1,300 children from grades one to seven, and two houses for seven teachers. At this school, First Quantum forgot to build toilets. The community took it upon itself to build the toilets. Despite numerous requests by the community to expand the school facilities, the company has refused. The community has embarked on its own initiative to mobilise local resources to make 25,000 mud bricks to construct another block of three classrooms and housing units for the teachers.

The approach to the provision of healthcare is similar to that of education. Kansanshi uses a colonial system of health provision to the surrounding communities – just the basics. We visited one health centre built by the company in Kabwela community. The building is of very poor quality and badly maintained. The toilet for the clinic is 20m away. Grass has grown in and around the toilet, a sign that it is not in use. The clinic has no toilet facilities, no running water, and looks like an abandoned place. The nature of this health facility contradicts Kansanshi’s claim in its sustainability report that “For any mining company, workplace health and community well-being are inextricably linked”.

The problems found in the community reflect a wrong approach to community engagement. The SARW report found that First Quantum does not engage in genuine negotiation with communities. What Kansanshi fails to understand is that the quality and acceptability of its decisions depends on their inclusivity. Simply consulting traditional leaders and national government is not sufficient.

The impression of consultation that the company brandishes in its sustainability reports and social policy is simply is an image-building strategy and a window-dressing initiative, aimed at diverting the attention of the company’s stakeholders. The company does this to the detriment of communities’ interests.

The report has conclusively found that the efforts that the company is making towards CSR are not transformative – they do not change the lives of the people but maintain people in poverty. Instead of growing hope, Kansanshi mine’s CSR is undermining the hope of poor communities.

Kansanshi mine does not attach significant importance to the economic and social transformation of mining communities, and most of the company’s CSR activities reflect a total lack of seriousness in conceptualisation, design, financing, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

Edward Lange is Zambia co-ordinator of the Southern Africa Resource Watch.