Music of Hypocrisy

Pupils in a community school at Linda Compund

There is so much talk about youth empowerment and what youths can do once they leave school. The emphasis is so much on youth entrepreneurship as a way to go in the absence of white collar employment opportunities. While I am not against this approach to dealing with some of the challenges facing young people, I have a few observations to make.

This call is “music of hypocrisy” to borrow from Pope Francis’ words in today’s homily. This murmuring often coming from political leaders and international organizations is not a voice of reason. Why are you pushing young people to grasp business opportunities when you are running away from your own business empires to join government? You have failed to sustain and grow your businesses despite all the expertise that you have acquired through your long service, yet you want young people some of whom have dropped out of school to go straight into businesses. How is this possible when they don’t have even the most basic knowledge of running businesses or simple accounting? More so they don’t have capital for start up or collateral to present to banks when they want to borrow money. You have all these yourselves, why can’t you show by example?

What do young people need to succeed in employment or businesses? They need to be provided with an education that will give them skills to make better choices and improve their lives and those of their children. The current education system is a divisive tool that allows sons and daughters of the poor to remain in abject poverty. In order to get the best education in this country you need to have the money and connections. Unfortunately, a poor man does not possess both. A well structured education system that offers skills as opposed to theories opens more opportunities for young people to be self-employed and acquire employable skills.

You have the power to put in place a better education system that will make every child of this land enjoy the fruits of life to the full. Once you have improved the system your children will also be compelled to go to the same local schools in retain you will also serve the millions you spend on your children’s education abroad. As I conclude, I will leave you with my own observation for which you have every right to agree or disagree with me. 

The biggest illness that is afflicting this country is the lack of empathy. If only you could spend time to think and ask yourself this question. What about if that son or daughter who goes to a community school and sits on the log while learning was mine, how was I going to feel? These are questions we must always ask ourselves. 

Leaders of the 21st Century

Visiting Hon. Miles Sampa's facebook page, one is encouraged to think that perhaps it is time young and energetic people take over the affairs of our nation. The other day he updated his people that he was away from the country.

Now Hon. Sampa has just updated his facebook with various projects being implemented in his constituency using the Constituency Development Fund (CDF). This is the way to go for all our leaders. This idea of requesting for hard copies of letters is not doing us any good. It is just contributing to deforestation and is a way of running away from your duty of explaining your actions to the public.

We are living in an era when  our leaders cannot afford to live in fenced offices. They have to explain what they are doing to the general public. One way they can explain their intentions to the public is to use any of the social platforms available.

I have just finished reading a blog by His excellency Kenny Hacket, the US Ambassador to the Holy See after presenting his credentials to the Holy Father, Pope Francis at the Vatican. He has blogged about his initial days as an ambassador and explain what his embassy does in its engagement with the Holy See.

The good thing about these new approaches to life and duty is that you don't hold people to ransom for them to know what you are up to. If it was your private company, now one would bother to ask you or force you to explain certain things. As a representative of the people and someone who draws his salary from tax payers money, it is only right that you make yourself available through some form of social interaction.

What Hon. Sampa and other MPs who are on facebook, twitter or linked In are doing is something that should be emulated by leaders of the 21st century. If even churches are now finding simpler and quicker ways of getting the gospel to their people who are you to continue living in stone age era?

If you can't do it please work with some technologically savvy youths to help you navigate through the internet. By so doing you will creating employment for some of these young men who have nothing to do in society.     

Can Zambia spring a suprise against Brazil?

Even though I am a Zambian, I will admit that today’s game against Brazil is one that will leave the nation disappointed. I fail to figure out how the current Zambian team can stop the Samba Boys as the Brazilians are called from recording a convincing win. Which player in our current team can stop the free-flowing Brazilian side featuring the likes of Oscar, Ramires, Neimar and Dani Alves to mention but a few?

The Brazilians who by virtual of hosting next year’s World Cup have already qualified for the Worlds’ greatest football showpiece would look to easy past Zambia. From the time Luiz Felipe Scolari was appointed coach, he has been busy playing friendly matches just to imbibe the right kind of quality to progress in the tournament. They are a team that is on resurgence with some bright young talents that routed the World and European champions - Spain in the final of the Confederation Cup. The Spaniards were silenced 3-0 in a game that many pundits thought would be an evenly contested encounter. 

Zambia are not expected to provide much of a problem to a team that already recorded a 2-0 win over a much stronger South Korean side on Saturday. Scolari admitted he is running out of time to experiment with the Brazil squad and wants every player, who is given an opportunity, to exploit it to the fullest. He already hinted that he is going to make five changes to his side that beat the Koreans. 

The Chipolopolo Boys have plenty of problems of their own with three players -- namely Stopilla Sunzu, Rainford Kalaba and Nathan Sinkala - facing immigration exit problems after reportedly leaving the country without following the proper procedure. The trio who were expected to join the squad to face Brazil in an international friendly in Beijing, China, are believed to have crossed into Congo on an unknown date but between Saturday October 12 and Sunday October 13, 2013. 

That aside, Zambia is one country that can spring surprises especially, when you don’t place so much hope on them. And being a Zambian I would very much love to witness one against a side that we have never met at senior level. But the list of problems with our players is too long to expect such a thing to happen. Collins Mbesuma, Davies Nkausu and Mukuka Mulenga will all sit out today’s game because of inuries and Jacob Mulenga and Chisamba Lungu have just recovered from their injuries while, Mayuka lacks match fitness.

Let me now end here and wait to see the outcome. Otherwise I wish everyone a pleasant game. 

Which way for Zambia national team?

The Zambia national soccer team’s 2-1 loss to Ghana in the 2014 World Cup qualifier match is one of the most painful moments, especially for those who had placed so much hope in the team to progress. Having won the 2012 edition of the Africa Cup the team's reputation had skyrocketed making fans ignore the reality on the ground. Signs were all over the wall about our team’s ability or inability to compete at the highest level.
 

This is the team that had just won the Africa Cup last year but failed terribly to defend the trophy early this year in a tournament played in South Africa. They drew all their three matches and three points wasn’t enough for them to qualify to the second round leaving Nigeria and Ethiopia making it to the quarter finals from our group. The truth of the matter is that the Chipolopolo Boys have not been scoring goals and yet we decided to ignore this fact. That has been a major problem. It is goals that win matches and not entertaining fans in as much as it is important to make fans happy. 

The task in Ghana became more daunting because of the team’s failure to win matches that they would have won. Here I am talking about the one all draw against Lesotho away and the same score line with Sudan at home. The team had also lost to Sudan in their opening match 2-0 only for FIFA to award them three points and three goals after their opponents had fielded an ineligible player. Saifi Ali should not have played after accumulating two yellow cards in previous matches.

That aside, what happened in Kumasi follows a similar pattern of past results when the team came so close to qualifying for the World Cup. We read about the 1973 team that was drawn against Morocco and Zaire for the single place in the 1974 edition of the world’s greatest football showpiece. Zaire qualified for the World Cup in Germany at the expense of the Atlas Lions and the KK 11 as the Zambian team was known then. What about the 1989 qualifiers after the team’s excellent outing in the 1988 Seoul Olympics? Everybody thought this was the strongest side to go past Morocco, Tunisia and Zaire and home wins over the three opponents put the team in a strong position only to lose 1-0 to both Tunisia and Zaire away and dashing all hopes. Fresh in the memories of many fans and soccer pundits is the drama of 1993, when after the Gabon air crash, the team was only a few minutes away from US 1994 World Cup but Morocco scored the only goal of the match to deny us a place.  

       

What we do between now and 2018 may determine whether the Zambia national soccer team will make it to the next World Cup or not. There has been so much money being splashed around in the name of supporting the team, hiring buses, planes and getting supporters to the football venues. This kind of expenditure can’t bring glory to Zambia. This money if it is directed to developing talent and organize our league can help our team become competitive in Africa and the world as a whole. At the moment there is no proper progression from young age to the senior level. When was the last time that Zambia qualified to either the Africa under 17 or 20 age group tournaments? For the under 20, it was in 2007 and it is where we had the likes of Emmanuel Mayuka, Rodger Kola and Fwayo Tembo coming through to even play in the national team and secure contracts abroad. That is the way to go and that is good investment that can bring results. If we start now recruiting players who are 13 or 15 years old, they will be 22 years by 2018. It is a painful but worthwhile route to take if you want to reap the rewards in future. 

At the moment there are no proper structures at local football teams and even at national level. Our focus is and has been so much on immediate results. Another route that we may need to consider is to lure those players in the diaspora, like the three children of Charles Musonda who are playing at Chelsea in England and others elsewhere as long as long as they have the Zambian roots. This is what strong teams like Ivory Coast and Senegal have done. They made sure that they brought back all their players who were playing in France and other teams in Europe to strengthen their teams. Cape Verde and Gabon are the latest teams to have searched around for their talents in Europe and bring them home. These boys abroad are exposed to good training facilities at the young age and train with experienced coaches who are helping them to be good and competitive players.   

 

A do or die match for Zambia

The permutations for the Ghana Vs Zambia game are very simple. Ghana needs a draw to qualify to the last round of the Brazil 2014 qualifier while Zambia requires maximum points to progress. That said the stage is set for Kumasi, some 500 kilometres away from the capital Accra and the reasons for taking this match there is because Ghana has been winning whenever they play there. In fact, the place itself has been dubbed the capital of football.

The Black Stars as the Ghanaian national soccer team is known have called all the key players for this match including those who had retired. Here I am talking about Chelsea’s Michael Essien whose last game for his country was in September 2011, Kevin Prince Boateng, the player who surprised many by moving away from Italy’s AC Milan to join Schalke in Germany and Andre Ayew, a player who stars for the French league one side Olympique Masseille. The Ghana team also boasts of young and exciting players in the likes of Christian Atsu who has just signed a five contract with Chelsea from FC Porto in Portugal and Assamoah Gyan who on a good day can be a thorn in the defence of any team. The inclusion of the three key players mentioned above underlines the seriousness with which the Black Stars are taking this match against the Chipolopolo Boys of Zambia. The danger though is that these players might cause some disturbances in the Ghana setup. This might also cause acrimony in the team especially if the regular players find themselves on bench. You look at yourself I have been with the team through thin and thick and then someone who was not there comes to take my place. This is the feeling going through some players.

Zambia goes into this encounter as underdogs when you compare the kind of talent on display for the Ghanaian team. This match itself is the main focus of the weekend’s qualifiers. The reasons for this are very simple. The two teams have an exciting set of players who play similar type of entertaining football. It is a match that everyone is talking about. The Ghanaians have every reason to respect the Zambian team that has beaten them in two key recent matches. The Chipolopolo Boys knocked out the Black Stars from the semi finals of the 2012 Africa Cup when the former beat the later 1-0. In the more recent encounter played at Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in Ndola, Zambia defeated Ghana by 1-0. When you look at these recent results, the Ghanaians have every reason to fear Zambia.

That aside, the match in Kumasi is likely to remain in the memory of many fans because Zambia is capable of upsetting the tables and make it to the last round of the World Cup qualifier. I did talk about some of the Ghana players but I didn’t mention any of the Zambian players. Let me do so. Zambia is going to be missing two key strikers, Collins Mbesuma of Orlando Pirates and FC Utrecht’s Jacob Mulenga, both are nursing injuries. This then means that the task of getting the much needed goals falls on the shoulders of Emmanuel Mayuka who moved on loan to a French team, new call up Rodger Kola and Fwayo Tembo. The midfield genius Rainford Kalaba of TP Mazembe who is slowly getting back to his old good form, Chisamba Lungu and Mukuka Mulenga can cause serious problems to the Ghana team. There is room also for skipper Christopher Katongo in the midfield to add the much needed stability in the team. The defence led by Stoppila Sunzu and Hichani Himonde is good enough to stop any threat from the Ghana strike force and Kennedy Mweene provides some experience needed for this match.

I did not want to waste much time talking about the intimidation that has preceded this encounter because I know football is played on the pitch and not in the board rooms. I wish to state though that there was no need for the team to come back for the prayers which they even missed. They could have connected to Ghana directly from South Africa where they were camping. The other confusion about the chartered plane being denied permission to land in Accra is just a symptom of the last minute arrangements on the part of the organisers. This could have been sorted out a very long time ago rather than on the day of departure. Let us not blame Ghana for this. What we should know is that emotions are normally very high for such encounters and tend to spill over.

Finally, I would say let the best team win but being a Zambian I would be much happier if we can beat Ghana at their own backyard. As you know football is a game which can sometimes produce shock results. Let us forget about all that has happened before this match and think about the game. I hope you will all enjoy the game. 

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