Mourinho the master tactician

It almost looked like an impossible task when Chelsea lost the Champions league first leg match in Paris against Paris St Germain (PSG). The team had gone down 3-1 and this was not an easy score line to overturn. I was also harbouring some doubts at the same time believing in Jose Mourinho to provide a silver lining for the Chelsea funs and that came in the form of a victory against Europe’s emerging powers - PSG.

PSG who are backed by Qatari investors have invested heavily in players such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic who was missing due to injury, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Edinson Cavani, Thiago Silva, Thiago Motta, Lucas Moura, Javier Pastore and others. On script this is a great team capable of causing problems to any team on earth. But Chelsea coach kept his belief in the likes of young Oscar, Eden Hazard, Willian and the experience of John Terry, Frank Lampard, Petre Chech and Branislav Ivanovic who did not disappoint on an important night at Stamford Bridge. They went on to beat their visitors 2-0 for the game to end 3-3 on aggregate. The Blues qualified on an away goal rule.

The winning goal came through Demba Ba, the man who has not been used regularly this season. His 87^th minute scrambled goal made a difference after Chelsea had taken an early lead through Andre Schurrle in the first half. The Senegalese big man who bundled in the ball from a Caesar Azpilicueta cross said afterwards, “I saw the ball and it was in the goal. I just do what I have to do when I get chances this season but tonight I took.” The Portuguese’s run along the touchline evoked memories of his famous Old Trafford celebration when his Porto side defeated Manchester United in 2004 although this time he was also keen to whisper in his players’ ears not to take risk.

   

It was not so much about the players’ profiles but the managers on the touchline. In Mourinho Chelsea has a coach who has won two champions league trophies with Porto in 2004 and Inter Milan in 2010. He has also never lost a quarter final match in this competition. It is this experience that the Portuguese was bringing to this clash against his opposite Laurent Blank. The former Manchester United player has experience of playing in the English league but no experience of coaching a team at that level. Mourinho had told his players to “go out and play with smiles on their faces” as they had nothing to lose after last week’s defeat and indeed his players did just that. 

It is the seventh time in 11 champions league campaigns that Chelsea have reached the semi finals and Mourinho is on course to become the first manager to win the European cup with three different clubs. The Chelsea coach repaid the belief that the Stamford Bridge followers have in him when they kept singing his return even when the team was winning the Europa league last year. Someone even wrote “it is in moments like these that Chelsea brought back Mourinho” refering to the Portuguese’s ability to prepare his players to overturn the 3-1 loss suffered in Paris.

Everyone can be a coach but what separates good from bad coaches is the character. Mourinho’s personality is one of wining, winning and winning. It is this mentality that has seen him not lose at Stamford Bridge and in 9 UEFA Champions League quarter finals. He is such a great tactician who is never afraid to make important but sometimes risky decisions. One example was in last night’s game where by the end of 90 minutes he had three strikers on the field and it paid off.

Congratulations Chelsea!!!     

Lamentations from a journalist

Sometimes securing an audience with a government official can prove more difficult than getting an assurance from God that you will live another day. One excuse is how busy they are; they will often claim they can only meet you “next week.” This is unhelpful when the story is urgent.

When they’re in opposition, they are buddies, pals, and friends – whatever term you may call them. But give them a chance to run your affairs and try to give them a call, they simply will never pick up your calls. When you’re lucky, which is not normally the case, they will give you all sorts of excuses – bring a letter on a headed paper or the Permanent Secretary is busy, so many excuses. Of course a few will respond or make an effort to call back when they find a missed call, the majority would not bother. They will only call you when they have a statement to issue and no questions asked. What they forget is that in trying to answer what they think are questions from the people their answers end up creating more questions. 

I am talking about our politicians and civil servants. The people we have trusted to run the affairs of the country on our behalf. It is important to note that those are not your personal to holder positions, they’re not your farms or your homes – they’re public offices and anyone should walk in at any time to check what you’re doing on our behalf. Of course not anyone because there will be uncontrolled traffic to those offices. The people of Zambia and anywhere in the world have their mates in the name of journalists to perform this function on their behalf. The journalists would in turn pass on this information to the public in order for them to know what is happening. 

Contrary to the above assertion, our politicians who are supposed to be our servants have turned masters and are dictating what should be asked or told to the people. They have invented excuses whenever you visit them. It is either you meet a tired secretary who shows no concern or at least care enough to schedule appointments with her boss or you will be told to put it in written and drop a hard copy. The questions that I have no answers to are:- Where do you keep the piles and piles of paper that you receive everyday in your offices? When are you going to at least embrace new technology and begin to demand for soft scanned and signed letters? Why is our public service so stack in the past? What I have learnt through my experiences is that you do not even respond to those letters. 

There is a bit of light coming from above though. I was encouraged when in one of my interactions with the Secretary to the Cabinet, Dr. Roland Msiska to note that he is forward thinking man who wants this government to be transformed into an e-powered one. In his words he said: “A smart government is a government which can clearly use ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and the people in such an efficient manner that most of the documents should be on the internet. For example, you should by the time you’re coming if we had our portal running which is now being tested – our government portal. You should have gotten a lot of documents and things we are talking about already so that by the time you are coming you should have just been asking me to explain things that you were not clear about in the documents. We are heading there as well. We are talking about an e-government system that will look at government to government communication, government to business communications."

Clearly this is what this country needs because that is a quick and easy direction every serious nation is taking. But is it possible under the current system of governance and type of leaders occupying those offices? This is a conundrum Dr. Msiska and his colleagues at cabinet office have to deal with. Facebook pages, twitter accounts, are they not good platforms to communicate and connect with the masses, you may ask. Yes, they’re but they don’t give an opportunity to ask questions and get right answers. They are after all not owned and managed by leaders except for a few exceptions. They are managed by young and energetic henchmen surrounding these leaders. I doubt if the leaders even know what is posted on these so called their facebook pages because they don’t own them.

Zambia is in urgent need of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, which would in a way, hopefully, open up this government and other private institutions to proper media scrutiny.  It will be a bit difficult even with the FOI in place but it is a move in the right direction. Many serious democracies have done so and results of having one can also enhance the fight against corruption.       

Provide leadership

Many questions continue to be raised about the PF government’s handling of various national issues – from the constitution, the NGO Act, commodity price increases to the depreciating kwacha. Certain people are beginning to think power has gotten in the ears of these leaders that they’re no longer focusing on their work. Perhaps, the revotionary former president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara was right when he once said that power was like a bottle of whisky; you have a sip, enjoy the taste, take another and before you know it the bottle is finished and you’re drunk.

It looks – to many in the opposition and civil society at least, that the PF have been enjoying the taste (of whisky). What is the fussy they’re creating around the constitution and NGO Act? They have been shifting goal posts, contrary to what they had promised in their manifesto. In fact, they have been given more time because their promise was to do all the important things within 90 days, which in simple terms is 3 months. It seems the PF where not quite ready for this task.  What they forgot is that this country has so much that needs to be done – everywhere you look, there is work that needs to be done. Our children need better schools that teach the right curriculum and right subjects, our hospitals need medical personnel and medicine, the jobless youth need something to do, widows and orphans require government’s support and the list goes on.  

The unnecessary tension that they are creating as a result of the jaded approach to the constitution-making process is making citizens sick and tired of their leaders. What has followed is this unending bickering among leaders. Huge sums of money have been wasted on the constitution making process which has been a project that started some years back. Who will show leadership on this one single national project? Many people thought the PF would do the right thing, alas, they were wrong. It seems we are back to our usual ways of bickering, backbiting and slandering one another – things that are so common in a country which prides itself to be a Christian. Wait a minute! What is Christian about this country where people who still and amass wealth dubiously are praised, go scot-free and are praised by those in the corridors of power? 

Let those who have the power use it well to deal with the challenges facing the nation than create unnecessary debates. The mandate given to you by the people of this country doesn’t warrant you to take a callous approach to issues affecting this country. You must be sober and explain your actions to the people who voted you into office. Remember, yours is to govern for five years and once that is over you will be exposed to the ballot box to seek another mandate. It will be sad if you allow your departure to be received with jeers as opposed to cheers that greeted your coming into office. 

Political Betrayal

I have just seen a message on Fr. Patrick Chibuye’s facebook page, expressing his regret for what he termed “being cheated by politicians”. I guess he is not the only one seeing things this way. Many of the people I have been interacting with are expressing similar sentiments and feel their own men and women have betrayed them. In fact, it is more like the Judas Iscariot biblical tale of your own man deciding to join the enemy’s camp.

He says, “I have realised that partisan politicians are the same in terms of dealing with people. They begin by first making sure that "baongola amano ya bantu", then dump them and pretend all is well with them and the people. Zambians have been involved in the constitution making processes, not once and not twice.” Fr. Chibuye is working from Mpika Diocese, some good 700 to 800 kilometres away from Lusaka and if his expressions are anything to be taken seriously, then there is a problem in this country.  Maybe our driving force was to see change at all cost and because of that, we were all blinded not to think of any consequences of our actions. African and indeed Zambian politics is littered with all sorts of examples about political betrayal and one does not need a chess grandmaster’s view of things to see it this way. Ask yourself where all those people who supported PF are today – Fr. Bwalya, George Mpombo, Mike Mulongoti and others. They have all fallen on the wayside.

Perhaps, we did not pay particular attention to US president, Ronald Reagan when he said in his 1981 inaugural speech, that "government is not a solution to our problem. Government is a problem". This is exactly what we are seeing with the PF government who have all of a sudden become a problem to the NGOs, to the constitution making problem, to the media reforms and many other issues. The underlying denomination is that they’re all politicians after all and to make matters worse they are the same old politicians who have led us to where we are today. The challenge that we have is how to solve this PF conundrum??? I do not have the answers but we can find the solution if we’re guided by people like Albert Einstein, a German-born theoretical physicist and violinist who is reminding us of one thing – “we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”.  

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.