A country in autopilot?

It came as an interesting term when one day when my brother and I were talking about the political situation in Zambia and he ‘matter of factly’ stated that ‘at the moment the country is in autopilot, we have a leader who is only there in name and not in practice’. While I do not disagree with him my interest was mainly in the term ‘Autopilot’ because my immediate thought is that this kind of despcription is reserved for mechanical obejcts such as cars or aeroplanes.

According to the wikipedia ‘autopilot is a mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide a vehicle without assistance from a human being.’ If this meaning is to be translated in terms of a nation then it means that the country has been left to run it’s course with no direction from it’s leaders. That being the case, it is a wonder that elections are held at all.

Having visited my beloved country just under two months ago, I fully concur with this description. The state of social services in the country leaves a lot to be desired. Not that it was much better when i left but things had started to improve during the tutelage of Levy Mwanawasa and since his death, it has almost been a down-hill tumble of things moving rapidly from bad to worse. I have had the priviledge of living just down south in South Africa where social services may not be the best in the world but is worlds apart from those that our country can even boast of.

We took a road trip from Cape Town to Lusaka and on the N1 to Joburg, you get signs warning of portholes ahead. We drove for a distance, slowing down in anticipation of the portholes which never materialsed. It soon dawned that the portholes simply did not materialse because our definition of portholes and the South African one is also worlds apart. While we expected to find large holes defacing the smooth road, what we actually found were patches of slightly uneven road.

With this experience, we got to Zambia and found that: a) there were no signs to warn of portholes so you just ran into them and had to be very skilled to avoid bumping the car up and down in a similar manner a horse would jump over a pole; b) the portholes were so large and covered most of the road, the smooth tar of the road is practically non-existent. We also found, to our amazement, that the Livingstone – Lusaka road was still under construction. This was particularly amazing because the road has been under construction for the past 10 years.

A road washed away by the rains in Zambia

Still brimming with excitement at getting to Lusaka, we were not dampened by this revelation. We  got to Lusaka at night and the drive through was smooth and quick, having all main roads in the city tarred and in an acceptable state. However, this was shortlived. In the morning we decide to hit the road early to go and have a go at applying for the newly introduced passports (old ones are being phased out). A distance that would take five minutes drive took an hour. The road is congested and the government attributes this to the high volume of Japanese second hand cars that enter the country everyday, including public holidays. Somehow it does not seem to occur to them that the road network and not the cars is the problem. I found this amusing, I was still just happy to be home, congestion or otherwise.

We finally get to the passport office and it is like a market-place full of people vying for one commodity that is in serious short supply. Just to get to the counter that sells application forms was such a mission, I gave up after an hour. I hate bribery and while the thought came to mind, I dismissed it with the contempt it deserves.

Our next official stop was the Ministry of Lands to enquire on the status of our deed application having bought a property five years ago. With due credit the Ministry seemed to have improved, what with a customer service centre! I was impressed. Seems not all is bad, there is a silver lining afterall. But alas, I spoke too soon and got impressed to quickly. Our application has been at the same level that it was five years ago, only difference being that it was faster to locate the file than it had been then. Reason for the stagnant application – we needed to prove that the first owner of the property was indeed the seller. While this is an easy thing to do in the national press, the fact that they waited five years to tell us this put huge question marks in my head about the credibility and legitimacy of the Ministry and all it’s staff.

So when my brother and I were discussing politics and he mentioned the ‘Autopilot’ state of the country, I couldn’t agree less with him. It is sad that Rupiah Banda, the current president, is already showing signs of failing dismally compared to the former, Mwanawasa. but what is even more sadder is the people that will have to bear the brunt of not having a direction in making things better for them especially that the wishes of the majority during elections pointed to the opposition rather than the ruling party. But as is the trend in Zambian politics since Kaunda’s fall, the ruling party always wins even if they get 20% of the total vote cast!

I think that if the country was a huge machine, it would have fared very well without interferance from human beings the likes of our leaders who do not know how to operate it or even have the interest of doing so except for their own selfish motives. Unfortunately, we are a nation of people who have hopes and desires and want to see a better tommorrow for all and right now this is really bleak.