Dr Canisius BANDA

I glow...

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@ssishuwa @damweembs Marcus Aurelius advises us to keep our eyes on the ball, to do right always, and to be deaf to malicious gossip!

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@Schamaksincere @TilkaPaljkOly Sishuwa has publicly explained why he does what he does. See below, for an example.

https://t.co/76l9WGZIng

Anyone who reads his public works can explain why he does what he does. The truth is that Sishuwa has alway been an irritant to successive ruling party supporters.

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@AntonySguazzin @bpolitics Hichilema’s lack of political will to fight corruption is well known by Zambians. E.g.

https://t.co/xP4oytfz1j

What’s odd is your sole reliance on foreign “experts” to comment on Zambian affairs. Is it that Zambia, in 2025, has no sufficiently educated analysts worth quoting?

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@MjAjrcl @cleopas_sambo @Stell_History @ssishuwa @mininghistory Yes,silence is your choice. Just don’t stop people such as Sishuwa who have the required courage to discuss uncomfortable subjects - like the practice of tribalism in govt - from doing so. Note that Sishuwa has opposed tribalism in successive govts, regardless of who is in power.

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@elonmuskADO OPEN YOUR EYES

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@elonmuskADO A portrait of human being and digits below it.

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@elonmuskADO 18

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@ssishuwa @460142_entity ...a mind without equal. A public intellectual par excellence. A national asset!

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

Mind FOOD
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Professors and doctors of science, mathematics, art, music, sport, languages, literature, hygiene, social studies, etcetera, all survival skills, our very best teachers, ought be the ones to guide our children in kindergarten and primary schools.

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@Anne_MarieSx ....wellbeing isn't a matter of geography. It is a mindset thing. You leave, you will leave with all your troubles. Wherever you go, they will follow you. The peace you seek is within you. You possess the power to calm your storm . Face the challenge. Ubwikala apatalala mwine...

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

Mind FOOD
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Raising the cost of energy takes energy away from the people. And when people have less energy their lives are taken away. Raising the cost of energy impoverishes communities, it hurts the already poor the most.
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[Sishuwa Sishuwa @ssishuwa]

A Nightmare

By A Citizen with No Name

They were clad in decent clothes. They spoke very well, in tongues I could readily understand. They were the kind of people that inspired trust. And trust them I did.

They followed me. They came to my compound, a slum. Just like my fellow community members, I lived in a shack made of cardboard and worn metallic sheets.

I had a wife and four kids, the only evidence of my creativity. It was a single roomed shack partitioned in the middle by a filthy piece of well-worn cloth, not the kind of environment to raise kids under.

I had no electricity. I had no running water. Being unemployed, you wouldn’t want to know just how I was managing to fend for my family. It is a horror story, my shameful secret.

They followed me because I had value. They knew it was me with the power. They were looking for employment and knowing that their dream would not come true without me, they came to persuade me. They were very good at it, those people.

They told me that they would change my life. They said that they would put me and my family in good housing. They said that they would help me educate my kids and safeguard my health. They said that they would create millions of jobs and that one of them would be mine. I was enthused.

Then they talked about water. Just like I had known all my life, though I had none, they said that water was life. They said that it was unacceptable for me to live the way I was. I agreed with them.

When they looked at my kids, they noted that they were malnourished and stunted. This, they promised to change. It was the deplorable conditions under which I lived to blame, they said. Then they explained that it was the leaders of my community, the leaders that I had earlier put in place that had created these deplorable and inimical conditions.

It was then that they showed me pictures of just how the leaders to blame looked and lived. Whereas I was suffering from adult malnutrition, my leaders were bloated with fat. Then I saw their cars. One of their cars could have financed my life for decades, I surmised. When I saw their palatial houses, anger began to well up in me.

Then they said that what I had seen contrasted with my life was the very picture of corruption. They explained that it was this corruption that was the cause of my sorry existence. I nodded. Then they asked me if I wanted my life to change for the better. I vigorously nodded. Then they asked me if I was ready to get rid of this corruption which was robbing me of my life and that of my family. I told them I wanted to do it there and then. To me, that was urgent. Wait, time would soon come for your action, they assured me.

All you must do is mark here. They showed me a piece of paper with someone’s photo, a symbol I did not recognise and an empty box at its end. They said on a day coming soon, I should just mark where they had shown me, and corruption would be over. I felt good.

They said that with just that one decision of mine, my life would be transformed for the better. They said that my poverty would then become history.

Later, someone told me that the piece of paper that they had shown me was a ballot paper. This person said that what they were asking me to do was vote for them. They had come to ask me for my vote. Oh, that is easy, I thought to myself.

That is how they convinced me to vote out the allegedly corrupt leaders of the day and vote them into leadership instead.

On the appointed day, eager to have my life changed, I woke very early, and I cast my vote for them. That is how I put them in power.

Time passed. Then more time passed but things stayed the same. They even got worse in some cases. I lost one of my kids to diarrhoea.

Then one day, I suddenly opened a door that was ajar, slightly open. I do not know why I did that, I just did it. I must have heard some cries of pain coming from there. I now remember. That is what made me open that door. It was instinctive. Shrill cries of anguish were issuing from there.

When I walked into the room, I found them all there, their backs turned away from me, huddled over a table, fussing over something.

At the sound of my footfalls, they all turned their heads and faced me. We all froze.

What I saw then I had never seen before. It was a sight of utter horror. They had blood on their lips. They looked frenzied, as if possessed with demons. Their eyes were red, as if aflame with some sick passion. They did not look human.

At the table lay a child, his belly slit open, his bowels all over his body, fresh blood flowing from it. It was apparent to me there and then that I had stumbled upon a devilish feast, a feast I was not supposed to witness. One of them had the still throbbing dead boy’s heart in his hands, ready to sink his avaricious teeth into it.

Noting that I had found them out, they eventually looked sheepish. It dawned on them that I now knew who they really were. This paralysed them. They just stood there as if pillars of stone. Then something strange suddenly happened. Their robes fell off their bodies. What was revealed frightened me to my bones.

They were wolves. Then they began to howl. That is when I went for the door.

It was then that I woke up.

It was the rain falling through my shack’s roof that was dripping on my reed mat as I slept that I first noticed. My threadbare bedclothes were quickly becoming wet.

Then quickly, I woke up my wife and kids. We then got pots and placed them beneath the leaks in what was our shack’s roof. It was not yet dawn. We did not sleep that night.

As we huddled together for comfort that rainy night, it was then that I realised just how poor I really was. I cried. No one noticed that I was crying. They concluded that it was merely rainwater on my face. It hurt me so bad that I could live the way I was and yet others lived better, at that time soundly asleep.

Ba sakalanyongo. It was a record playing at some late night bar in the neighbourhood. That eerie sound wafted into me like a balm. I wondered just whether my wife and remaining kids were also able to hear it. It was both an incriminating and enlightening sound.

Nothing had changed. I was still the poor man I had been all my life. My life was actually falling apart.

Ever since that day, I have never slept again.

I am now awake.

(Note: This fictional story, on the illusion of change, was first published on 11 October 2012, a year after the transfer of power in Zambia.)

https://t.co/g1fLd6Miyk

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

Mind FOO
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When you find that something isn't working, it is because there is another way.

David ANKWA, Nigeria [Imventor of a genset that runs on water]

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

Mind FOOD
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I come not seeking your praise. I come only seeking fulfillment of my purpose.

Should I excel at my exertions, it is not because of you. It is only because that is my goal.

That my work pleases you is of no interest to me.
Only that I did my part.
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[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

Cherish the freedom and liberty of everyone
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If you ever find yourself in a position of power, remember this and check yourself, resist becoming despotic.

Marcus AURELIUS

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

Mind FOOD
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Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat [Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason].

This then is the sad tale of the UPND's shameful fall from grace. It ends badly.
______________

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@LauraMiti It boggles the mind just how the Jews missed the lesson from the holocaust [that oppression is costly, unsustainable and vengeance doesn't pay]; and the priceless lesson from their father David [that sometimes, to bring down a giant, all one needs is only a sling and a stone]

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@EmbZambia @ssishuwa @johanhallenborg Be careful, son! 😠 Hiildah's view is worthy!

[Dr Canisius BANDA @CanisiusDr]

@j_kapembwa @ssishuwa ....change of policy or a smokescreen, window-dressing?

And from national statistical records, Panic should NOT panic, for she is neither an Easterner nor a Northerner!

[Sishuwa Sishuwa @ssishuwa]

Outright opposition to one candidate rather than genuine support for the candidate voted for is becoming the norm across democracies in the world. Many of those who voted for Joe Biden in the last US election were motivated by the desire to stop Trump rather than their support for Biden or the Democratic Party.

This is also true for Zambia’s last election. I hope Hichilema understands that he was largely the conduit of the revulsion against the PF and former President Edgar Lungu and that his support is tenuous. The 1.8m voters who supported Lungu, despite the damage he and the PF inflicted on Zambia, are hardcore supporters who are unlikely to leave PF.

In contrast, many of those who voted for Hichilema are not his supporters but people who were disillusioned with the status quo. These are the ones who decisively swung the vote in his favour. Their support in future elections is not guaranteed; it is subject to good performance.

In my view, the heroes of the last election were Bemba speakers in Northern and Muchinga provinces, voters in the Eastern Province and those in Lusaka and the Copperbelt who rose above ethnic prejudices and rode on economic grievances to rally behind Hichilema. If Hichilema does not take the time to understand why these people voted for him, he risks losing their support.

The Lozis, Tongas and Northwesterners were not the heroes of the last election, for these groups have historically voted for him but their support was not enough. It was only after the Bembas, Easterners and urbanites came to the party that he finally crossed the line. It saddens me greatly that these groups are the ones suffering marginalisation today especially in the civil service. It does not help that Hichilema’s supporters, mainly from the Zambezi provinces, are so excited that they keep talking to each other rather than respectfully persuading those with contrary views to see their point. They have canonised Hichilema and bully and harass anyone who does not identify with the ruling leadership. This is counterproductive. When Zambians stop talking, those in leadership should get concerned.

I get a sense that having been elected with a popular mandate, Hichilema and his supporters think there is no credible opposition to unseat him. In my view, the biggest opposition that he faces is an alert and politically engaged citizenry, not an organised party. The latter will rise organically and should be the least of his concerns. What Hichilema must fear most is already in place: the voter. Discontent will not wait until there is an effective opposition party to harvest it!

Zambian voters may not always know what they want, but they almost always know what they don’t want!