Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen

Passionate about Development and Women's Rights. PhD @ Uni of Leeds in International Development #ProgressiveFeminist #pursuerofloveandlight

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

I am truly honoured and grateful to announce that I am officially an alumni of the Harvard Kennedy School of leadership for the 21st century and officially representing my country as a Distinguished Humphrey fellow. Harvard was always a far fetched dream and this is so humbling

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

@_masho @SEELeeds @SRILeeds Thank you❤️

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

It’s been a while but have been working in the background and enjoying my interactions in teaching and researching sustainability in CSR and business at @SEELeeds in @SRILeeds yesterday @CRRC2024 I presented a paper on exploring Decolonisation in the teaching of CSR and business

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

@Lacksonmudenda @SEELeeds @SRILeeds 🙏

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

This was expected from the abrupt declaration from fee to free education. Not much had been planned nor reimagined. Perhaps we need to rethink the subject load, teach literacy and computational skills but advance to sciences or more hands on skills for less advanced students

[BBC News Africa @BBCAfrica]

How do you teach a class with more than 100 children?

Zambia made primary and secondary education free in 2021, but teachers, like Cleopatra, are struggling to cope.

It's not only increased her class size, but pushed the school “to reduce the number of subjects” being taught

[CASCADE @CASCADE_UKHEI]

That concludes the first day of the #CASCADE inception meeting!

Thank you to all who joined and shaped such engaging discussions.👏

We’ll be sharing more tomorrow but in the meantime you can follow us here (@CASCADE_UKHEI) or visit our website: https://t.co/QTkXiwScUO

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

It was a pleasant surprise to see Tambu Matenga now @Cambridge_Uni who I tutored some time back in my early years as a tutor at UNZA today @CASCADE_UKHEI where we had different discussions about research in conservation, practice, collaboration & practices in knowledge sharing

[Sishuwa Sishuwa @ssishuwa]

I feel sorry for Laura Miti

Laura Miti @LauraMiti has become an expert at attacking the thinker, not the thought. She hardly demonstrates weakness in what the person has said and instead focuses on the person making the argument. She does not offer an elaborate rational view of her positions. Name calling, being nasty and so on are not intellectual rhetorical devices for her; they are the substance of her utterances, almost always. Nothing better illustrates this than the very case of Fr Chewe Mukosa, the Copperbelt-based Catholic priest she is attacking in the attached post.

Fr Mukosa has expressed the opinion that politicians who fail to honour election campaign promises must be voted out. In an interview with @DiggersOfNews newspaper, the priest argued that “social responsibility demands that if one pledges to strengthen the Kwacha, reduce mealie meal price to K50 and end load-shedding, they must honour that.” He is also quoted as having argued that “leaders who cheat after they ascend to power are fake and need to be removed through the ballot.”

Instead of contributing to this discussion by showing why she disagrees or agrees with the views expressed by Mukosa, Laura focuses her response on the person who offered the opinion. To avoid misinterpreting what Laura said, it is worth quoting her remarks in full:

“Fr Mukosha (sic) reminds one of the UPND’s new friend, Fr Frank Bwalya.

"Spewing out poorly analysed but shrill rhetoric on serious issues. A consistently very performative engagement with issues that is probably aimed at garnering the very kind of attention that IG Musamba gave him. This man has been given wings.

"The Catholic Church really is a mother structure. Out of its womb, we have seen the best and the worst for Zambia. This one aweee.”

This is the totality of Laura’s post on the views expressed by the Catholic priest. It is worth noting that the subject of Mukosa's views is clear: the importance of trust in elected public officials and what should happen to politicians who fail to honour their election campaign promises. According to the priest, such politicians should be removed from power peacefully through the ballot because they would have betrayed public trust, which is at the heart of representative liberal democracy.

Instead of stating her views on this subject, Laura glosses over the issue and instead launches an astonishing attack on the Catholic priest himself, accusing Mukosa of spewing – meaning vomiting – shrill rhetoric (meaning loud and often unpleasant) and poor analysis. Notice how Laura does not provide the reader or public with her supposedly solid analysis on the same subject. She seems to have decided that her role is to pass judgement on the opinion of this Catholic priest. Without telling us how she reached her verdict, she concludes that what Mukosa said constitutes nothing more than shrill rhetoric and poor analysis. The reader is left to hunt for solid analysis elsewhere, one that would explain why it is so bad for anyone to suggest that politicians who fail to fix a pressing social and economic problem should be voted out. Imagine arguing the opposite: if these politicians fail, then they must be re-elected!

Laura then proceeds to launch two other attacks on the Catholic priest.

First, ignoring the fact that Fr Mukosa was clearly contacted by the newspaper for an interview, she accuses him of “very performative engagement with issues that is probably aimed at garnering the very kind of attention that IG Musamba gave him”. Here again, what Fr Mukosa said is secondary or relegated to the dustbin. What is elevated as substance or content that is suitable for discussion is the accusation that the Catholic priest is hungry for public attention. Laura blames the Inspector General of police Graphel Musamba whose organisation had earlier summoned this same priest for questioning after he preached about the cost-of-living crisis.

In his Easter homily, Fr Mukosa decried the crippling 8-hour daily power cuts, soaring food and transport costs, high levels of youth unemployment, and the political culture of lying and patronage that is common among Zambia's political elite. Police interpreted this sermon as a form of "hate speech" (according to the official explanation offered by the spokesperson) and formally summoned the man of God for questioning. The callout that the police issued to Fr Mukosha was later withdrawn following public backlash and reported fear by the authorities of potential social unrest in a volatile or politically explosive area such as the Copperbelt Province, generally regarded as the home of protest culture in Zambia.

It is worth noting that Mukosa has an established history of speaking out on social concerns. A google search of his name brings press coverage of his previous interviews, including with @DiggersOfNews under the Lungu administration, interviews in which he criticised the government for, among other things, failure to provide essential basic services. Even when Lungu’s administration was restricting the democratic rights of opposition parties (the right to public assembly, expression, movement, etc), this same Catholic priest, according to published evidence in different media outlets, welcomed then opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema into his services and even gave him the platform to address his congregants.

Yet according to the implication of Laura's post, Fr Mukosa was, until recently, a largely unknown person who was only catapulted into public limelight by the recent police summoning that gave him the “wings to fly”. Here, the suggestion is that it was a grave mistake for the police to have summoned this Catholic priest not because it interfered with his right to expression and preach whatever he considers appropriate for his flock, but because the State body has now turned him into a notable voice that commands public attention and which newspapers find worthy contacting as a news source. According to Laura, whatever the Catholic priest said should have been ignored by everyone including the police because Fr Mukosa is merely engaged in performances aimed at curing his obsession for attention. In my view, the idea that expressing social concerns and criticism over the cost-of-living crisis is "hate speech" should worry human rights advocates like Laura more than whether the person expressing such concerns is "attention seeking".

Second, Laura says the Catholic Church is like a mother’s womb, out of which comes children who grow up to have the best or worst attributes or character traits. Here, the reader is told that the Catholic Church accommodates everyone for priestly training. Some of the priests end up as the best, others the worst. Using the analogy of a mother’s womb, Laura then proceeds to attack Fr Mukosa as one of “the worst [priests to have come out of the Catholic Church] for Zambia.” Laura does not explain how she reached this conclusion; she does not give a rational explanation or defence of her attack on Mukosa: she has said it, “This one aweee”! That is enough.

What Laura is doing here is to employ a tried and tested trick of liberal demonisation and character assassination: start and repeat a nasty label about someone several times and it will stick, the way the word “dictator” is used in the West to describe African leaders who do not serve their interests. That is Laura: she does not defend “principles”; she deals with the victim of a violation of rights, for not toying her line. Laura has become an expert at the use of this nefarious trick: attack the person, not demonstrating weakness in what they have said!

Most ordinary people in Zambia are grumbling and collapsing at the weight of the burdens of life the Hichilema administration has hoisted on them. A human rights defender and commissioner on the country's Human Rights Commission like Laura should be best placed to appreciate the many ways this grumbling is expressed, not to attack those calling attention to the stress and pain the burdens are causing. But this is her classic character: ignore the issue and deal with the messenger. I do not think Laura is stupid; she knows what she is doing when she does this.

In presenting Fr Mukosa in the manner she has, Laura may be trying to discredit him as a credible fighter for social justice and a news source by putting him in the brackets of the “worst” Catholic priests in Zambia. The public is being persuaded to see him as someone they should not listen to because he is in the habit of spewing out poor analysis and shrill rhetoric on serious issues in search of attention. In the service of whoever stands to benefits from her efforts, she is demonising, dehumanising, and destroying a genuine critic of elected public leaders. Laura is also simultaneously intimidating any other Catholic priest who may wish to take this route of raising awareness in the electorate that “social responsibility demands that if one pledges to strengthen the Kwacha, reduce mealie meal price to K50 and end load-shedding, they must honour that”; and that “leaders who cheat after they ascend to power are fake and need to be removed through the ballot.”

Laura knows that political parties who are supposed to air such views publicly are being gagged by being denied the opportunity to hold public rallies and mass gatherings: these are the platforms where human beings enjoy to the fullest their right to ventilate on such matters. Rather than celebrate the rare priest who takes the risk of using the pulpit to do so, or who gives an interview to a newspaper on very important social concerns, she seeks to discredit and smother him to death.

There is nothing ‘intellectual’ or ‘democratic’ about this assault on a person who is exercising their right to free speech: the denunciation is aimed at smothering to death critics of lying elected officials and any protests about them, now and in the future. This kind of conduct is only expected from zealots who are intent on defending the indefensible, or political party combatants who have taken off their gloves and are wielding knives, in defence of their leader.

It is sad that Fr Mukosa is being delegitimised, “invisibilised” by a prominent public activist, a believable, relatively respectable, and famous female person who can pass a plausibly believable verdict on his public persona. Anything he says henceforth must be filtered through what Laura has said about him: he is among the worst of the Catholic priests who consistently sprout out “poor analysis” and “shrill rhetoric” to satiate their hunger for attention and desire to make their name publicly known. What is lost in these exchanges is the real issue that Fr Mukosa raised: the importance of trust in public office and the need to hold to account those who govern us.

I expect Laura as a Human Rights Commissioner and social justice activist herself to defend Fr Mukosa and protect his right to express himself freely, instead of falsely discrediting him and shredding his well-earned public reputation. I feel sorry for Laura Miti.

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

2 years later, the government has cancelled the mining license for Mwembeshi Resource Limited, begs the question why now! What has changed from the initial stance that allowed them 2 mine and what does this cancellation mean for other such projects & environmental sustainability

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

The contested trajectory of the need to achieve economic progress at the expense of environmental protection, is the consumer welfare and environmental considerations at the core of this growth trajectory? Have your say? what and how should the alternatives look like?

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

One thing is certain, you do not have to be the most passionate person in the room, just be present and strive to breath life into those you engage with

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

It has been a welcome challenge to resituate myself in the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

reminding myself of context and space of knowledge and awareness of those I engage with is critical to my positionality of wanting to maintain my global south identity

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

predicaments of how knowledge about development is taught and written between students and researchers in the South and those in the North, ultimately, nuances of development can be lost in leaning towards a single context, the context where you are based

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

As a Development advocate from the global south trying to navigate the nuances of Development between the South and North, I often find myself in very interesting

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

I consciously practice reflective decolonisation of teaching, stating that the knowledge I am highlighting is very contextual

[Chris Swart @BwanaChris]

Zambia finds itself in a paradoxical quandary. Its infrastructure, crucial for economic proliferation, bears the brunt of the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) Katanga mining imports and exports. The DRC, a colossus in global copper and cobalt markets, relies heavily on Zambian thoroughfares for transit. Despite these minerals fetching hundreds of billions on the global stage, the remuneration received by Zambia, chiefly through road levies, is starkly disproportionate.

An array of over 4000 lorries laden with precious minerals, fuel, and mining apparatus traverse Zambian roads daily. Yet, the revenue accrued from these activities barely scratches the surface of the costs required for infrastructure upkeep and development. Accelerated depreciation and heightened repair expenditures are grim realities for Zambia, with the roads and bridges crumbling under the relentless traffic.

This imbalance has plunged Zambia into a precarious fiscal predicament. The substantial costs subsidising Katanga's mining operations are contributing to an escalating national debt, a financial albatross around Zambia's neck. Investments in infrastructure, vital for economic expansion, become millstones when not recouped through commensurate levies or taxes, leading to fiscal instability.

This scenario necessitates an urgent re-evaluation of the bilateral accords and fiscal frameworks between Zambia and the DRC. Zambia must advocate for terms that adequately reflect the usage and attrition of its infrastructure. Introducing more equitable tax brackets or usage fees could alleviate the fiscal burden currently shouldered by Zambia. Moreover, regional collaboration and investment in robust, sustainable infrastructure might offer long-term resolutions, diminishing maintenance costs and boosting efficiency.

Presently, Zambia's benevolence in facilitating the DRC's lucrative mining sector is a double-edged sword. It provides critical support to its neighbour but at a considerable cost to itself. The challenge lies in striking a balance that fosters regional cooperation and economic development while safeguarding Zambia's fiscal and structural integrity. Failure to address this issue will not only exacerbate Zambia’s debt crisis but also stifle its economic potential.

[Sishuwa Sishuwa @ssishuwa]

@muyaa_mbango For context and to avoid the dangers of a single story, here was my response to Prof Mbenga, in case he does not take the liberty to share it.

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

@ssishuwa The context of this text is not far-fetched. We live with people whose life has always been premised on survival, while we seek surplus and more comforting spaces, others wake up to evolving poverty due to bad politics, the poor are taxed for perpetual poverty #nodignityinpoverty

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

@FrankChansa3 Thanks

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

@ the Fair Trade International Symposium at University of Leeds today moderating the session on Southern voices amongst many themes. In this theme, will be looking into how campaigners and academics can engage with schools on issues of fair trade and sustainability #FTIS2023

[Dr_Claudia Mvula Pollen @ClaudiaM_Pollen]

@BChipeleme Is that an actual question?