Facebook isn’t making us lonely. It’s making us anxious. Get over it.

As a masterpiece and a cultural catastrophe at once, Facebook is distinctly American. It represents a social regime that’s scintillating and hideous. The values intrinsic to it—velocity, wit, growth, exhibitionism and “connectivity”—can seem superficial, but they’re ours.

Recently, Facebook brass are making housecalls to investors, using razzle, dazzle and astral projections to justify valuing the eight-year-old company at a big, round $100 billion. This comes in preparation for Facebook’s midmonth initial public offering—what’s expected to be the biggest I.P.O. in the history of the Internet.

At the same time, government officials have started to cast a cold eye on Facebook, making sure it—and Apple and Google—don’t get a regulatory pass from Washington just because they’re cute. Facebook not long ago had to agree to a 20-year settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that the company violated users’ privacy.

Many consumers are even wary of Facebook.  A recent poll put Facebook’s favorable rating among Americans at 58 percent, well behind Apple (74 percent) and Google (82 percent).  Just as the company prepares for its close-up, Facebook is the subject of near-hysterical anxiety. “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” asks this month’s Atlantic cover story, only to answer “you’re damn right”—and then heap on the freestyle condemnation in the way that only a fact-free, full-tilt cover story can.

Facebook, it turns out, makes us sick, narcissistic and mentally ill.

Facebook—and its 901 million users—should take this alarmism in stride. The great American cultural accomplishments have always been the result of our national tension between appetite and anxiety.  At the moment, Facebook is the apotheosis of this dynamic. A vast, conceptual frontier—one with no known outer limits on population, size or revenue—the social Web sometimes seems to exist to worry about itself. Is it costing us our humanity? Our dignity? Our communities? Our attention spans? Our politics?

But the Internet is no longer the Wild West. It looks more like the so-called Postbellum West, when the Homestead Act had established some order, and borders, public institutions, railroads and agricultural colleges were being erected. This is precisely the kind of radical transition in American history that engenders panics—financial panics, about what companies or dollars are worth, and moral panics, about what in the world we’re all doing here.

Just ride it out. Since the Revolution, two opposing fantasies have defined the creation of moral, aesthetic and financial value in America. The first is the fantasy of promiscuous, wanton appetites and ambition. This fantasy is so integral to national operations that everything in our culture—from advertising to monetary policy—is designed to stoke hunger and keep satiety out of reach.  Against the monstrous and glorious and neverending ravenousness that is our birthright, the scolding voice of temperance can seem bearish, soul-smothering and European. But it exists in productive tension with the first fantasy. This second, contractionist fantasy of restraint and restriction—often styled as more sophisticated than naked greed—makes much of processes like restoration and “right-sizing” and comeuppance.

Its exponents evince a nostalgic longing for an imagined past when the genie was in the bottle; when everyone knew where and who and what he was. On this reasoning, “the value of a dollar” is intrinsic and not a function of strings pulled by economic architects and market forces.

This tension between expansiveness and restraint ought never be resolved. That’s a safe argument to make because it will never be resolved. There is no America (and thus no Internet, and no Facebook) without this tension. We Americans are frontiersmen and immigrants who live to go too far while we’re also puritans who are cross with ourselves for doing it.

Of the many arguments for why French women eat croissants and stay slim, while Americans diet and get fat, the most appealing one has it that Americans gain weight because we worry about gaining weight. We fret over our hunger. Calories + cortisol = America.

Recently in Slate the sociologist Eric Klinenberg made the same point as he skillfully debunked the Atlantic article, and the tenacious myth that the Internet engenders “alienation,” that modernist phantom. Surveying the history of alienation hysteria in American social science, Klinenberg wrote, “What distinguishes Americans is not that we are more isolated, but that we spend more time and energy worrying about whether we are.”

No more worrying! Facebook is right where it should be. It’s a free and vast global enterprise in conflict with forces (governmental, cultural, popular) that want to inhibit it. Sounds like the perfect time for an I.P.O.  Maybe, in fact, the company should host a beautifully designed Federal Trade Commission fan page, and allow the government to post Facebook’s privacy infractions on it.  Then they should have a running roll of “Is Facebook killing us?” articles and let everyone chat about them online. It will pass, the high moral tone of our era—but hopefully not too soon, giving Facebook time to take its place among the great American public companies.

By Virginia Heffernan

Marital problems can lead to mental disorder - Dr Simenda

DID you know that marital or relationship problems can lead to a mental disorder? Well, according to Dr Francis Simenda, Chainama Hills College Hospital head of clinical care, the number one cause of mental illness among women is mood disorders that are primarily triggered or maintained by life events like marriages and divorces. Dr Simenda, a specialist psychiatrist, says marital discourse; problems in marriage, general dissatisfaction in marriage, lack of children, unresolved problems with husbands, families and extended families can lead to a mental disorder.

"Actually the big one is the death of the spouse; when a husband dies, the women don't take it properly. Sometimes even when they lose a boyfriend, so life events contribute a lot in the genesis and maintenance of these disorders," he explains.

Mental illness
Dr Simenda says mental illness is a group of disorders or illnesses that affect the mind and the brain. He says there are many classes and types of mental illnesses. Dr Simenda says the first group under the World Health Organisation (WHO) classification is mental disorders that are related to loss or decline in brain functioning.

"These are called dementias; so the memory fades away and the general function to control the motor and the speech abilities of a person slowly decline. When we use the word dementia then we are describing a disorder where the loss of memory primarily is irreversible," he says.

He says under this class, the other disorders are just amnesic syndromes, retrograde or anterograde amnesia which is a technical term of loss of memory. "We also have what we call deliriums under the same group. It is an acute confusional state, acute loss of brain function. It arises after surgery, acute infections, septicaemia; so the brain function recovers quickly after treatment," he says.

Dr Simenda says the second group of mental illness arises from the use of poly-substances like alcohol, cannabis, nicotine, glue, cocaine and heroin. He says the third group or class of disorders is called schizophrenia and related psychosis.

"We have mood disorders - mental disorders that are primarily characterised by a disordered mood or emotions, so these include depression or mania which is the opposite of depression," he says. Dr Simenda says in the fourth group, are personality disorders.

"We have disorders or adult personalities. Like you say this man is stubborn or quiet. When these human straits become a problem or so pronounced that they interfere with occupational or social wellbeing, then we call it a disorder and it needs treatment. Then we have histrionic disorders. These are mainly women who very dramatic in the way they carry themselves. They are cheerful but at the same time can quickly change and become sad. So they exhibit swings in their character," he says.

He also says there are disorders related to sexual orientation. "Maybe we haven't described them very well in Zambia but all these cases where someone might just like to have sex in a bizarre way. We have heard of masochism (receiving pleasure - often sexual - from acts involving the infliction or reception of pain or humiliation), vouryerism (sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviours, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions usually considered to be of a private nature); frotteurism (a paraphilia in which sexual arousal or orgasm is achieved by actual or fantasised rubbing up against another person, usually in a crowded place with an unsuspecting victim) and sexual preference with children (paedophilia) like you've heard nowadays. That's an illness," he says.

Dr Simenda says that for men with paedophilia, (it could include women) they have a tendency to have sex with minors or watching naked minors on the internet or circulating some materials to gratify their sexual pleasure. "They get satisfaction...some just watch videos, some just take pictures but in our Zambian case, they actually have sex with them. It could be that people are reporting more now and these cases have come to light. I suspect these offences used to happen but they were not reported but with the coming of the NGOs, the police's VSU Victim Support Unit and general awareness, these cases are no longer in the dark," he says.

He says it is yet to be seen whether these people reform when they are sent to prison because if it is a disorder then it needs to be treated.

However, Dr Simenda says if it is sheer criminality then the outcome is also different. Dr Simenda says it could be a man or a woman who prefers to have any form of sex which is outside the normal form.

"There are some who like to exhibit their private parts and they obtain gratification from that. Others whip themselves in the bedrooms; so there are many forms but you must note that nowadays homosexuality and gayism were removed from the list as a disorder of sexual orientation, that is WHO removed it. It was classified as a medical illness in the beginning but in the latest classification it was removed," he says.

He says masturbation was also removed as it used to be classified as a mental disorder.

Dr Simenda says there are also disorders that are normally related to early childhood. The perversion mental disorders. "You have heard of autistic disorder. It starts after two and half years. This is a child who does not develop communication skills especially on the outside world, they remain withdrawn, within themselves. Most of them are associated with very pervasive mannerisms like banging of the head and talking to themselves. They are in their own lost world," he says.

"There are times it is associated with epilepsy that is fits and when that happens, there is usually an element of mental retardation. We also have intellectual disabilities in children. When the child is failing to cope like others, we look for specific disorders. We have children with reading disorders, mathematic disorders and speech disorders."

He says there are also eating disorders though not common in Zambia but are common among models. "We have anxiety disorders, panic disorders common with near death experiences. We have phobia like if you have a person that is afraid of heights or animals. The disorder is named according to that specific animal or fear. Among the young, we have conduct disorders where they behave unacceptably," he says.

Dr Simenda says there are also disorders that are not classified in any specific group. Dr Simenda says the common causes of mental illnesses in Zambia vary with some inheritable.

"Almost all of the them can be inherited and there is research currently going on to continuously identify which chromosome, which genes and in what combination but these you will note that genetics alone does not mean that there will be an outcome of disease so there is an interaction between the genetics, the environmental factors that person is living in and of course the lifestyle, what we take in. So there is an interaction between the genes, the hormones and the neural transmitters. This is what we think leads to a manifestation of a mental disorder. So it's a collection of a number of factors," he says.

He says the hospital admits about 4,000 patients per year.

"Last year we received about 3,700 patients. On a daily basis, since we struggle with bed space, we admit a maximum of 150 patients. We keep people for a short time and discharge them due to the unavailability of bed space. So our capacity right now is about 150 and the majority are male. It is not to say that women do not have mental disorders. It's because women in most parts of the world are less violent," he says.

Dr Simenda says when men develop psychosis, they tend to be violent.

"Women suffer quietly in the homes or they are manageable as outpatients," he says. He says the cause of the disorders vary and are a combination of different things. Dr Simenda says for men, more than 60 per cent of those admitted have a combination of different things.

"They will be using either alcohol, cannabis, or some other substance or abuse and as we are becoming open at the border, we are beginning to see drugs that were less common in the past like cocaine, heroin and others," he says.

He says women do not use much of the substances but a few do.

Dr Simenda says when a person develops even a mild mental disorder, the stigma from the family and the community sometimes fuels or continues to fuel the disorder.

"Even from the employers if they know, you can imagine even in church, people with mental disorders are highly discriminated against and this actually makes the disease outcome worse," he says.

For treatment, Dr Simenda says there is promotive treatment - health promotion in mental health.

"We also educate that most of these diseases are actually treatable," he says.
He says the next stage is prevention.

"We want people to attain self-actualisation, that is living a life that is very productive and being at the pinnacle or going through the stages of life successfully until old age. We do physical treatment that is provision of medicines, that's actually treating most of these disorders and controlling the symptoms associated with these disorders. Mostly we call them anti-psychotics. We use mood stabilisers, anti-depressants, that is drugs that are able to lift the mood when it is depressed," he says.

"We use drugs called anxiolytics that abolish anxiety disorders so they help when you have anxiety disorders. With personality disorders most of the time the treatment is psychotherapy but in severe cases, we use medicines to control the behaviours and compulsions and obsessions"

For the pervasive development disorders, Dr Simenda says they combine a number of strategies like school education therapy with parents and caregivers.

He says mental retardation, has its own special treatment.

Dr Simenda says conduct disorders in the youth are mainly treated using psychotherapy and other educative programmes.

"In short all the mental disorders have a treatment of some kind. We also have other physical treatments called electric convulsive therapy. It is an old treatment where we introduce a surge of electrical energy in the brain to induce a fit and that helps in the symptom control of some mental disorders like severe depression and suicide," he says.

He says mental disorders destroy the core function of the brain.

"So we want to rehabilitate our patients. We do a number of rehabilitation services by bringing back the skills, occupational therapy and physiotherapy if the muscles were affected. And these therapies are nowadays recommended to be done in the communities where people stay. We follow up these patients," he says.

Dr Simenda says getting better is a measurement.

"We have what we call rating scales where we measure the symptoms and then we see from the time we started and where we are now in terms of improvement. I am sure for the community, they want 100 percent recovery but in some cases it's not possible but we control the symptoms especially the most common symptoms of self-grooming, violence, staying outside, not eating, being a danger to themselves as a mental patient and to the community," he says.

He says sometimes patients escape from the hospital because the very nature of all mental disorders is that they attack the personality.

"So they don't realise that they are actually unwell so the first thing when they are brought to Chainama is to plan to escape. They must go out and continue what they are doing, they don't have the ability to perceive that they are unwell. Some of them we get them back, some their relatives bring them back because they go and cause problems in the homes, fighting, breaking property," he says.

Dr Simenda says those found on the streets are chronic schizophrenic patients where the families would have abandoned them to roam the streets.

"Now there are challenges with collecting them against their will because of the legal system and as I speak to you, the law that governs mental illness was done in 1951, the Mental Disorders Act, but right now, we are repealing it and there is a new Bill coming out. We now have a Mental Health Services Bill that is currently in development. Maybe this law will make us develop the service even better but by order of a Magistrate you can get them off the streets," he says.

Dr Simenda says the public should appreciate that mental health and mental illnesses exist.

He says people should start appreciating that these groups of diseases are treatable. He says eliminating stigma and discrimination is key.

"We need to mount a campaign so that people know and become supportive of mental programmes in schools, universities, in the work place and communities. We must be talking about mental illnesses everywhere. In this country most of the time we act when it is too late or when there is violence; evident of broken windows but really all the mild mental illnesses, anxieties should be treated by a professional, the outcome is better that way," he says.

"There is also stigma, they don't want the neighbours to know because they think their daughter will not get married and so on. They actually deny mental patients, they go and hide them in the village and don't educate them but we want even someone with a mental disorder to undergo some education and find a meaningful occupation in future other than withdrawing patients because they have epilepsy and they couldn't go to school." http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=26142&highlight=mental disorder in marriage

Blogging vs ethics: A case of the Zambian Watchdog and the Lusaka Times

By Malama Katulwende

Blogs have recently gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping and initiating news stories on the Internet. Blogging has thus become a distinctive, alternative media form in its own right – as distinguished from, say, the mainstream media such as newspapers, television and radio stations.

To quote Goldfain and Van der Merwe in Prof. Fackson Banda’s presentation, “Alternative media: a viable option for Southern Africa?”, blogging is “an aggregator of information that encourages dialogue and participation in a society that is flooded with information dispersed by authoritative voices. It is a media platform and has the potential to give minorities a voice.” For all its potential good, however, blogging can result in legal liabilities, defamation, unethical media practices as well as political and social dangers. Let us take the case of The Zambian Watch Dog and the Lusaka Times. According to the website http://www.zambianwatchdog.com the Zambian Watchdog is owned by private Zambian journalists who publish breaking news on Zambia and about Zambia on a 24 hour basis.

They also publish ‘investigative special reports’ and at times ‘aggregate news’ carried by local media. Their guiding principle is – “We write news regardless of who or what the subject is. We fear no one. We favor no one.” Recently – on the 20th August 2010 – the Zambian Watch Dog posted an article titled, “Mwanawasa was not a great president” by Malama Katulwende on their website. The post coincided with the late Levy Mwanawasa’s memorial and became an instant success. It was read by millions of people around the globe and inspired a flood of comments. The article was also reproduced by another blogger, The Lusaka Times – again as ‘breaking news’.

What the Zambian Watch Dog and the Lusaka Times did not inform their readers, however, was the source of the article, when it was published, and who authorized its use on their blog. As the author of the article I was shocked to read this post in its current form. The original title, “Reinventing Levi: Mwanawasa as a memory site” had been altered to read, “Mwanawasa was not a great president”. Furthermore, the first three critical paragraphs had also been removed so that the piece started somewhat in the middle. Yet what was even more puzzling was the fact that contrary to the recognized norms of journalism, UKZambians was not credited as the publisher and copyright owner of the article. For me personally, though, I was disheartened that the readers presumed the article was recent when, in fact, it was published in September 2008.

The work in question was preceded by “Measure for Measure: Levi’s Legacy on Trial”, which I’d written to dispel the wild claims associated with the late Mwanawasa’s legacy. The reproduced article, however, was not prefaced to place the text in context – though I still stand by every word I wrote. The Zambian Watch Dog and the Lusaka Times had done nothing but copy and paste. They even allowed their readers to throw a cascade of verbal abuse, offensive language and other types of obscenities on the author, late president Dr. Levy Mwanawasa, and some of the current leaders in the Zambian government. I also read remarks which demeaned the Bemba people of the country (of which I am a part) as thieves and plunderers.

Concerned, UKZambians emailed the Zambian Watchdog: “Can you stop to copy and paste old articles from UKZambians without permission? The article you have reproduced was written a year [and half] ago when this topic was important. Right now, things have changed and people have moved on. Now because you cannot be resourceful enough to produce your own original articles, shamefully you start on this irresponsible way of pasting old article and opening old wounds. This is damaging the image of our respected columnist and UKZambians association with him as can be seen from comments on your website. We demand that you withdraw the article immediately and write an apology about your careless behavior to your readers.” The Watchdog Team responded like this: “You are an idiot and if you want go to court. Why don’t you ask the one who sent that thing to us. Moron.”

UKZambians then asked me whether I’d authorized the Zambian Watch Dog to reproduce the said article – and I said “no”. I emailed the editor of the blog and kept my editor in copy: “I have read your exchanges with my publisher, UKZambians in respect of the article, “Mwanawasa Was Not A Great President” which was posted on your website. I did NOT send you the said article, which I wrote in 2008, nor did I authorize the use of it. I think what you should have done was at least contact UKZambians for authorization, then do a write up to explain to your readers the context in which the article was written. It appears to me – from the comments – that they think the article was written a few days ago. Once they understood the mood at the time, they might have appreciated why it was written. As it is, I’ve received unwarranted attacks and all kinds of insults and some people have even misrepresented the facts about my private life. You did not even inform me nor UKzambians that you’d post this article. I just got a mail from someone I hardly know. I also think that as a media, we need to acknowledge each other’s works and not resort to insults. We are in the same business and we have to work together. I trust the Watchdog team will write UKZambians and apologize unreservedly.” I received a response from their editor: “Listen you fool, stop wasting my time. We told the other chap who was sending us nonsense to go to court. So why don’t you take your copyright to court? Coward.” I responded again: “Sir, when you use someone’s work, don’t you think you ought to acknowledge the source?

I am sure the Zambian Watch Dog believes in the ethics of journalism? Whoever sent you my article? Lots of Zambian websites use my work – I don’t mind as long as they acknowledged who published it. Don’t you understand copyright?” Again I received an acrid retort: “The article we publish did not come from that thing you are referring to. It was sent to us with the name of the author whom we put. Is that difficult to understand?” I challenged them on copyright once more – and the Zambian Watch Dog replied: “If you have nothing to tell us, please keep the silence [!] And how can we know that you are who you claim to be? And what is this UKZambians you are talking about? If people attack you for your work, well, why did you write it? You wanted to write something like that and hide it on a website read by 13 people? And now that it has been read by millions of people you are cowering and want to run away? Nothing has changed my friend from the time Levy died. Apologize? The Watchdog apologizing? You are joking.” Now the case of the Zambian Watch Dog and, to some extent, the Lusaka Times, raises some legal and ethical challenges of web-blogging. Is journalism all about copying news stories from various websites and tabloids and pasting them on blogs for your readers in defiance of copyright laws? Should blogs respect intellectual property rights at all? What might be some of social, political economic and legal consequences of this form of plagiarism? Again – is the conduct of the Zambian Watch Dog in respect of a reminder to acknowledge the source of information ethically justifiable? Copyright laws, as I understand them, are the basis on which intellectual property rights are created. To quote Wikipedia at length: “Copyright are exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright does not protect ideas, only their expression or fixation. In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered. Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time, after which the work is said to enter the public domain. Uses which are covered under limitations and exceptions to copyright, such as fair use, do not require permission from the copyright owner. All other uses require permission and copyright owners can license or permanently transfer or assign their exclusive rights to others.” Copyright laws were enacted to encourage originality by regulating the copying of inventions, identifying symbols and creative expressions. Without copyright laws, nevertheless, incomes for musicians, authors, artists, scientists and composers would diminish from their intangible assets such as musical, literary, artistic works, discoveries and inventions, words, symbols and designs.

Thus copyright laws allow owners of such intellectual property to benefit financially from the labor of their minds, and pay for associated research and development costs. Other benefits are economic growth and innovation in countries where intellectual property rights are strengthened and guaranteed. The question to consider right now, though, is whether the rights accorded to the copyright owner (such as UKZambians in respect of the articles I write) are subject to the “principle of fair use” in the case in which the Zambian Watch Dog and the Lusaka Times, collectively, copied and reproduced my article “Reinventing Levi: Mwanawasa as a memory site” on their blogs? The answer is “No”.

In terms of Section 107 of the US Copy Right Law, for instance, the reproduction of the said article and its alteration may not be said to have been intended as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. The two blogs plagiarized the article and simply pasted it on their websites to make money. According to the U.S Library of Congress home page, however, the reproduction of my article would have been regarded as “fair use” had the blogs used “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for the purpose of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

In my view, therefore, the blogs failed to uphold the efficacy of media ethics which, among other things, required all practicing journalists and the institutions they represent to acknowledge their sources and respect the copyright laws. Yet granting that every blogger and individual stood in breach of copyright laws they way the Zambian Watch Dog and Lusaka Times had done, then I am afraid that institutions which invested in creating a viable and vibrant media would lose out. The bloggers would simply sit tight and wait for newspapers to gather news at great expense, and then copy it out once it were published and make money.

This, I dare say, is not what journalism is about. This is fraud and ought to be punished. The reader will perhaps observe from the email responses we received from the Zambian Watch Dog that these guys are conceited, disrespectful, vulgar and hackneyed. Yet I do not believe that journalists, conscious of their craft and reminded of copyright laws in general, have very much to gain by offending the copyright owners and the creator of the said article. What bloggers ought to do instead is negotiate access to and fair use of news materials with different sources such as UKZambians, The Post newspapers, Times of Zambia, Daily Mail, Reuters, and so on, through mutually beneficial agreements. If they don’t then I am afraid the blogs will be inundated with lawsuits for copyright infringement. The other point worth of consideration is whether the blogger might be ethically excused for allowing obscene language and other kinds of insults to be posted on their website. From what I have observed so far, though, it is safe to suggest that the Zambian Watch Dog and Lusaka Times have become platforms where different people exchange insults around various topics and hurl obscenities at each other.

I have read, for instance, comments which demeaned Zambia’s republican president, Mr. Rupiah Banda and his ministers, the Catholic bishops, and the leaders of the opposition in the most indescribable manner. There are also comments which suggest that Bembas, for example, are thieves and irresponsible people. Tongas, Lozis and other tribes are also equally insulted or belittled. The blogs carry these ideologies of the tribe, discrimination, racism and other kinds of hatred against groups on the basis of their ethnicity, culture, race and religion almost every day. Although I am personally critical of the government and what our leaders do, I find all this ethically wrong and unacceptable. This is because providing media spaces for bigotry and other types of prejudices could inspire social strife. Blogs should therefore not publish such comments. Much as an individual should always exercise his or her freedom of expression, it is also important to remember that the liberties and freedoms of other people ought to be respected as well no matter how much one disagreed with them.

I have argued the legal and ethical challenges of web-blogging. Blogs such as the Zambian Watch Dog and the Lusaka Times should enter into agreements with other media institutions to avoid copyright infringement and lawsuits. They may also avoid legal liabilities by exercising the principle of fair use of copyrightable material. Copyright laws exist to foster innovation by regulating inventions, symbols and other creative expressions. Furthermore, the blogs and those who run them are better advised to be respectful at all times and delete offensive comments from their websites so that the rights and dignities of all people are respected regardless of their religion, culture, ethnicity and race.

THE BAROTSE QUESTION: What should be done?

Both the recommendation by the Rodger Chongwe Commission that the Barotseland Agreement be restored and the off the cuff comments by President Michael Chilufya Sata that he would not recommend that view to his cabinet, are both legitimate. The Chongwe Commission’s recommendation is anchored on the Commission’s interpretation of the law, namely, status of the abrogated Barotse Agreement 1964, while President Sata’s view is anchored on the political realism of the present day Zambia as a sovereign united nation. The challenge is to harmonize the two world outlooks and still end up with a united and prosperous Zambia.

There is generally little debate on the colonial history of Zambia. Following the Berlin Conference of 1884, the territory we started calling Zambia in 1964, was part of Land in Central Africa ceded to the British on 19th September, 1893 in a Land and Mineral Concession Certificate of claim signed by Henry Hamilton Johnson - the Commissioner and Consul General for the territories under British influence on behalf of British Government and witnessed by James Francis Cunningham - Manager of the African Lakes Company Limited and Lord Monteith Fortherington - the Manager of the African Lakes Company Limited. The whole Region was then known as British Central Africa.

THE BAROTSE QUESTION
The Barotse question has its origin with the Lochner Concession of 1887 when Lochner as the representative of the British South Africa company signed a treaty with the Litunga of the Barotse people for protection against slave traders and in turn gave mineral exploration and mining rights in his land to the BSA company. These were the rights which the BSA company kept enjoying and extending at their will until they were revoked by the Zambian government at independence. The land of the Litunga where the Barotse people had sovereighnty was defined in 1878 by Litunga Lewanika (who ruled from 1878-1916 with one break in 1884-5) . In describing the Barotse Nation, he described true Barotseland as the Land in the Zambezi River Flood plain and about 40km East of Limulunga and Senanga (Gann, Rotberg). This characterization is historically correct as it agrees with the fact which affirms that from 1864 when the Basotho led by Sebitwane and who spoke kololo and had ruled Baroseland since 1838 were defeated and expelled by the Barotse (who now spoke a lingua franca known as Lozi and in some quarters came to be referred to as the Lozi people), the Boundary of the Lozi Nationality was restricted to the Zambezi valley.

In subsequent years, the boundary of what the British Colonialists named as Barotseland kept shifting as other tribes were brought and made subject peoples of the Barotse Nationality.
On 25thJune, 1898 at a meeting held at Victoria Falls, the Litunga Lawenika together with 7 of his Counselors and witnessed by 5 other people on behalf of the Barotse Nationality, signed with R.T Corydon - representing the British South Africa Company - a concession in which he ceded Land to the BSA Company that included “the whole territory of the Nation or any future extension there of including all subject and dependent territory.”

In term of Geographical Boundary, the Barotse Nationality’s Boundaries were defined as:
a) Northern Boundary – from the Headwaters of the Dongwe along Kabompo Rivers to the junction of the Kabompo and Zambezi rivers.
b) Western Boundary – from the junction of the Kabompo and Zambezi Rivers along the Zambezi River to its Junction with the Majili River.
c) Eastern Boundaries – from the Junction of Zambezi and Majili Rivers along the Majili River to its head water hence Northward along the line of the watershed at the Headwaters of the Dongwe River.

In 1900, Britain formally annexed Barotseland and governed it as part of North Western Rhodersia. The people of Barotseland enjoyed equal rights as all other peoples of the territory as the British declined to give any special status to Barotseland. In a letter of complaint by Lewanika to Coryrdon dated 23 January, 1906 Lewanika reiterated what he had conceded to the BSA Company in the concession of 1900. In defining the territory where he had jurisdiction, that is to say, the boundaries of his Nationality “Baroseland”, he noted that his nationality comprised of” Barotse Valley and round Sesheke”The letter acknowledging this fact was signed by Lewanika and witnessed by his Ngambela – Masika and Ford Aitkens.

Later in another concession dated 11th Angust, 1909, Lewanika extended his anthority to include
a) The Country on the West lying between the Zambezi River and the Anglo Portuguese Boundary
b) The Boundaries of Barotseland as defined in 1900
c) North Western Rhodesia as defined by the BSA Company particulary the areas of Batoka and Mushukulumbwe countries in which according to Art 3 of the concession , Lewanika retained right to graze Cattle in unoccupied Lands. The tribal and linguistic map of Zambia is also very clear on the identification of peoples of the Barotse Nationality. The Barotse nationality did not include Lands of other tribes such as that of the Kuanga, Kuandi, Nkoya, Totela, Shanjo, Subiya, Toka, Leya Lumbu, Mashi, Kwandi, Nkoya, Totela, Shanjo, Subiya, Simaa, Ndundulu, Mbunda Nyengo, Mwenji, Makoma, Mbewe, Lovale, Lukolwe, Lushange. The Litunga and the Barotse people in general, having defeated the Kololo and who were now enjoying British protection, were concerned with keeping their original home as described in the 1900 concession inviolate. The Litunga and his people realized that with the advance of colonialism, they would no longer be able to retain any influence outside those initial boundaries. They wanted to protect the Barotse Reserve from European settlement. And this, they succeeded as, unlike the other areas under British rule, no European or Indian settlement was allowed and no private ownership of Land was ever permitted.

The claim by the Litunga Lewanika in his letter dated 11th August, 1909 that his authority included North Western Rhodesia , is not borne by historical evidence. At the time Lockner signed a concession with Lewanika in 1900, other Chiefs of other tribes of the British Central African Protectorate also signed concessions with another envoy of the BSA Company named Joseph Tomson. The concessions were so numerous that the British Government decided to issue to the BSA Company “Certificate of claim” for each area where Tomson had signed concessions with chiefs who could not be identified . The areas were identified as A,B,C,D etc and the Company built forts in those areas such as Fort Rosebury and Fort Abercon representing present day Mansa and Mbala respectively. The area covered by certificate of claim ‘’A’’ which included present day Copperbelt, Central and parts of Eastern, Southern Provinces, the BSA Company decided to transfer for administrative reasons, to the “suvereinty of Lewanika as the Land was inaccessible from Fort Jameson. The Administrative move effected on 30th March, 1905 by the BSA Company enabled Lewanika to benefit as he was now entitled to the share of the Tax Money that other Tribes people paid to the BSA Company. Lewanika never claimed ownership of the Copperbelt or any other Lands outside Baroseland.

These administrative changes that gave Lewanika “care taker” status resulted in the creation by the BSA company of an entity known as “ Baroseland - North Western Rhodesia” and was initially headquartered at Kalomo. The other area known as North Eastern Rhodesia was Headquatered at Fort Jameson , now Chipata. In 1911, the two territories merged into the Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia. The name “Barotseland” was not featured in the new entity. However, the Almagamation Order contained specific provisions securing the Litunga Lewanika relative authority over Baroseland alone without North Western Rhodesia. During the time of colonial rule, Barotseland had features of a charter colony although the Treaty and the Charter gave the territory protectorate status but not as an official protectorate of the United Kingdom government. Britain granted Barotseland semi autonomous status and made it a Protectorate within a Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia and administered as part of Northern Rhodesia. Other ethnic groups in the country such as the Bembas, Ngonis or Chewas did not ask for this status from the British. Barotseland was also denied recognition as an independent Kingdom in contrast to Lesotho and Swaziland which were recognized as such. This fate is shared by Zululand and the Baganda . The British refused to recognize the Litunga as a King. The British designated them as simply Paramount Chiefs. The British recognized only one King in their Empire- King George then and later Queen Victoria.

There is also a text description of the Boundary of Barotseland as at 1953 during the short lived Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasasand and an accompanying map drawn at the same time. This is probably the same spatial definition of Barotseland which Article 125 of the Zambia Independence order used to define Barotseland as the territory that as at midnight 23rd October, 1964 is comprised in the “Barotseland protectorate”. Documentary evidence of this description of Barotseland protectorate is not readily available anywhere. It certainly does not include Copperbelt, Central, Southern and parts of Western and Northern Provinces. What is evident is that the Barotse Nationality had influences in adjacent areas of its Borders. “From the Tribes which the Barotse subjugated, they exerted tribute in kind but in exchange, their vassals received gifts , loans of Cattle and protection from their enemies and the region remained relatively safe from the Slave Trade. Subject Tribes participated in the system as many had specialized products for exchanges.” ( Ghan ) These Tribes, as was the case with the Barotse, also enjoyed, relative autonomy and practiced different Governance systems.

As the wind of change which began with the independence from colonialism of Ghana in 1957, it was evident that this wind of change would come to Northern Rhodesia too. The African Welfare Societies first formed by Dauti Yamba in 1920’s at Mwenzo in Nakonde grew in stead and culminated in the formation of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1948 where one Mbikusita Lewanika who was later to become the Litunga of Barotseland was elected as the first President of the nationalist movement. The Barotseland question, namely, that Barotseland should have relative autonomy as was the case with the British High Commission territories of Bechuanaland, Basutholand and Swaziland has always been the demand of the Litunga but was always refused by the British colonialists. They preferred that Barotseland was administered by the Commissioner of North Western Rhodesia at Kalomo and later Livingstone, the Governor of Northern Rhodesia at Lusaka and later the Prime Minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Salisbury. This rejected by the British had merit. Martin Meredith (2006) has observed that in Africa, there were over 10,000 African polities which the European colonialist amalgamated into 40 European colonies and protectorates. Zambia alone had more than 73 ethno linguistic groups. The British were correct in merging Barotseland into Northern Rhodesia to create a viable modern state.

However, in spite of use value of this unity of the people of Northern Rhodesia, the Litunga and the BRE continued to demand for autonomy of Barotseland. This demand became a side event at the independence talks at Lancaster House in London. Ealier in 1963, the Litunga had hired a lawyer named L.K Wilson to prepare the Barotse case for secession. Three records were prepared.
a. A record of quarantees of Barotseland‘s status as set out in various concessions signed and affirmed by constitutions of 1911, 1924 and 1953 .
b. The Barotse case for secession presented along the lines of the High Commission territories of Swaziland, Basutholand and Lesotholand;
c. Barotseland’s existence as a nation prior to the creation of Northern Rhodesia; failure of the colonial government to develop Barotseland;unsuitability for Western democracy for African conditions; and advantages of becoming an independent state of Barotseland.

The British government rejected the Barotse case. The UNIP delegation also refused to entrench rights, privileges and status that the Barotse demanded in the Zambian Constitution. Instead the three parties (UK, Northern Rhodesia and the Litunga representing Barotseland) opted for a separate agreement as an annex to the Independent Constitution. The three parties signed the agreement on 18th May, 1964. The Cabinet of the new Zambian government reaffirmed the agreement at its 63rd meeting on 30th October, 1964 to formally bind it to the Republic of Zambia. However, despite there being an agreement which provided among others for the Litunga of Barotseland to continue to have power to make laws for Barotseland in relation to the Litungaship, Barotse Native Government, Barotse Native Authority, Barotse Native Courts, the Litunga’s Council, local government, Land, Forests, traditional and customary matters of Barotseland, Fishing, control of hunting, game preservation. Control of bush fires, native treasury, supply of beer, reservation of trees for canoes, local taxation, and Barotse local festivals, the agreement was not implemented by the UNIP government.

The UNIP delegation and later its cabinet did not sign the agreement and affirm it respectively in good faith. As soon as Independence was granted and the new leaders were confident of their power, they quickly moved to abrogate the agreement by introducing the Local Government Act of 1965 which abolished the Barotse Government, the Barotse Native Authorities, he Barotse Native Courts, the Barotse Native Treasury and provided that Barotseland would from then on be administered through a uniform local government system applied in all districts and provinces of the country. Barotseland was renamed Western Province. The Barotse National Council was abolished by statutory instrument and five district councils were established. The Litunga and the Barotse opposed this unilateral move and insured that in the elections of 1968, UNIP lost all seats to the ANC. In the Referendum of 1969 which removed all entrenched provisions that gave the Litunga rights on land, the people of Western Province gave a 75% NO verdict to allow the UNIP government to wrestle land from the Litunga. Furthermore, the Litunga and the BRE continued to promote the Sichaba(National) Party or the Barotse National Party (BNP) whose political aims were to lobby for secession.

In July, 1991, just as the MMD was coming into power, in order to entice the votes of the Barotse, the BRE met President Kaunda and demanded that if he won the multi-party elections and formed government, he would accede to their demands to restore the Barotse Agreement and refund UK Sterling 400,000 which Finance Minister Arthur Wina had taken from the Barotse Native Teasury in 1964. President Kaunda agreed and undertook to meet all the demands. (Sichone and Simutanyi, 1996:188). Unfortunately, President Kaunda lost, but the demands of the Litunga and the BRE did not end. The new government of President Frederick Chiluba viewed the demands of the BRE as unimportant and irrerevant. The Minister Without Portfolio Brig. General Godfrey Miyanda now leader of the Heritage Party, was appointed to negotiate with the BRE. The effort failed and in 1993, President Chiluba threatened that anyone making demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement 1964 would be charged with the high crime of treason.

In the successive governments of President Levy Mwanawasa and President Banda, the National Constitutional Conference which had been set up unilaterally by President Mwanawasa (it was boycotted by the Catholic Church and the PF among others) ignored the submissions of the BRE. The draft Constitution that was made excluded principles of regional autonomy or devolution of power. President Banda’s government had absolutely no time to consider the BA 1964 question. The NCC contemptuously ignored the BRE demands and chose instead to continue with the divisive doctrine of unitary state.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
President Michael Chilufya Sata and the PF government have the opportunity to resolve this question of Barotseland. The demands of the Litunga and the BRE cannot be casually dismissed or ignored or wished away as has happened since 1964. However, in trying to resolve the impulse, the following questions must be addressed.
1. Was the Barotseland Agreement ever repealed or revoked? Could the Parliament of Zambia repeal the BA 1964 annexure to the Independent Constitution? Was its abrogation supported by law? If the agreement is alive as observed by the Chongwe Commission, how can it be implemented without destabilizing the country?
2. Is the Litunga and the BRE justified in demanding for the restoration of the BA 1964? If relative autonomy as demanded is granted, what political institution will be in place – multi party democracy or a return to monarchical hegemony? What will be the response of other nationalities in Western Province such as the Nkoya, Mbunda, Nyengo, Luvale and others who are not Barotse? What will be the view of other nationalities like the Chewa, Bemba, Tonga, Ngoni, and so on that constitute the totality of the peoples of the Republic of Zambia?
3. What is the consensual view of the BA 1964 in Western Province? Are present demands of the BRE representational of all the people of Western Province including the Nkoya, Luvale, Mbunda Nyengo , non indigenous peoples who have settled there and so on.
4. Should the dispute be taken up by the High Court of Zambia as provided by Art. 9 of the BA 1964 in resolving any disputes on the agreement? What is the dispute and how does it impact the wider Zambia?
5. To what extent should the Right to Self Determination including secession as provided in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relevant to the BA 1964? Are the Barotse nationality an oppressed people in Zambia?
For sure, valuable lessons can be learnt from the experience of other countries. Some examples include the case of Serbia and Kosovo which ended up with Kosovo declaring UDI in 2009; Sudan in which South Sudan emerged as an independent state after such a long and terrible civil war; Canada and Quebec in which Quebec has been recognized as a nation within a United Canada; Tanzania and Zanzibar in which Zanzibar is relatively autonomous; the example of South Africa where local government has been integrated within federated structures, and so on.
For many observers and analysts, there are three possibilities in resolving the Barotse Question.
1. To re-negotiate the Barotse Agreement so as to ensure more regional autonomy of all the regions of Zambia anchored on liberal democratic values and federalism. This will require that the PF government provides for Zambia a new constitution that entrenches federated structures in our governance. The Technical Committee appointed by President Sata can be requested to negotiate with the Litunga and the BRE and other Royal Establishments together with all civil society on the historical necessity of devolution and recommend in the new draft constitution the federated way in which Zambia would be governed. It is a notorious fact that no country has ever developed under the so called unitary state structures. In fact, this is a colonial legacy that suited despots. All serious countries only developed when they federated. This is true for the UK, Germany, Japan, India, RSA, Brazil. USA, France, Russia, India even small countries like South Korea, Switzerland and so on.
2. To uphold the status quo holding Zambia as a unitary state with power concentrated in Lusaka. To continue giving lip service of support to decentralization and devolution demands of the people. To ignore the demands of the BRE and the Litunga and treat advocates of the restoration of the BA 1964 as treasonous. This option is not only reactionary and divisive, but will make Zambia forever poor. This plays in the hands of Zambia’s enemies who celebrate at our inability to manage our country efficiently and effectively. Only despots who want to continue stealing peoples resources in Lusaka and abusing their powers unfettered support the maintenance of a unitary state.
3. To dissolve the state of Zambia and allow Barotseland to secede from the former Northern Rhodesia and divide the Zambian people into two or several balkanized separate entities. To divide the people of Zambia who since 1911 have lived and inter-married and created a unique Zambian national character? This is the demand of some separatist elements in Barotseland. This will require, among others, the determination of the boundaries of Barotseland, the holding of referenda in both Barotseland and other previously subject peoples like the Nkoya, Nyengo, Mbunda, Luvale to determine whether they would want to revert to be ruled by the Litunga again and so on. Such an option is obviously retrogressive and will tend to revise a backward and oppressive governance system of feudalism. This option does not support the development project and is inherently reactionary.
For sure, President Sata and the PF government can and should resolve the BA 1964 problem. Option one is not only historically necessary, but is also a historical inevitability as it is borne and steeled by history.

By. Dr. Mbita Chitala Executive Director, Zambia Research Foundation

An Ideas Whose Time has Come: Entrepreneurialism has Cool

VICTOR HUGO once remarked: “You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.” Today entrepreneurship is such an idea.The triumph of entrepreneurship is driven by profound technological change. A trio of inventions—the personal computer, the mobile phone and the internet—is democratising entrepreneurship at a cracking pace. Today even cash-strapped innovators can reach markets that were once the prerogative of giant organisations.

The internet provides a cheap platform for entrepreneurs to build interactive businesses. Meg Whitman grew rich by developing an online marketplace, eBay, where people could buy and sell without ever meeting. An army of pyjama-clad bloggers has repeatedly outsmarted long-established newspapers on breaking stories. Automated news-collecting services such as RealClearPolitics and Memeorandum, using tiny amounts of capital, have established themselves as indispensable tools for news junkies. The development of “cloud computing” is giving small outfits yet more opportunity to enjoy the advantages of big organisations with none of the sunk costs. People running small businesses, whether they are in their own offices or in a hotel half-way round the world, can use personal computers or laptops to gain access to sophisticated business services.

The mobile phone has been almost as revolutionary. About 3.3 billion people, or half the world’s population, already have access to one. The technology has allowed entrepreneurs to break into what used to be one of the world’s most regulated markets, telecoms. And many developing countries have been able to leapfrog rich ones by going straight to mobile phones, cutting out landlines.

This has resulted in a cascade of entrepreneurship. Iqbal Quadir, a Bangladeshi who emigrated to America to become an investment banker and then a business academic, had a dream of bringing mobile phones to his homeland. He struck up a relationship with Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, which provides microfinance, to turn the dream into reality. If the bank was willing to lend women money to buy cows, why not mobile phones? Bangladesh now has 270,000 phone ladies who borrow money to buy specially designed mobile-phone kits equipped with long-lasting batteries, and sell time on their phones to local villagers. Grameen has become Bangladesh’s largest telecoms provider, with annual revenues of around $1 billion; and the entrepreneurial phone ladies have plugged their villages into the wider economy.

Thanks to the combination of touch-screen technology and ever faster wireless networks, the mobile phone is becoming the platform of choice for techno-entrepreneurs. Since July last year Apple has allowed third parties to post some 20,000 programs or applications on its “app store”, allowing phones to do anything from identifying the singer of a song on the radio to imitating the sound of flatulence. So far around 500m “apps” have been downloaded for about a dollar a time.

These developments have been reinforced by broad cultural changes that have brought entrepreneurialism into the mainstream. An activity that was once regarded as peripheral, perhaps even reprehensible, has become cool, celebrated by politicians and embraced by the rising generation. Britain’s Oxford University used to nurture one of the longest traditions of anti-entrepreneurial prejudice in the world. The dons valued “gentlemanly” subjects such as classics or philosophy over anything that smacked of “utility”. (“He gets degrees in making jam/at Liverpool and Birmingham,” went one popular ditty.) The students dreamed of careers in the civil service or the law rather than business, still less entrepreneurship. “How I hate that man,” was the writer C.S. Lewis’s tart comment on Lord Nuffield, his city’s greatest entrepreneur and his university’s most generous benefactor. Today Oxford has a thriving business school, the Saïd School, with a centre for entrepreneurship and innovation and a growing business park that tries to mix the university’s scientists with entrepreneurs. Oxford Entrepreneurs is one of the university’s most popular societies, with 3,600 student members and a record of creating about six start-ups a year.

No longer niche

The story of Oxford’s conversion to entrepreneurship is being repeated the world over as a growing number of respectable economists discover the new creed. For most of the post-war period entrepreneurs were all but banished from economics. Practitioners concentrated on the traditional factors of production—land, labour and capital—and on the price mechanism. Schumpeter was almost alone in arguing that the most vital competitive weapon was not lower prices but new ideas. Today entrepreneurship is very much part of economics. Economists have realised that, in a knowledge-based economy, entrepreneurs play a central role in creating new companies, commercialising new ideas and, just as importantly, engaging in sustained experiments in what works and what does not.

William Baumol has put entrepreneurs at the centre of his theory of growth. Paul Romer, of Stanford University, argues that “economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable…[It] springs from better recipes, not just more cooking.” Edmund Phelps, a Nobel prize-winner, argues that attitudes to entrepreneurship have a big impact on economic growth. Another reason for entrepreneurship becoming mainstream is that the social contract between big companies and their employees has been broken. Under managed capitalism, big companies offered long-term security in return for unflinching loyalty. But from the 1980s onwards, first in America and then in other advanced economies, big companies began slimming their workforces. This made a huge difference to people’s experience at the workplace. In the 1960s workers had had an average of four different employers by the time they reached 65. Today they have had eight by the time they are 30. People’s attitudes to security and risk also changed. If a job in a big organisation can so easily disappear, it seems less attractive. Better to create your own. Yet another reason for the mainstreaming of entrepreneurship is that so many institutions have given it their support.

In 1998 HBS made entrepreneurship one of the foundation stones of business education, partly in response to demand from students. The school’s Arthur Rock Centre for Entrepreneurship now employs over 30 professors. Between 1999 and 2003 the number of endowed chairs in entrepreneurship in America grew from 237 to 406 and in the rest of the world from 271 to 536. The media have also played a part. “Dragons’ Den”, a television programme featuring entrepreneurs pitching their ideas to businesspeople in order to attract venture capital, is shown in 12 countries. “The Apprentice”, a programme that had Donald Trump looking for a protégé, has produced numerous spin-offs. Even China’s state-owned Central Television has a show about entrepreneurs pitching ideas to try to win $1.3m in seed money. A welcome mat for businessThe world’s governments are now competing to see who can create the most pro-business environment. In 2003 the World Bank began to publish an annual report called Doing Business, rating countries for their business-friendliness by measuring things like business regulations, property rights and access to credit. It demonstrated with a wealth of data that economic prosperity is closely correlated with a pro-business environment.

This might sound obvious.

But Doing Business did two things that were not quite so obvious: it put precise numbers on things that people had known about only vaguely, and it allowed citizens and investors to compare their country with 180 others. This “naming and shaming” caused countries to compete fiercely to improve their position in the World Bank’s rankings. Since 2004 various countries have brought in more than 1,000 reforms. Three of the top reformers in 2007-08 were African—Senegal, Burkina Faso and Botswana. Saudi Arabia too has made a lot of progress. Doing Business is also encouraging countries to learn from each other.Most rich countries are working all the time to make it easier to start new businesses. In Canada, for example, it is now possible to start a business with just one procedure. But the list of top reformers includes all sorts of unexpected places, and the range of reforms that have been undertaken is impressive. India has concentrated on technology, for example, introducing electronic registration for businesses; China has put a great deal of effort into improving access to credit. Robert Litan, of the Kauffman Foundation, suggests that the World Bank may have done more good by compiling Doing Business than by lending much of the money that it has.

Global Heroes: entreprising genie youths can learn.

Despite the downturn, entrepreneurs are enjoying a renaissance the world over, says Adrian Wooldridge.

IN DECEMBER last year, three weeks after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and in the midst of the worst global recession since the 1930s, 1,700 bright-eyed Indians gathered in a hotel in Bangalore for a conference on entrepreneurship. They mobbed business heroes such as Azim Premji, who transformed Wipro from a vegetable-oil company into a software giant, and Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys, another software giant. They also engaged in a frenzy of networking. The conference was so popular that the organisers had to erect a huge tent to take the overflow. The aspiring entrepreneurs did not just want to strike it rich; they wanted to play their part in forging a new India. Speaker after speaker praised entrepreneurship as a powerful force for doing good as well as doing well. Back in 1942 Joseph Schumpeter gave warning that the bureaucratisation of capitalism was killing the spirit of entrepreneurship. Instead of risking the turmoil of “creative destruction”, Keynesian economists, working hand in glove with big business and big government, claimed to be able to provide orderly prosperity. But perspectives have changed in the intervening decades, and Schumpeter’s entrepreneurs are once again roaming the globe.Since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution of the 1980s, governments of almost every ideological stripe have embraced entrepreneurship.

The European Union, the United Nations and the World Bank have also become evangelists. Indeed, the trend is now so well established that it has become the object of satire. Listen to me, says the leading character in one of the best novels of 2008, Aravind Adiga’s “The White Tiger”, and “you will know everything there is to know about how entrepreneurship is born, nurtured, and developed in this, the glorious 21st century of man.”This special report will argue that the entrepreneurial idea has gone mainstream, supported by political leaders on the left as well as on the right, championed by powerful pressure groups, reinforced by a growing infrastructure of universities and venture capitalists and embodied by wildly popular business heroes such as Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and India’s software kings. The report will also contend that entrepreneurialism needs to be rethought: in almost all instances it involves not creative destruction but creative creation.The world’s greatest producer of entrepreneurs continues to be America. The lights may have gone out on Wall Street, but Silicon Valley continues to burn bright. High-flyers from around the world still flock to America’s universities and clamour to work for Google and Microsoft. And many of them then return home and spread the gospel.

The company that arranged the oversubscribed conference in Bangalore, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), is an example of America’s pervasive influence abroad. TiE was founded in Silicon Valley in 1992 by a group of Indian transplants who wanted to promote entrepreneurship through mentoring, networking and education. Today the network has 12,000 members and operates in 53 cities in 12 countries, but it continues to be anchored in the Valley. Two of the leading lights at the meeting, Gururaj Deshpande and Suren Dutia, live, respectively, in Massachusetts and California. The star speaker, Wipro’s Mr Premji, was educated at Stanford; one of the most popular gurus, Raj Jaswa, is the president of TiE’s Silicon Valley chapter.The globalisation of entrepreneurship is raising the competitive stakes for everyone, particularly in the rich world. Entrepreneurs can now come from almost anywhere, including once-closed economies such as India and China. And many of them can reach global markets from the day they open their doors, thanks to the falling cost of communications.For most people the term “entrepreneur” simply means anybody who starts a business, be it a corner shop or a high-tech start up. This special report will use the word in a narrower sense to mean somebody who offers an innovative solution to a (frequently unrecognised) problem. The defining characteristic of entrepreneurship, then, is not the size of the company but the act of innovation.

A disproportionate number of entrepreneurial companies are, indeed, small start-ups. The best way to break into a business is to offer new products or processes. But by no means all start-ups are innovative: most new corner shops do much the same as old corner shops. And not all entrepreneurial companies are either new or small. Google is constantly innovating despite being, in Silicon Valley terms, something of a long-beard. This narrower definition of entrepreneurship has an impressive intellectual pedigree going right back to Schumpeter. Peter Drucker, a distinguished management guru, defined the entrepreneur as somebody who “upsets and disorganises”. “Entrepreneurs innovate,” he said. “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.” William Baumol, one of the leading economists in this field, describes the entrepreneur as “the bold and imaginative deviator from established business patterns and practices”. Howard Stevenson, the man who did more than anybody else to champion the study of entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School, defined entrepreneurship as “the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control”. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, arguably the world’s leading think-tank on entrepreneurship, makes a fundamental distinction between “replicative” and “innovative” entrepreneurship.

Five myths

Innovative entrepreneurs are not only more interesting than the replicative sort, they also carry more economic weight because they generate many more jobs. A small number of innovative start-ups account for a disproportionately large number of new jobs. But entrepreneurs can be found anywhere, not just in small businesses. There are plenty of misconceptions about entrepreneurship, five of which are particularly persistent.

The first is that entrepreneurs are “orphans and outcasts”, to borrow the phrase of George Gilder, an American intellectual: lonely Atlases battling a hostile world or anti-social geeks inventing world-changing gizmos in their garrets. In fact, entrepreneurship, like all business, is a social activity. Entrepreneurs may be more independent than the usual suits who merely follow the rules, but they almost always need business partners and social networks to succeed.The history of high-tech start-ups reads like a roll-call of business partnerships: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Apple), Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Microsoft), Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google), Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes (Facebook). Ben and Jerry’s was formed when two childhood friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, got together to start an ice-cream business (they wanted to go into the bagel business but could not raise the cash). Richard Branson (Virgin) relied heavily on his cousin, Simon Draper, as well as other partners. Ramana Nanda, of Harvard Business School (HBS), and Jesper Sorensen, of Stanford Business School, have demonstrated that rates of entrepreneurship are significantly higher in organisations where a large number of employees are former entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship also flourishes in clusters.

A third of American venture capital flows into two places, Silicon Valley and Boston, and two-thirds into just six places, New York, Los Angeles, San Diego and Austin as well as the Valley and Boston. This is partly because entrepreneurship in such places is a way of life—coffee houses in Silicon Valley are full of young people loudly talking about their business plans—and partly because the infrastructure is already in place, which radically reduces the cost of starting a business. The second myth is that most entrepreneurs are just out of short trousers. Some of today’s most celebrated figures were indeed astonishingly young when they got going: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell all dropped out of college to start their businesses, and the founders of Google and Facebook were still students when they launched theirs. Ben Casnocha started his first company when he was 12, was named entrepreneur of the year by Inc magazine at 17 and published a guide to running start-ups at 19. But not all successful entrepreneurs are kids. Harland Sanders started franchising Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 65. Gary Burrell was 52 when he left Allied Signal to help start Garmin, a GPS giant. Herb Kelleher was 40 when he founded Southwest Airlines, a business that pioneered no-frills discount flying in America. The Kauffman Foundation examined 652 American-born bosses of technology companies set up in 1995-2005 and found that the average boss was 39 when he or she started. The number of founders over 50 was twice as large as that under 25.

The third myth is that entrepreneurship is driven mainly by venture capital. This certainly matters in capital-intensive industries such as high-tech and biotechnology; it can also help start-ups to grow very rapidly. And venture capitalists provide entrepreneurs with advice, contacts and management skills as well as money. But most venture capital goes into just a narrow sliver of business: computer hardware and software, semiconductors, telecommunications and biotechnology. Venture capitalists fund only a small fraction of start-ups. The money for the vast majority comes from personal debt or from the “three fs”—friends, fools and families. Google is often quoted as a triumph of the venture-capital industry, but Messrs Brin and Page founded the company without any money at all and launched it with about $1m raised from friends and connections.Monitor, a management consultancy that has recently conducted an extensive survey of entrepreneurs, emphasises the importance of “angel” investors, who operate somewhere in the middle ground between venture capitalists and family and friends. They usually have some personal connection with their chosen entrepreneur and are more likely than venture capitalists to invest in a business when it is little more than a budding idea.

The fourth myth is that to succeed, entrepreneurs must produce some world-changing new product. Sir Ronald Cohen, the founder of Apax Partners, one of Europe’s most successful venture-capital companies, points out that some of the most successful entrepreneurs concentrate on processes rather than products. Richard Branson made flying less tedious by providing his customers with entertainment. Fred Smith built a billion-dollar business by improving the delivery of packages. Oprah Winfrey has become America’s richest self-made woman through successful brand management.

The fifth myth is that entrepreneurship cannot flourish in big companies. Many entrepreneurs are sworn enemies of large corporations, and many policymakers measure entrepreneurship by the number of small-business start-ups. This makes some sense. Start-ups are often more innovative than established companies because their incentives are sharper: they need to break into the market, and owner-entrepreneurs can do much better than even the most innovative company man.

Big can be beautiful too

But many big companies work hard to keep their people on their entrepreneurial toes. Johnson & Johnson operates like a holding company that provides financial muscle and marketing skills to internal entrepreneurs. Jack Welch tried to transform General Electric from a Goliath into a collection of entrepreneurial Davids. Jorma Ollila transformed Nokia, a long-established Finnish firm, from a maker of rubber boots and cables into a mobile-phone giant; his successor as boss of the company, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, is now talking about turning it into an internet company. Such men belong firmly in the pantheon of entrepreneurs.Just as importantly, big firms often provide start-ups with their bread and butter. In many industries, especially pharmaceuticals and telecoms, the giants contract out innovation to smaller companies. Procter & Gamble tries to get half of its innovations from outside its own labs. Microsoft works closely with a network of 750,000 small companies around the world. Some 3,500 companies have grown up in Nokia’s shadow.

But how is the new enthusiasm for entrepreneurship standing up to the worldwide economic downturn? Entrepreneurs are being presented with huge practical problems. Customers are harder to find. Suppliers are becoming less accommodating. Capital is harder to raise. In America venture-capital investment in the fourth quarter of 2008 was down to $5.4 billion, 33% lower than a year earlier. Risk, the lifeblood of the entrepreneurial economy, is becoming something to be avoided.

Misfortune and fortune

The downturn is also confronting supporters of entrepreneurial capitalism with some awkward questions. Why have so many once-celebrated entrepreneurs turned out to be crooks? And why has the free-wheeling culture of Wall Street produced such disastrous results? For many the change in public mood is equally worrying. Back in 2002, in the wake of the scandal over Enron, a dubious energy-trading company, Congress made life more difficult for start-ups with the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation on corporate governance. Now it is busy propping up failed companies such as General Motors and throwing huge sums of money at the public sector. Newt Gingrich, a Republican former speaker of America’s House of Representatives, worries that potential entrepreneurs may now be asking themselves: “Why not get a nice, safe government job instead?”Yet the threat to entrepreneurship, both practical and ideological, can be exaggerated. The downturn has advantages as well as drawbacks. Talented staff are easier to find and office space is cheaper to rent. Harder times will eliminate the also-rans and, in the long run, could make it easier for the survivors to grow.

As Schumpeter pointed out, downturns can act as a “good cold shower for the economic system”, releasing capital and labour from dying sectors and allowing newcomers to recombine in imaginative new ways. Schumpeter also said that all established businesses are “standing on ground that is crumbling beneath their feet”. Today the ground is far less solid than it was in his day, so the opportunities for entrepreneurs are correspondingly more numerous. The information age is making it ever easier for ordinary people to start businesses and harder for incumbents to defend their territory. Back in 1960 the composition of the Fortune 500 was so stable that it took 20 years for a third of the constitutent companies to change. Now it takes only four years. There are many reasons for this. First, the information revolution has helped to unbundle existing companies. In 1937 Ronald Coase argued, in his path-breaking article on “The Nature of the Firm”, that companies make economic sense when the bureaucratic cost of performing transactions under one roof is less than the cost of doing the same thing through the market. Second, economic growth is being driven by industries such as computing and telecommunications where innovation is particularly important.

Third, advanced economies are characterised by a shift from manufacturing to services. Service firms are usually smaller than manufacturing firms and there are fewer barriers to entry.Microsoft, Genentech, Gap and The Limited were all founded during recessions. Hewlett-Packard, Geophysical Service (now Texas Instruments), United Technologies, Polaroid and Revlon started in the Depression. Opinion polls suggest that entrepreneurs see a good as well as a bad side to the recession. In a survey carried out in eight emerging markets last November for Endeavor, a pressure group, 85% of the entrepreneurs questioned said they had already felt the impact of the crisis and 88% thought that worse was yet to come. But they also predicted, on average, that their businesses would grow by 31% and their workforces by 12% this year. Half of them thought they would be able to hire better people and 39% said there would be less competition. economist.com

Understanding the Barotseland Question..........What Youths Need to Learn.

By Sishuwa Sishuwa
ONE of the most interminable, touchy and persistent challenges that has troubled successive Zambian governments has been the Barotseland question. The Barotseland question has invoked deep nationalist sentiments in some Zambians who have viewed those talking of a Barotse (or Bulozi) nation as unpatriotic citizens who deserve to be locked up for treason. For others, especially those located in the state or close to the government of the day, demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement have been interpreted as the work of a few misguided people who want to bring about anarchy and disunity to our constitutional order based on a unitary state.

The political temperature in Barotseland reached scorching levels on January 14 2011 when demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement of 1964 led by the Barotse Freedom Movement (BFM), Linyungandambo, Movement for Restoration of the Barotseland Agreement (MOREMA) and the Barotse Patriotic Front (BPF) (all unregistered or illegal organizations) led to a peaceful rally in Mongu that was brutally suppressed by security forces of the Rupiah Banda administration, resulting in the death of two people and the imprisonment of several others. The violent manner in which the government cracked down on the protesters was unprecedented.

As part of his campaign message, then opposition PF leader and now President Michael Sata promised to resolve the Barotseland question if elected. True to his word, President Sata has begun addressing the Barotse challenge. Recently, the government made available and publicised the Barotseland Agreement of 1964 as a starting point for discussions. It is the first time this has been done by any sitting government. Previous successive governments, most notably the Banda administration, not only criminalised debate over the Barotseland issue but also treated the Agreement as a top, classified document to be kept away from the public eye. President Sata latest stance demonstrates the current government's preparedness to depart from that incorrect historical path, confront the challenge head-on and find a lasting and amicable political solution to the Barotseland question as any delay may have far-reaching repercussions on the territorial integrity of the country we call Zambia.

Dialogue should be based on knowledge and such an approach enables both parties to come to the negotiating table with informed perspectives. But what really is the Barotseland Agreement? How was it abrogated? And how can the protracted standoff over the Barotseland Agreement question best be resolved? A reader of the column recently shared their take on this issue and I reproduce the writer's opinion, which I share, with very minor alterations, below.

What is the Barotseland Agreement?
The good citizen writes: "Barotseland is not a fiction or an imaginary political community, inconsistent with the modern state of Zambia. Barotseland has a legal and special status in Zambian political history. It enjoyed the status of a Protectorate during British colonial rule in its own right and as part of the Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia. In various colonial treaties and Orders in Council Barotseland was acknowledged as a separate nation-state. Specifically, the Moncton Commission of 1960 reaffirmed the special status of Barotseland within Northern Rhodesia. Section 57 and 80 of the Northern Rhodesia Order in Council of 1962 and section 59 and 112 of the Self-Governing Constitution of Northern Rhodesia of 1963 affirmed Barotseland as a separate state within Northern Rhodesia.

It was ‘a protectorate within a protectorate.' To be sure, the Zambia Independence Act and the Zambia Independence Order of 1964 gave recognition to the Barotseland Agreement of 1964.
Prior to Zambia's independence the position of Barotseland had to be considered. As a protectorate of the British Crown, Barotseland had an option to be part of an independent Zambia or to remain a British Protectorate and seek its own independence separately. Barotseland at the time had status similar to the British High Commission Territories of Bechuanaland, Basutholand and Swaziland (present-day Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland).

The people of Barotseland chose to be part of an independent unitary Zambia on condition that they retained some degree of autonomy and were in charge of local government affairs based on their traditional and customary law as they had done for generations. It was agreed at the London Conference held on 16 April 1964 that the Litunga of Barotseland will continue to have power to make laws for Barotseland in relation to local government, native treasury, local taxation, native authorities, traditional and customary matters, native courts, land and natural resources, game conservation and local festivals, among others.

Thus the Barotseland Agreement of 1964 signed by first President Kenneth Kaunda on behalf of the Northern Rhodesia Government, the Litunga of Barotseland Sir Mwanawina Lewanika III on behalf of the people of Barotseland and Duncan Sandys, Secretary of State for Commonwealth and Colonial Relations and representing Her Majesty's Government as a witness to the settlement, did not create a separate state of Barotseland but rather reaffirmed its semi-autonomous status in a unitary state of Zambia.

The abrogation of the Barotseland Agreement
In 1965 the independent government of Zambia unilaterally abrogated terms of the Barotseland Agreement by introducing the Local Government Act 1965 which effectively abolished the Barotse Government, Barotse Native Authorities, the Barotse Native Courts and the Barotse Native Treasury and Barotseland was to be administered through a uniform local government system applied throughout the country. The Chiefs Act was introduced the same year and it permitted the President of Zambia to recognise or withdraw recognition from any Chief in the country at will, in the interest of national unity and order, leading to widespread suspicions in Barotseland that the Act was targeted at the Litunga.

In 1969, the Government organised a national referendum to determine if the Barotseland Agreement should be removed from the constitution or terminated. The people of Western Province overwhelmingly voted ‘No' in the Referendum but the rest of the other Provinces voted Yes. Barotseans argued that it was wrong for the Government to extend the referendum to the whole country on a matter that concerned them, adding that the referendum should have just been restricted to the affected Province. In the aftermath of the referendum, the Government took to Parliament the Constitutional Amendment Act of 1969, which effectively terminated the Barotseland Agreement of 1964. The same year, the Government renamed Barotseland as Western Province and declared that all provinces were to be treated the same.

The rights reserved for the Litunga and his Council and the people of Barotseland were tampered with as they no longer had the institutions to exercise local self-government. This was interpreted in Barotseland as another attempt to further undermine the semi-autonomous status of Barotseland and vest all land in the President of the Republic of Zambia. Agitation and resentment over government actions regarding the abrogation of the Barotseland Agreement are not new. They were voiced in 1968, 1969 and 1970 with some Lozi traditionalists led by Litunga Mbikusita Lewanika demanding restoration of the provisions of the Agreement or they would seek secession. In 1993, under the Frederick Chiluba Government demands were again made for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement.

But the authorities at the time dismissed the demands and even threatened to arrest and detain all those involved, including Litunga Ilute Yeta for high treason. President Chiluba declared then that Zambia was a unitary state and as such indivisible, therefore no part of it would be allowed to break away. The recent demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement of 1964 led by BFM, Linyungandambo, MOREMA and the BPF should thus be understood in their right context.
They are just a continuation of the work of other similar organisations that suffered government reprisals and harassment. For example, the Barotse Patriotic Front (BPF) was banned and its leader placed in detention for advocating secession in the late 1990s. What is different about the new formations is that they are much more radical and demand immediate resolution of the impasse.

The motive force that led to the current demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement was the apparent refusal by the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) to incorporate submissions by the Barotse Royal Establishment to recognize the status of Barotseland in the new Constitution and implement the provisions the Barotseland Agreement 1964. The submissions by the Barotse Royal Establishment to the NCC in 2010 were dismissed outright as lacking merit in a unitary state. It was this which provoked anger by sections of the Barotse ‘nation' that there is need to engage in dialogue on the Barotseland Agreement as it was an important part of the first independence constitution.

Since this agitation began there have been a lot of commentaries from different sections of our community on the merits and demerits of restoring the Barotseland Agreement. One group of people dismiss the demand as tribal, parochial and going against the tenets of a unitary state and the national motto of ‘One Zambia, One Nation.' Another group accuses those who advocate the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement as secessionists, anarchists who should be arrested, charged with treason and possibly hanged. While others, have simply trivialized the demands as unworkable, as Barotseland cannot survive without Zambia, ‘since it is just a sandy place.'

There are those who feel that advocates of the Barotseland Agreement want a separate state which will incorporate all the areas which originally fell under Litunga's dominion in pre-colonial times."
So, good citizen, ‘what should be the way forward?', I put it to my intelligent friend.

Resolving the Barotseland Question

WE continue with last week's interrogation of the Barotseland question. What then should be the way forward? First, demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement cannot be said to be tantamount to secession. To the best of my knowledge the Barotseland Agreement 1964 was never repealed nor revoked. The point is that the central authorities in Lusaka unilaterally abrogated the terms of a legal document that was part of the Zambian constitution. The Government of the Republic of Zambia has an obligation to explain what happened to the Barotseland Agreement 1964.

Why were those terms abrogated? Who was consulted when those changes were being made and to what extent was there consensus on the matter? There is no doubt that if there was consultation and consensus regarding changes to the Barotseland Agreement 1964 and the status of Barotseland post-independence, there would not be demands for its restoration today.

Second, it is most irresponsible for national level politicians to dismiss the demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement 1964 as the work of young, misguided individuals who want to bring about disunity and anarchy in the country. While the methods being used by the advocates of the Barotseland Agreement 1964 may not be acceptable to everyone, it is important to recognize that they are raising legitimate demands that need to be addressed by the Government of the Republic of Zambia. The hardening of positions in Lusaka, the criminalization of debate and the demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement will only drive the resistance underground and escalate into a fully-fledged armed conflict.

Indeed, what successive Governments have found unacceptable is the demand for secession by the advocates of the Barotseland Agreement on account that the Government has not only unilaterally abrogated its provisions, but has consistently refused to listen to any voices on this matter and lately ensured that there is no mention of Barotseland in the new Constitution of Zambia. The events of January 14, 2011 where security forces brutally suppressed the holding of a peaceful public rally on the Barotseland Agreement question resulting in the death of two people and injuries of several others were not only unfortunate but were avoidable.

Third, it is important to interrogate how widespread the demands for secession are in Barotseland. It would be politically naïve to assume that simply because there are few people who are making the demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement, there is no consensus on the issue in the province. It would also be politically costly for the Government to use brute force in suppressing the demands as that will only radicalize the conflict. The starting point should be to recognize that the people of Barotseland have a legitimate right to make the demands for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement, including the right to secede from Zambia. However, this should be done through democratic channels.

Fourth, the government of the Republic of Zambia should not misrepresent history and misinform the Zambian people about the true status of Barotseland. Reading the many commentaries that have appeared in our media in recent months, an impression created is that those making demands for an independent Barotse nation are mad, misguided and bent on creating disunity in this peaceful country of Zambia. Senior government politicians have been quoted as saying that what the advocates of the Barotseland Agreement are demanding is no tenable and in any case there is no way Barotseland can be treated differently from other parts of the country. This is a distortion of historical facts.

Barotseland and Northern Rhodesia proceeded to independence based on a legal agreement. That legal agreement termed the Barotseland Agreement was the product of negotiated settlement between the people of Barotseland, Northern Rhodesia and the British Government. The terms of that Agreement are therefore important for the sustainability of the union between Barotseland and Zambia. It was envisaged in the Barotseland Agreement 1964 that in case of disputes the Courts of Zambia would adjudicate between the parties.

Fifth, the demands by the people of Barotseland for the restoration of the Barotseland Agreement or to secede from Zambia are not an isolated case in international law.
Although no country in the world provides for a state's right to secede in its national constitution except Ethiopia, there are many similar cases where nations came together and when the purpose for which they came together were no longer in force they sought to break away. Yugoslavia was brought together as an amalgamation of several small states dominated by Serbia. The Soviet Union was also a federation of several states. When the purpose for which the coming together was no longer justified they broke up, sometimes after prolonged military conflict.

Kosovo which has been dominated by Serbia as its autonomous province is perhaps the best example that can be compared to Barotseland in Zambia. No amount of resistance from Serbia was enough to prevent the unilateral independence by Kosovo in 2009. Other examples include South Sudan and Quebec, Canada's second most populous and economically influential province, after Ontario. South Sudan recently declared its independence from mainland Sudan after a democratic referendum was held. After several years of demands for secession from mainland Canada, which included two unsuccessful referendums for independence in 1980 and 1995, the Canadian House of Commons finally passed a historic motion in 2006 that recognises Quebec as a nation within a united Canada. However, there are alternative options that the Government of Zambia can pursue that do not border on secession. These include recognising the fact that Zambia, like the United Republic of Tanzania, is a unitary state and that national heritage should be reflected in the constitution.

Valuable lessons can be drawn, for example, on how Tanzania and Zanzibar, whose union was also promulgated in 1964, have managed to hold on, promote national unity and avoid the path that our own union has taken. However, there has to be willingness on the part of the Government of Zambia to take responsibility and face this question head-on, inspired by two obvious questions: ‘what is the problem?', and ‘how can that problem best be resolved in a manner that enhances national unity and puts this matter to rest?' Furthermore and in order to avoid any potential mix-up, misinterpretation and strife, the reported plans by the Government of Zambia to relocate certain districts from Western to other Provinces should be shelved until the Barotseland question is amicably resolved.

National politicians and party leaders should exercise their minds over the Barotseland question. The question requires a political solution and it is imperative to engage in dialogue with all the protagonists over the issue. Surely, 47 years after independence perceptions about Lozi nationalism have slightly changed. Even perceptions about the Lozi monarchy has fundamentally changed and notions of modern democratic norms are now prevalent in the minds of most inhabitants of Barotseland. However, it is up to the people of that area to democratically choose what form of government they desire, including to continue being part of Zambia or to secede. Nationalist sentiments can be very strong and pose potent mobilizing forces against perceived dominant and exploitative forces.

To be sure there are three positions on the Barotseland question: to remain as part of a unitary state of Zambia, to restore Barotseland Agreement so as to ensure more regional autonomy, albeit in a traditional authority sense, or to completely secede. These positions are not mutually exclusive. They are intertwined and have wider implications on the relationship between modern and traditional jurisprudence. To allow more autonomy to Barotseland undermines the political authority of the Zambian state and may encourage other regions to make similar demands. For example, the Barotseland Agreement provides for institutions such as a Barotse National Government, Barotse National Council (parliament), Barotse Native Courts and Barotse Native Treasury all sovereign institutions that will have implications on the sovereignty of Zambia and its unitary constitution. The question is why did the central government at the time not deal with these issues in a more transparent and democratic way, than hope that somehow they will die away with the passage of time?

The other curious irony is that Barotseland throughout colonial history was administered as part of Northern Rhodesia. The 1911 Order in Council that amalgamated North-Eastern Rhodesia with North-Western Rhodesia to create the colonial state of Northern Rhodesia conferred protectorate status to both Northern Rhodesia and to Barotseland, and yet Barotseland was administered as part of Northern Rhodesia. A poor resolution of the crisis in Barotseland has serious political implications for the Zambian state, Zambian politics and the viability of national unity. What is needed is a democratic resolution of the Barotseland Question that should involve the following: convening of a conference on the Barotseland Question in Barotseland to assess the state of the debate and to narrow the areas of contention; organizing a national referendum within Barotseland to ascertain whether the people would want to secede or remain part of a unitary Zambia; recognition of all political forces and civil society organisations that are engaged in the Barotseland issue and promotion of a mature debate about the Barotseland issue to avoid it escalating into regionalism, xenophobia and victimization of individuals and groups from that region.