Maravi

My parents always refrained from begging – RB

My parents always refrained from begging – RB
By Christopher Miti in Chipata
Mon 09 Aug. 2010, 14:00 CAT

PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda has said his parents always refrained from being beggars. And senior chief Nzamane said the launch of the Mfumbeni Development Association was aimed at informing various stakeholders and the government that the local community was prepared to take development in the chiefdom to a higher level.

Launching the five-year Mfumbeni strategic plan for 2010/15 at Chilobwe Basic School on Saturday, President Banda urged people not to depend on handouts from anywhere.

“If in a family you only depend on a person, one child who is working to provide for us, when you come home, the poor child has got so many hands put in front of him. ‘We want that, we want this, we don’t have food, we don’t have this’, that child will fail in what he wants to do,” President Banda said.

“I was fortunate not to have been brought up in a family such as the one I am describing. My late father aBwezani and my mother Sarah, I can’t recall one day when I visited them, I used to come to see them when they were alive for almost every month of my life. I would never stay in Lusaka for more than two months, three months unless there was a problem.

Now when I look back now that I reflect as to why I liked all the time to come and see my parents…I know the reason why. “My mother and father at no time in all my life did I get home and my parents were begging me for something. They never said to me 'pali njala pano' there is hunger.

They never said to me ‘we want money from you’ or ‘we want this, we want that’. It was up to me to assess the situation and give them whatever I thought they needed or ask them. My parents always refrained from being beggars.” He said many of his friends in Lusaka, Copperbelt and Livingstone refrain from going to their villages because they could not give enough to their people.

“Some of these people confided in me that they are afraid to come home because when they come they can’t give enough to the people. We have to be independent in order to be appreciated even by our own children. We all have to be independent, poverty aside, I know people in villages who are poor but have got food in their nkhokwe granary and they are proud of that.

I am saying you should be the granary of Zambia as indeed you are now and don’t depend on handouts from anyone,” President Banda said. He urged the people who attended the launch to emulate the association’s spirit of self-development. “Mfumbeni Development Association is a good example to us Zambians, not only to me who is standing here, all of us must emulate this spirit of self-development.

Of course, you have to be helped by your government, of course you have to be helped by your children but you should be adequately prepared to take initiative to do the best that you can for yourself and then help will come not only from the government, not only from your children, the world will come to help you if they know that you are serious people prepared to work,” President Banda said. He said before he became Vice-President he used to go to senior chief Nzamane’s palace more than any other palace because of one reason.

“I used to enjoy sitting in his verandah at the palace and talking about the problems our people are facing and what we can do. The name Mfumbeni Development Association was always on the lips of chief Nzamane.

‘I want to form a foundation I want to find ways and means together with my people to develop ourselves, of course we expect the government to help us we expect our cooperating partners to help us but I want to find ways and means for us the people of this chiefdom to do something ourselves’.

Some of you might think that the chief thought about launching this association one morning when he got up, he has been thinking about this for a very long time, and I am really, really happy that at last his dream of launching the Mfumbeni Development Association is taking place right now,” President Banda said.

He said Zambians could only become proud if they stood up to the challenge of fighting poverty. President Banda said people needed to decide to develop the country, and those kind enough would come to their aid.

He said the government was proud that the nation had grown 2.7 million metric tonnes of maize and many people attributed that to the support through the Farmer Input Support Programme. He said all Zambians needed to be proud of peasant farmers because they used the farming inputs properly and ensured that they grew more food.

He said the government's commitment to helping people with fertiliser would continue because of the people’s good response. “We the people must stand up and say we are going to develop and do the appropriate thing like what we are doing together.

This is one of the most interesting, most fascinating, most appropriate mwambo ceremony to talk about our country and its development. Reduce this to the family level, the father, the mother and the children, uncles, everybody put together in that family,” President Banda said. He said Zambians were not doing enough to think of ways in which they could develop themselves.

“I have never been invited to a ceremony dedicated to the input of the people. This chief Nzamane has stood before us and said ‘we take up the responsibility for developing ourselves’. When I was still here before I became Vice-President, I used to spend a lot of time driving through with my white Isuzu going to the palace to see His Royal Highness.

I visited this palace more than any other palace in this country,” President Banda said. And chief Nzamane said the people in Mfumbeni had a vision for the chiefdom through the association for improved quality of life to sustain development and prosperity.

“Our shared mission statement for the association in order for us to attain our goal is to plan all development activities, mobilise resources, monitor activities, collect data from zones for management purposes and coordinate development work through linkages with stakeholders for the benefit of the people of Mfumbeni,” chief Nzamane said.

“Our shared core values are cooperation, commitment, hard work, respect, faithfulness, honesty, accountability, transparency, and gender sensitivity. In this chiefdom we believe there is something we can do to generally better our living standards.

Since we live in the rural area we know what development activities are priorities that the central government has strived to do for us but has fallen short of our expectations as a group of people. The resources allocated to these development activities do not show clear and prominent achieved results. This results in people at the grassroots painting these shortfalls as failures by the government.”

He said the people in his area believed that by improving their social and economic status, the population would not be drifting to the towns and line of rail to seek employment as they would create the enabling environment through agriculture and other areas of development.

Chief Nzamane said the strategic plan incorporated HIV/AIDS mainstreaming and all the budgets of activities would have an HIV/AIDS component to highlight the importance of the continued fight against the disease and promote behaviour change, sustainable and healthy living.

Chief Nzamane said the hardworking people of Mfumbeni chiefdom were still relatively poor due to the unsystematic way of doing things but that with proper strategic planning, things would be better.

In a vote of thanks, association vice-chairperson Festus Ndhlovu said the people of Mfumbeni were happy to work towards fighting poverty and bringing development.

Paramount chief Mpezeni and three other Ngoni chiefs were conspicuously missing at the event, which was attended by some chiefs from Luapula Province, Nsenga chiefs from Petauke and Nyimba, Kunda chiefs from Mambwe and selected Ngoni chiefs from Chipata.

After the event, President Banda toured markets by visiting the Saturday Market and later met his long-time friend Johabie Mtonga commonly known as Adada Biza.

Labels: RUPIAH BANDA, WORK ETHIC

posted by MrK @ 2:18 AM