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The paradox of Junkies; quarantine might be the ultimate solution by Bill Kaping’a

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The so-called Junkies have been hitting the news lately, well……. for all the wrong reasons. They’ve been wreaking havoc in the Capital Lusaka breaking into motor vehicles and getting away with valuable items, ransacking market stalls and helping themselves with merchandise, staging robberies and of course, ‘baptizing’ innocent victims with unprintable or literally beating up anyone who dares cross their paths.

But who are these junkies, anyway?

They are basically ‘graduates’ from our streets. In their early or late teens, they’ve previously eked a living on the streets doing odd jobs, asking for alms from would-be good Samaritans or indeed eating from dumpsites. However, the Junkies are now in their adolescence and can’t stand the shame of engaging in any of the aforementioned activities as they’ve done in the past. They’ve now retreated to the shanty compounds and organized themselves into gangs and go about brutalizing and terrorizing innocent members of the public whilst high on drugs or inebriated, hence the moniker – the Junkies!

The Copperbelt province, Kitwe in particular, is yet to witness an escalation of such a conundrum as the potential Junkies are being kept busy at the fast-diminishing Black mountain where they are busy scavenging for chrome which they can at least sale at a good profit! But alas, once the portion that has been allocated to the community is exhausted, we shudder at the thought of what these youngsters may resort to.

Following numerous complaints from members of the public, Minister of Homes Affairs Hon. Jack Mwimbu issued a directive to the police last week to immediately put their boots on the ground and flush out these misfits. And as sure as night follows the day, agile men and women in combat gear swiftly moved in and did the needful.

Although general members of the affected communities can finally breathe a sigh of relief…….at least for now, the problem is far from over. Unless we get to the root cause of the problem; we can fill up the entire Chimbokaila prison with all the ragamuffins but many more Junkies shall surely arise in the nearest future and come back to haunt us.

As earlier alluded to, the junkies are obviously ‘graduates’ from our streets – they are former street kids! If we are to nip the problem in the bud, we must adopt a fire brigade approach start providing practical solutions to street kids before they evolve into junkies otherwise it may be too late. Since most of these kids at least have a home where they come from, government should consider joining forces with NGOs, the church and corporate entities alike and establish Welfare centers in our communities where “children at risk” may not only go and pass their leisure time constructively, but equally access education or skills training and a warm meal as an incentive.

With the introduction of free education by the New Deal Administration, one would have expected all the kids to be in school, and yet we still see some of them loitering the streets. We mustn’t pretend and ignore the fact that there are several inherent factors that still force or attract certain kids to be on the streets. Whereas some may be running away from abuse, neglect or hunger at home, others are just plain stubborn kids who are not keen to be controlled. It would therefore be prudent for us to stop looking at street kids as a singular problem but tackle the issue on a case-by-case basis. Whereas those running away from abuse or starvation at home might just require alternative solutions such as safe homes or welfare centers as possible interventions, a bit of coercion might suffice for truant ones. These are the ones that deserve to be ‘locked’ away under the watchful eye of ZNS!

As we may be aware, Junkies are already proving to be a pain in the neck, their age notwithstanding. Imagine the scale of violence they may unleash on society in a few years’ time once they are old enough? We’d easily go back to those spine-chilling episodes of the early 1980s when the Copperbelt province was renowned for dreadful crimes.

Instead of just dumping them at penitentiaries as a possible deterrent and offloading them back into the community after a while, the Junkies ought to be ‘quarantined’ in far-flung areas under the auspices of ZNS. Apart from the rigorous routine of counselling and rehabilitation, the Junkies should undergo mandatory training in agriculture and other practical skills such as carpentry, bricklaying, mechanics, and welding. Once they are done with training, they can be engaged in productive activities such as crop production or animal husbandry and rewarded some sort of remuneration from the profit made.

Of course, we are not suggesting that the Junkies must be isolated from society until the return of Jesus! Those who have demonstrated exemplary conduct may be ‘excused’ from the programme in good time and assisted to set up their own ventures while the unrepentant ones may still remain yoked to the programme until they have completely reformed.

These are our humble thoughts; what’s your take on this?

Strictly Personal

Off we go again with public shows, humbug and clowning, By Jenerali Uliwengu

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The potential contestants in the approaching elections are already sizing themselves up and assessing their chances of fooling their people enough for them to believe that they are truly going to “bring development” to them.

 

I mean, you have to be a true believer to believe that someone who says they have come to offer their services to you as your representative in the local council or in the national parliament and they tell you that they are going to build your roads to European standards, and your schools are going to be little Eatons; your hospitals are going to be better and more lavishly equipped than the Indian hospitals, where many of our high-placed people go for treatment, and your water supply will be so regular that you have to worry only about drowning!

 

I mean no exaggeration here, for the last time we had the occasion to listen to such clowns — five years ago — we heard one joker promise he would take all his voters to the United States for a visit.

 

He was actually voted to parliament, or at least the cabal acting as the electoral commission says he was. He has never revisited that promise as far as I can remember, but that must surely be because he is still negotiating with the American embassy for a few million visas for his voters!

 

Yes, really, these are always interesting times, when normally sober people turn out to be raving mad and university dons become illiterate.

 

Otherwise tell me how this can happen: Some smart young man or woman shows up in your neighbourhood and puts up posters and erects stands and platforms for the campaign and goes around the constituency declaring his or her ardent desire to “develop” your area by bringing in clean and safe water, excellent schools, competent teachers, the best agricultural experts as extension officers, etc, etc.

These goodies

At the time this clown is promising all these goodies, you realise he has been distributing money and items such as tee-shirts, kitenge prints, khangas, caps as well as organising feeding programmes, where everyone who cares can feed to satiation and drink whatever they want with practically no limitation.

Seriously, I have been asking myself this question: Would you employ a young man who shows up at your front porch and tells you he is seeking a job to develop your garden and tells you that, while you are thinking whether to employ him, “Here is money for you and your family to eat and drink for now!”

Now, if we think such a man should be reported to the police or taken to a mental institution, why are we behaving in exactly the same way?

Many a time we witness arguments among countrymen trying to solve the conundrum of our continued failure to move forward economically, despite our abundant resources, and it seems like we haven’t got a clue.

But is this not one of the cues, if not probably the most important clue, that we have not found a way to designate our leaders?

It ought to be clear to any person above childhood that this type of electoral system and practice can never deliver anything akin to development or progress.

Now, consider that we have being doing this same thing over and over — in many of our countries elections follow a certain periodicity like clockwork — but we have not discovered the truth.

Put simply, our politics is badly rigged against our people, and elections have become just devices to validate the political hooliganism of the various cabals running our countries like so many Mafia families.

Knee-jerk supporters

We have so demeaned our people, whom we have turned into knee-jerk supporters of whoever gives them food and drink around election time, that now they say that at least at election time it is their turn to eat, which means, naturally, that at all other times it is the turn of the ones who “bring development” to the people.

Clearly, this is not working, and it is no wonder that dissatisfaction and frustration are rife, as our people cannot put a finger to the thing that holds them back.

Apart from these sham elections, from time to time, the rulers organise shows designed to make the people believe that somebody is concerned about their problems.

We have one such masquerade happening in Tanzania right now, where public meetings are organised so people can vent their frustration. But these will never solve any problems; they are just shows.

If the elections we have been holding had any substance, there would not be any need for such public shows, except those organised by those people we elected.

Where are they? What is the use of spending so much money and other resources to erect and maintain a political system that has to be propped by public shows, where people come to vent their grievances over the hopelessness of the system in place?

I am just asking.

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Strictly Personal

Road deaths are symbolic of our national failure, By Tee Ngugi

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“Killer roads claim 25 lives,” screamed the headline of the Daily Nation on March 18. Among this number were 11 Kenyatta University students, who died in a grisly road accident on the Nairobi- Mombasa highway.

The report gave chilling statistics on the ever-worsening road carnage. The 25 died in a span of three days. Between January and February 20, a staggering 649 people lost their lives on our roads.

What these statistics show is that we are well on our way to breaking the annual record of deaths on our roads.

Roads are deadlier

In a column in 2022, Kenyan roads are deadlier than some of the battlefields, I gave some comparative statistics to illustrate just how deadly our roads are.

I stated: “In 2021, more than 4,000 people lost their lives (in Kenya). By contrast, the UK, with a population of 65 million people and 32 million cars, recorded 1,400 deaths on the roads in 2021.

“In Germany, within a comparable period, about 2,500 people died on the roads in a population of 85 million people and 48 million cars.
“Thus, Kenya, with a population of 50 million people and only two million cars, registered more deaths on the roads.”

I went on to show that the deaths on our roads in 2021 were twice the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 20-year period.

If these statistics are not enough to wake up our somnolent officials, then nothing ever will.

Not the avoidable deaths during droughts. Not the deaths caused by collapsing buildings. Not the sky-high cases of femicide.

Not the cry of millions who sleep hungry every day as officials fly around in helicopters. Not the alarming numbers of street families.
Not the despair of millions of unemployed youth. Not the squalor in our unplanned towns and cities.

Nothing will wake these officials. In any case, as the Daily Nation of March 19 on globe-trotting officials showed, when awake, our officials are travelling to the next European destination or, as the countless cases of theft being reported almost daily in all media show, they are busy lining their already saturated pockets.

Now, Kenya wants to send its police to Haiti to rein in marauding gangs that control most of the capital. Do our officials, or citizens, ever ask themselves how Haiti became what it is?

Cursed by God

Haiti is not cursed by God. It got that way because of systematic plunder by officials over the years.

It became what it is because of officials not performing their duties to required standards, and not being sanctioned for it.

It became that way because its officials love nothing more than to cavort in Paris or Miami, rather than think about how to transform the lives of their people.

Every day in our papers, we read about the conduct of our officials that mirrors the behaviour that led to Haiti becoming the broken country it is today.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

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