National Mourning

Even though I never proved it, I learned that if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump away to safety. But, if you put the same frog in a pot with water at room temperature and slowly heat it up, it will die from the rising water temperature without moving. Of Course, I have never proved this theory. However, it is my wish that Zambians eventually take the approach of the frog when faced with death or a funeral. As a society, we must warm up to death and learn to accept it, live with it and move on to the next day. Death must not bring as to a stall.

We have evolved as a society and as the population has grown so have we been faced by many deaths. We must learn to adapt, mourn the deceased and let life go on for the living. Death is something that befalls everyone eventually. We must learn to live with it and in times of occurrences of death learn to move on and celebrate the life of our passing colleagues. Yes death is painful, but those that remain must learn to move on. Zambia is a Christian nation, thus its citizens and residents alike must know that death itself is not the end. The bible comforts us in John 14:1-3, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” Further comfort is found in 1Thesalonians 4:13,14; “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.  We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

Meet Omar (not real name)

Omar is a 36year old man who lives in Nyumbayanga not too far from his child hood home in Bauleni. Omar finds himself giving out a broad smile every time he sees a hearse or a convoy of cars heading to a funeral procession.

Apparently, the smile stems from an incident that happened 28years ago at his school when he was just in his 2^nd grade. Omar’s father had been called by the school authorities to be alerted of his son’s perpetual habit of reporting late for class. The father was surprised by the teacher’s statement and he immediately turned malevolently to his son in enquiry of an answer. Omar calmly responded, “Everyday as I walk to school, I find one convoy after another of cars headed for a burial or a memorial service at Leopards hill cemetery. My dad and my teacher tell me I have to stand in order to show respect to the deceased so I only continue walking after the last car has passed.”

This was Omar’s story. Every day he encountered several vehicles heading for burial and thus he stood still until the last car passed then he would continue his walk to school. No sooner had he started walking than another convoy appeared, also headed for burial and poor Omar would stop and stand still again. By the time he got to school he would be an hour late. The fact that he lived in Bauleni and went to Woodlands B primary school meant he had to walk along leopards hill road for long stretches.

A Zambian flag at half mast

Late Dr. FTJ Chiluba & Dr. Kenneth Kaunda singing with
Gospel Artiste Hezron Ngosa at late Dr.Patrick Levy Mwanawasa's funeral service

Effect on business & livelihood

Omar’s story highlights but an enigma caused by funerals bringing everything to a stop in our society. But my view of showing respect to the departed does not mean life has to momentarily come to a standstill. Every time a big shot dies and the government declares national mourning, Omar comes to mind. In Zambia, national mourning means, during such a period, all flags will fly at half-mast and activities of entertainment nature are postponed or canceled, radio and TV stations play solemn music and all sports events are canceled regardless of any TV broadcast agreements which need to be fulfilled.

The cancelation of football matches has really been a problem for the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ), which has had to postpone and reschedule local league fixtures despite South African sports broadcast giant Supersport having paid to air such games and reserved programming slots for such games. The buck doesn’t stop at football or sport, if you run a business in event management, PA system hire or any other of an entertainment nature then your business will suffer a loss of revenue during that mourning period. In the short term, those who run businesses in the entertainment industries suffer a loss of revenue but in the long term this could be a reduction on GDP.

There are also those people whose livelihood is entertainment. There are a lot of musicians whose album sales only add up to the cost of shooting a music video which they hope will catapult their popularity and consequently increase the album sales. Such a person survives on weekend ‘gigs’ hoping from one night club to the next every weekend. If consecutive weekends are declared mourning periods, then only God knows how they will make their bread

On a social perspective, If you are a young man who planned to wed on a particular date at a venue like The Mulungushi International Conference Center (MICC) you’d have to postpone your wedding. The cancelation will be done with little or no regard to other factor such as if one had paid air tickets flying out to a honeymoon destination the night after the wedding. I mentioned MICC because I assume some privately owned venues would probably ‘illegally’ allow the wedding to go ahead but any institution with government connections certainly wouldn’t.

What I have seen from other societies is that, when there is a national mourning or a state funeral they will not cancel all events, instead all commercial or sporting events will go ahead but preceded by a minute’s silence to show respect. The weekend of December 7^th and 8^th for instance saw all football matches in England start with a minutes applause from both teams and all spectators to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela. In South Africa itself, all football matches went ahead as well with respect shown before the match with a minute of silence.

My views... My thoughts
The problem with halting all activities is that as the population is growing and more people have served in one or more government positions or become prominent in other spheres of life, we will lose a lot of productive time each time any of them dies and more and more days are declared for national mourning. We can pay our respect to the departed without ceasing to live ourselves.

Having a minute of silence before a company unveils a new product is more beneficial to those still living and respectful to the departed and their family than having such an event canceled and everyone is cursing silently for lost time. Not too long ago, national mourning was declared and so many people kept asking questions trying to know who had died. It turned out that the deceased had been a minister of Agriculture in the UNIP government precisely around 1974. I don’t have the actual population distribution statistics for Zambia but I’d safely estimate that 60% of the people alive at the time the man's funeral was declared as national mourning hadn't heard of the man. Anybody born after 1968 would have been 6 years old in 1974 and may not remember anything from that year or years before.

In this kind of situation, the man is best honored by a state funeral and a minute of silence at all public events in that period and let the family who really suffer the loss to mourn their father, husband, uncle, brother, grandfather and whatever else he was to everyone close to him. This is more respectful. While everyone was asking who had died the radio stations stopped playing the mandatory solemn music but just switched to anything with a gospel tag. Unless Pompi’s giant killer and Marky II’s rap rendition in Bemba, of TI’s Halelujah qualifies to be solemn. I don’t think even Kings Malembe Malembe’s Rhumbaish dance gospel Pye pye pye is solemn.