Yearbook 2005
Zambia. According to countryaah, Lusaka is the capital and one of the major cities within the country of Zambia. The opposition was fiercely opposed to President Levy Mwanawasa throughout the year, who was accused of incompetence and authoritarian leadership. After a strike among the miners in the province of Copperbelt degenerated into riots and vandalism, the president ordered that Michael Sata, leader of the opposition party Patriotic Front, be arrested. According to local newspapers, Sata had acknowledged that he urged the workers to resort to violence to emphasize the demand for wage increases. He was prosecuted for both rioting and espionage, a criminal offense that in Zambia may include property destruction. Sata went free to the castle until further notice.
- Also see abbreviationfinder.org for how the acronym ZA stands for the country of Zambia and other meanings of this two-letter abbreviation.
Zambia’s third largest party, Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD), elected former finance minister Edith Nawakwi as new leader. She advocated a united opposition to the 2006 presidential and parliamentary elections and was at the forefront of demands for a new constitution. When a government-appointed commission proposed that the president’s power be limited and Parliament be told more about cheering the opposition, the government said no.
During the autumn, the government got more and more difficult. Like other countries in the region, Zambia was hit by severe drought and failed harvest, which led to sharply increased food prices. For a long time, the government claimed that it had the supply situation under control, but in September the import duty on maize was forced to drop and the private sector imported 200,000 tonnes. In November, it was clear that this was not enough, and the government declared that the country was in a state of disaster. It was appealed to the outside world for food for US $ 18 million since 10% of the residents were found to be near starvation.
In September, technical problems forced Zambia’s largest refinery to close. This led to severe fuel shortages that paralyzed the communications and caused Konkola Copper Mines, the country’s largest mining company, to threaten to temporarily shut down production. To solve the crisis, the government abolished the import duty of 5% on refined oil products, which meant a loss for the state of about SEK 18 million per month. The Minister of Energy had to take on the blame for the problems and resign.
Literature. – The fragmented literary picture of the territory that from 1980, with independence, took the name of Zimbabwe is a mirror of the historical events of the country, marked by the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. and by the numerous conflicts between local populations, especially between Shona and Ndebele, starting from the 19th century, for territorial hegemony. The English entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) prevailed over all of them who, from 1888, with a commercial agreement in the name of the British South African Company, subjected the country, rich in resources, which later took the name from him (Rhodesia).
If the best known literature is that in English, the first important works came out in shona and traced the history of this group threatened by internal and external enemies, as is evident in the historical novel Feso (1956) by Solomon Mutswairo (1924-2005) and in the epic poem Soko risiva musoro (1958, Tale without a head) by Herbert Chitepo (1923-1975). National history is also at the center of English-language fiction, including Stanlake JVT Samkange’s celebrated On trial for my country (1966) (19221988) and The coming of the dry season. (1972) by Charles Mungoshi (1947). It is still history that can be read in filigree in the exaltation of the landscape that Musaemura B. Zimunya (b.1947) puts into verse, as well as, more recently and explicitly, in the production of Chenjerai Hove (b.1956), in exile since 2001.
The best known among the writers of the Zambia is, however, Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1988), a student at Oxford, from which he was expelled, and a wanderer in London, whose visionary and cryptically modernist writing, testified by the poems but above all by the novel autobiographical The house of hunger (1978), cannot be ascribed to traditional stylistic elements. With an urban setting, but strongly symbolic despite its merciless realism, Marechera’s work has become a model for many young African writers. Equally representative is Tsitsi Dangarembga (v.) That with Nervous conditions (1988; trans. It. Nerve Conditions, 1991) produced one of the key texts of contemporary postcoloniality. Permeated by pre- and post-independence history, but framed in a feminine perspective, the work of Yvonne Vera (1954-2005), who lived for a long time in Canada and returned to Zambia shortly before her death, reworked the recorded horrors in a lyrical key. from history. His novels, including Nehanda (1993), Under the tongue (1997), burning Butterfly (2000; trans. It. The fire and the Butterfly, 2002) and The Stone Virgins (2002; trans. It. The virgins of rocks, 2004), have been translated into many languages and awarded in Zambia and abroad.
With a predominantly grotesque vein, the new writers have taken up the lessons of the generation that preceded them to re-read the tragic history that led to the current economic and cultural collapse of the country, which is why most of them reside abroad.: this is the case of Brian Chikwava (b. 1972), transplanted to London where he set his novel Harare North (2010); by No Violet Bulawayo (b. 1981) who from the United States entered the list for the Booker prize with We need new names (2013; trans. It. There is a need for new names, 2014); by Tendai Huchu (b. 1982), resident in Scotland and award-winning for The hairdresser of Harare (2010; trad. it. The hairdresser of Harare, 2014) or Christopher Mlalazi, of which Running with mother (2012; trad. It. Rudo’s escape towards the Phezulu mountains, 2014) should be noted.
