Legends And Icons

Each successive generation looks to the previous generation for legends and icons to serve as role models that handover values and knowledge that is vitally required in the continuum of progressive social and economic development.

For many people the legends and icons are represented primarily by parents, and can be supplemented by teachers, church leaders, work colleagues, and even political leaders.

My personal legend and icon has been my father. A man that always said ‘I may not leave you with wealth, but I will certainly leave you with a good name’. For some, a good name is the greatest wealth that a parent can bequeath to them, while for others, cash in the bank and property is their life long dream being realized. Sadly, my father passed in Lusaka on Saturday 15 May 2010 at the ripe old age of 86. I am very fortunate to have received his good name and may his blessed soul rest in peace.

Now what remains behind for us are the lessons of life that we can use to navigate our own lives much more strategically as the errors and successes of our legends and icons become part of our own living history.

We celebrate Africa Freedom day every year and yet to many of us all we experience is another day off work and seldom do we fully appreciate the opportunity that the day commemorates in respect to uplifting our lives, and the lives of our children as we look to the future.

One might question the significance of legends and icons in relation to social and economic development of any country. For some it is obvious that there are linkages from one generation to another and the human development paradigm is channeled through this mechanism. For others there are options of books and the internet to provide all the necessary history and background that is required to propel development in this modern age. Albeit that all literature and even the internet has information mostly based on the perception of the author rather than on hard indisputable facts. This may explain why the world is in such a big social and economic mess at the moment.

Africa’s lack of rapid and sustainable development may be as a result of looking outward for the answers rather than looking inward for the legends and icons of our time.

Our minds have become so busy with conflicting information, irrational ideas, and wishful thinking, that we have mostly closed ourselves from other more progressive options that are right at our doorsteps.

Today, the lessons passed on by Nelson Mandela during the post democratic dispensation in South Africa, and the lessons that he articulated while in detention on Robben Island, risk being relegated to anecdotes rather than the blood, sweat and tears that they truly represent. Is modern day South Africa now more cognizant of the socially and economically marginalized lives of the poor masses across the country? When will this model nation of African development finally eliminate tin shack dwellings and almost zero education amongst its poor?

While the rest of Africa endeavors to emulate the South African city skyline and highway network, it may be useful for South Africa to look closer at the achievements made by Zambia and other African countries in the struggle for equitable access to decent housing and basic education for the vast majority of their people.

The legends and icons of Africa include Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Kenneth Kaunda, Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, Samora Machel, and Anwar Sadat. The history books written outside the continent tend to label these great heroes as dictators, delusional leaders, terrorists, and troublemakers. African literature records these leaders as champions of freedom, liberators, inspirational icons, promoters of Pan Africanism, and legends of our times.

Recent events bring to the fore some notorious icons such as the alleged drug lord and master criminal in Kingston Jamaica who commands such a strong following that members of the public are willing to put their lives on the line to break him out of police custody and set him free. One can reasonably conclude that a situation exists in Kingston where either the official system of government has failed the people and the alleged drug king has stepped in to provide the local people with opportunities and options for a livelihood, or the public have been corrupted and coerced into a life of lawlessness and anarchy.

The legends and icons of our time can therefore either bring us motivation, hope, and expectations for a better and brighter tomorrow, or they can help to plunder us into submission, misery, and darkness for the foreseeable future.

Zambia can begin to domestically build a living history of the legends and icons that have contributed to advancing the social and economic development of the country since the days of colonial rule. There are many silent heroes in our villages, towns, and cities whose lives and stories remain unspoken and undocumented. There are treasures of traditional and cultural oral literature that remain in the homes and eventually graves of unsung Zambian heroes. There is pride, confidence, and great lessons that are buried each day in our burgeoning cemeteries as great people bid farewell to this world and take their experiences and thoughts with them to the after life.

The legends and icons that survive in our communities today seem to be the mockers of integrity, the attackers of honesty, the fighters against sincerity, and the killers of truth. The generations of our youth that are exposed to this kind of icon have a bleak future ahead of them because the lessons that they learn are usually lessons on self destruction that can only bring shame and poverty to the nation.

It is every citizen’s responsibility to flush out the bogus legends and icons and usher in and hold up high the true heroes of our nation.

Every hard working man, woman, and child in this nation is material for tomorrow’s new legends and icons. Every honest and sincere person has the ingredients to become the hero of tomorrow.

The virtue of integrity and humility has the potential to fashion the character of the generation of tomorrow which is faced with the challenges of globalization, regional integration, and nation building in a hostile and very unfair world order in which the barbaric principle of the survival of the fittest and strongest still reigns.

Published 1 June 2010