John Matshikiza
With the Lid Off
Lusaka looks sadly dilapidated these days. You can tell that no one really comes here because the huge, pompous international airport that was built in Kaunda’s heyday, shortly after independence in the 1960s, stands gaunt, faded and out of step with the times.
The car park is the same as it was way back then – a barren acre of tarred wasteland, unloved, like an abandoned drive-in cinema.
Half a dozen cars make the effort to slip into the slots closest to the terminal, but most people coming to meet or drop off passengers simply leave their cars idling against the kerb at the main doors. There are no officious traffic policemen to argue with. It’s not as if there is all that much traffic to obstruct, in any case.
The huge, Sixties, Chinese-style terminal building is all wasted symbolism, a high-ceilinged hall that promises a hive of activity, but turns out to be virtually empty. Even the check-in counters have long been moved to an enclosure on the side. All that vaulting, ambitious space is just space.
The real business of the airport takes place in breeze-block enclosures and tunnels off to the sides – a separate airport that operates independently of the massive, post-Maoist mausoleum.
The staff at the check-in counters are indifferent youths who couldn’t care less if you are happy to be arriving, have had a pleasant stay if you are departing, or might be inspired to visit their country in the future. They seem to be conserving their energies for the real lives that they will be leading after working hours, rather than applying them to the jobs they are (presumably) paid to do.
Some dumb expatriate student once described Lusaka to me as “the hub of the universe: the hub stays still while the rest of the universe moves on”.
In those days (the early Seventies) as an angry African teenager, I would bristle at this smug dismissal of the town where I was living. Sure, Zambia wasn’t terribly exciting, at the best of times. But we identified with it as a sort of flagship of the “African renaissance” of those times – a self-styled “humanistic, people-centred society”, not quite so uncompromisingly socialist as Nyerere’s Tanzania, to the east; not as obnoxious as Smith’s Rhodesia to the south, and not as creatively chaotic as Mobutu’s Zaire to the north.
It is never very promising to describe a country as being not what other countries are. But Zambia carried on in dull contentedness. It was a life, of sorts.
The universe has, indeed, moved on since then. Nyerere, Smith and Mobutu have all gone, along with Caetano, who held Zambia’s other neighbours, Angola and Mozambique, in thrall from distant Lisbon, and Vorster, who was the immovable logic of the Deep South. Kaunda is history, too.
Airports all over the world have grown, and continue to grow. Dar es Salaam, Kigali, and Kampala have all built new airport terminals to reflect a new age. Johannesburg airport’s car park is an open-ended, vertigo-inducing, mass- experience phenomenon, struggling to keep up with an ever-spiralling burden of incoming and outgoing traffic.
Only Lusaka airport remains the same. Somewhat to my chagrin, I have to concede that objectionable expatriate’s point from 20 years ago. Lusaka persists in being the motionless hub of the world.
The good thing about this frozen reality is that I am able to step back into it and follow the traces of my youth almost without missing a beat. I recognise few people in those old, familiar streets, but fall into the old ways with a new crowd that springs up around me.
The Artist Known as “Sakala” (names have been changed, on request, to protect the identities of the people concerned) was more or less a juvenile last time I was here. Now he, along with his partner-in- mayhem, the Artist Known as “Chilufya” (not his real name either) take me on a reckless series of peregrinations through the nightlife of the city.
Lusaka was always charmingly easygoing about colour. So the three of us – the Viking Sakala, the dread-locked Chilufya, and I – are not remarkable as we slip into the back of a slouch-bellied taxi and set off to see what the town has in store for us.
A mile down the road, the taxi stops dead. All is darkness. Out of the silence, the driver sighs an apology. He’s run out of petrol.
We get out and walk.
Another taxi stops for us. This time we make it as far as the main drag, known as Cairo Road, before this taxi also shudders to a halt. He, too, has run out of petrol. Yes, this is a typically Lusaka adventure.
We get out and walk.
The nightlife, when we finally tracked it down (on foot) was quite spectacular. I can’t remember everything that happened on that night, but I was heard tiptoeing into the house where I was staying somewhere around 4am – sure sign of a man who has had a good time (within the limits of decency, I hasten to add).
Lusaka’s unhurried pace has always been part of its charm. But as one gets older, the urgent desire to see growth rather than decay becomes stronger.
It was great to walk the paths of innocence once again. It was great to discover that the good times can still roll. But it would have been even better to be able to say that, even though the decay is a sign that the going is still tough, there are at least also signs that some tough Africans are starting to get going.
In Lusaka, alas, it seems like that’s still going to take some time.