Jack Zimba

  Cut trees ready to be burnt into charcoal. Pictures: Kellie Bocxe   Gertrude Mwimba. A man ploughs a new field. Boys sit on fresh logs in the Mumbwa GMA. A man stands on a giant charcoal kiln measuring 40m, in the Mumbwa GMA. JACK ZIMBA WE HAD only driven a few hundred metres inside the Mumbwa Game Management Area (GMA), branching off from the M9, the road that leads to Mongu, when we found the first evidence of the destruction – a large charcoal kiln. When our vehicle came to a stop, a man and two young boys making the kiln took to their heels, disappearing behind the tall trees. Kennedy, one of the game rangers escorting us, counted about 50 fresh stumps of the mutondo tree around the kiln. He wagged his head, more in frustration than in disbelief. The game ranger has now become accustomed to such scenes in this protected swath of forest, which also acts as a buffer zone for the country’s largest wildlife sanctuary – the Kafue National Park, which occupies 22...

  JACK ZIMBA   O N OCTOBER 28, 1997, when a group of soldiers led by an army captain, Steven Lungu, who came to be known by his alias Captain Solo, attempted to overthrow the government of President Frederick Chiluba, a small group of Special Forces soldiers was summoned. Within a few hours, the coup was over, the renegade soldiers arrested, and the nation saved. Whether it is protecting the country from an internal or external threat, the Special Forces have been used as the last line of defence, and to carry out operations where conventional troops cannot be deployed or have failed, in most cases, beyond enemy line. Most recently, the Special Forces were called to action on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Congolese government troops had hoisted their country’s flag on Zambian territory. No-one from the Special Forces is willing to talk about the operation, code-named Operation Kulula, which ended the incursion, although it was widely repo...

  Col. Peter Malembeka at a shooting range at Mushili Barracks in Ndola. Picture courtesy WOII Ingwe Kipande (COMBAT CAMERA)   JACK ZIMBA HE IS standing tall and imposing – pistol in hand, and an Uzi Pro submachine gun slung across his shoulder - in a shooting range littered with countless cartridges emptied from different types of military firearms. Colonel Peter Malembeka is the man in charge of the Special Forces unit, popularly known as commandos, at Mushili Barracks in Ndola. And today, the men in maroon berets are using the Israeli-made Uzi and Jericho 941 pistols to fire at their targets, simulating urban warfare. Some men are taking turns on two sniper weapons on legs. One is the Russian Dragunov sniper rifle capable of taking out a target up to 1.5km away, while the other is an Israeli-made Galil sniper rifle. Col. Malembeka is not a man who leads from behind, pushing his troops. Rather, he likes barking orders from the front. When I ask him how he trains his men to...

JACK ZIMBA ON MONDAY, August 22, 1955, a young Irish Jesuit stepped off a plane at the City Airport (which is now a Zambia Airforce base in Longacres). It was his first visit to Africa, and he fell in love with it. He talks about the cheerfulness, generosity and openness of the Zambian people, as well as their suffering. A mathematics genius, he dedicated his life to educating young Zambians, and later to the fight against HIV and AIDS. Sixty-five years later, Father Michael Kelly says he is now looking forward to going home. And by “home”, he is not referring to his native country – Ireland - but to Heaven. In fact, Fr Kelly renounced his Irish citizenship in 1968 to become a Zambian citizen because, as he puts it, “I wanted to identify with the people of Zambia as wholly as possible”. “I’m Zambian through and through. I don’t have any other citizenship, and at the moment I don’t have any passport at all, either Zambian or any other, because the only passport I need is going up t...