FRAUGHT OF BAROTSE LAND AGREEMENT

ALL eyes and ears are in Western province the mother of the Barotse land as one tribe is already alleged to have been demanding for other ethnic groups to leave the province and the meeting championing this cause is set for today January 14, 2011.

And the Ministry of Home Affairs has equally sent 45 police officers to reinforce the security workforce in the province. The drama in the whole issue is that both government and the Barotse agreement royalists have failed to tell the Zambians the content of the document leaving the rest of the country innocent and ignorant over this tug of war.

The Barotse land agreement has been making souring headlines in the media and I shudder to think as to where the whole document is archived.

The first thing the people championing the restoration of the agreement should have done was making the document public so that lay men like me who just hear about the document can read through and make an informed decision and debate on the subject.

The government equally has been not fare to itself. The best it could have done is to publicize the document in the print media and ask the Zambian people to judge and decide if the demands of the agreement are genuine and worthy to restore.

So far the hear-say indicates that the agreement is all about the Lozis wanting to govern themselves or better still wanting to stand splendidly isolated from the central government and be controlled by the Litunga.

At the moment Zambians do not know whether it is government that is rigid or the other party, the situation which must be solved quickly to avoid any animosity that may arise from the subject.

According to Robert Litungu in his article which appeared in the Times of Zambia for January 12, 2011, the call by the Marotse aristocrats is also patronising and condescending. He said the agreement presupposes that the Barotse territory is a possession of the Litunga and his family, granted to them by the British, hence the British admirals uniform.

“Under the Barotse Royal Education (BRE) Khotla system, the chief’s family are made into district chiefs, (Post newspaper 07/01/2011) and are not tribal chiefs.
The indunas report to district chiefs. The same personnel determine matrimonial cases, the removal of villages from one induna to another and the question of how available funds are to be spent, without the least consciousness that each instance is a different function of Government.

”The restoration of the agreement would derogate from the human rights of the Nkoya and other tribes settled in Western Province.”  Read the full article in the Times of Zambia.