The Lawyers of Chambia: Licensed Criminals for Criminals

By Moombe Namakobo

The book The Lawyers of Chambia (Licensed Criminals for Criminals) is a satire piece of work that is aimed to provoke the reader's thoughts in legal-related matters. More than getting a reader to think, the book seeks to drive readers to acquire general legal knowledge. The book also seeks to reduce the conflicts that arise between lawyers and their clients by provoking the reader to take interest in legal matters that affect them instead of totally and completely leaving all knowledge and responsibility of their personal legal problems to a lawyer. The book highlights the crucial role a legal system plays in the development of a country and the world at large.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669820161

Moombe Namakobo

The author is a Zambian citizen born on October 10, 1986, in Choongo village, Monze district of Southern province. He is the third child in a family of seven. The author attended nine different schools from grade 1 up to grade 12. He studied agricultural engineering at the biggest agricultural college in the country, the Natural Resources and Development College, where in 2010, he obtained his diploma. The author also obtained a certificate in Zambian law from Copperline University in 2020. The author is married with three children. The author currently works for the Ministry of Agriculture in Chililabombwe District of the Copperbelt province. The hobbies of the author are farming, reading political articles, and most of all singing which is why the author is also a singer and song writer who has recorded gospel music. The author has written a lot of unpublished works since 2005 when he completed high school at David Kaunda Technical High School. The interest to write is born from a strong desire to add a voice to matters that affect society.

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Copyright © 2022 by Moombe Namakobo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/22/2022

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T HE DAY IS October 34, 2021. The sunrises and shines its morning rays on

the happy singing people all dressed in beautiful matching colors of copper, green, and black. The old, walking on their three legs, have their eyes shining with a sense of renewed hope that maybe this year’s celebrations will validate their youthful fight for the freedom of their country. The young are excited with very little understanding as to why. It is in the constitution of this great republic that every thirty-fourth of October, everyone must be happy and failure to be happy is a treasonous offense.

So yes, the flag is flying high because this is the Independence Day for the great Republic of Chambia. People are gathered for the ceremonial singing of the national anthem to symbolize their independence from colonial rule. A half-intoxicated youth starts the singing as everyone joins in,

"Standa singo Chambia proud anfri

Landofweke njoi yuniti

Visters in the struggle for rera,

We wo freedom fight

Owa stronge Fri.

Praise be to Go

Praise be praise be praise be

Bless agrenatie

Chambia Chambia Chambia

Fri minista under the frag of our right,

Chambia praise to vis

Owa strong enfri"

Yep, yep! But before they could say hurray, an old man who was slowly walking with the help of a walking stick toward the singing crowd screamed, Shut up! Stop it! Proud and free nothing!

Sudden silence swept through the crowd as everyone turned toward the screaming voice. He didn’t expect that his angry shout would effectively silence the happy crowd that easily. When everyone kept quiet and gave him the unexpected attention, he got a bit embarrassed, paused both his walk, and talk briefly before he collected himself to suit the moment. He shrugged his shoulders to signify composure and started speaking in a calmer voice without losing the determination with which he shouted his audience to silence.

We have nothing. It’s all lost. Our struggle was for nothing. I wish my forefathers didn’t run away from the slavery ship, maybe my children would have ended up going to live in one of the developed countries. Who knows, maybe we would be living in Europe, you know, being a British citizen. Maybe my children would have become successful musicians like Jaicko Mackson in America which would have been a better life than living in this so-called my country where I don’t own anything.

The words of the old man were as confusing as they were intriguing and no one seemed to understand what he was talking about. Not having the courage to ask him the people in the crowd murmured questions among themselves, What is he talking about? Is he drunk from the pre-independence celebrations?

No am not drunk. His authoritative voice interrupted to the embarrassment of the person who asked the question.

Someone in the crowd pushed his way toward the old man and called out, Mr. Jumbe? Almost as if to confirm whether he had correctly identified the old man’s voice. Mr. Jumbe, the young man called out again with a tone of positive identification this time.

What is happening and why are you not in your copper gown? The young man asked intentionally to address what he suspected to be everyone’s concern.

The Chambian economy was mine driven, and copper was the major mineral produced by the mines. As a matter of fact, Chambia was one of the highest producers of copper in the world only second in Africa. Even though its citizens were not really benefiting fairly from the copper proceeds, it still remained a symbol of pride for the country.

This pride was why the main color of the national flag was copper. To celebrate the wealth of the country, people would wear copper colored attires at national events, especially the Independence Day. Therefore, to see someone not putting on their copper attire on Independence Day was almost viewed as treasonous as being sad on Independence Day and Mr. Jumbe had committed both offenses.

Mr. Jumbe was a well-known and once well-respected man in this small town of Chilango. He was once a rich man who had done a lot for his community. As a private individual member of the community, Mr. Jumbe had done more for Chilango town than any politician who ever represented Chilango as a member of parliament. But lately, Mr. Jumbe seems to have gone through major changes in his life. He no longer lives in his luxury up-market mansion but he has relocated into a house in the low-class residential area from which he had to remove his tenant.

There has been a lot of speculation about what could be happening in the lives of the Jumbes. Those who know him personally say he never used to drink as much as he does now. It was extremely unexpected of him not to be beautifully adorned in the symbolic attires of copper on the Independence Day of Chambia and contemptuously looking this sad. Usually, he has the fanciest designer attire made of the colors of the Chambian flag which are black and green in addition of course to copper. He is usually out there giving speeches with visiting government officials as a free man of Chilango town, a status he was given by the Chilango Municipal Council for the many works he has done in the community.

In fact, in the years past, he wouldn’t have been here with this group but would have been celebrating the Independence Day at an official venue arranged by the office of the district commissioner. The fact that he is here, and not in the expected attire makes people even more curious. It is perhaps this curiosity about him that has made this singing group give him all the attention.

The wealth of our nation is gone. The taxpayers’ money, mostly collected from the poor, all gone; the strategic government assets all gone including our land and soon we will have nowhere to go when the Chinese come for their money, narrated the old man who by this time was given a log to seat on under a tree while everybody surrounded him.

Gone where, who has taken our wealth? popped the questions from the crowd which was still deciding whether this was a man out of his mind or something serious had just befallen mother Chambia. As he opened his mouth to respond to his confused audience, fresh bird droppings from the tree dropped on his head from a bird that had just u turned, failing to get into its nest because of the crowd beneath the tree. Some naughty teenagers could be heard trying to harbour laughter. The site of a soiled old man was tickling to the youthful ones, but mature people rushed to attempt to clean him up out of respect as they admonished the undisciplined teenagers to shut up.

Just leave me like this. What difference does it make if you remove the bird droppings from my head? Everyone here has droppings on their head, except only mine are visible. The young ones touched their heads in confusion to confirm what he was talking about.

The grown-ups, on the other hand, could tell that such words from an old man were pregnant with meaning and a signal that something serious had happened. They stopped with their interruptive questions and decided to listen.

"Shame on all of us. We all deserve to be laughed at for walking around with pride not realizing that we have bird poop on our heads.

"While we sing praises and dance for our political leaders who are supposed to take care of our resources, they have siphoned all our money using our best lawyers into personal accounts. They incautiously throw money during political campaigns and then take pictures of our poor women and youth fighting to get a note or two to buy food. Such treatment only befits an unloved dog. Like fools, we clap for such treatment from our politicians.

"While they treat us like less animals, the lawyers are busy facilitating the siphoning of our money through fake companies and dubious contracts. Our money has gone to the ends of the world in offshore accounts. The millions they keep in their houses they mockingly call them pocket change in their parliamentary debates on national television.

Every time they call for political meetings, they buy beer for our youth and throw money so that like fools we keep praising them. Now you tell me my bird poop is more humiliating than that! Yes, we all have bird poop on our heads. Our country is breaking and it is all thanks to the lawyers who have made it possible for all kinds of thieves and criminals to come and rape our country, to rape and reap off its economic flesh ’till it is all but a pile of dry bones, lamented the old man.

"In 1964, we fought for independence from the colonial rulers because we wanted to be masters of our destiny. We wanted to create equal opportunities for all of ourselves in education, health, and ownership of property with our government facilitating on behalf of its people. Our forefathers chanted, fought and some in the process died just so that we could rule ourselves. The colonial masters eventually gave in and allowed us to rule ourselves.

Chambia was ours finally with all its resources at our disposal to develop our lives. We gave authority to our government to collect taxes to mobilize resources to realize our developmental agenda; in order to be able to make our own budget and share our wealth equitably. Our future was set, but after collecting so much money in taxes and getting even much more through borrowing, all that money has disappeared.

The crowd was now getting angry. The information the old man was sharing was beginning to unsettle his listeners. It was beginning to ring familiar bells. You see, after the glorious attainment of independence and the self-rule that saw Chambia begin to make her own decisions, things took a wrong turn somewhere. Chambia was doing well for herself initially, it built two universities and other training schools. Chambia had industries and companies that were run by the state.

Chambia was running a socialist government which later became difficult and expensive to manage. Most of the companies the government was running were not making as much profits as was necessary to keep them sustainable while some were just loss-making altogether.

Grappling to keep the economy running, Chambia went on a path of borrowing until the debt which was supposed to be the solution became the major problem. The country of Chambia had gone through a deep economic pit hole that it ended up in a debt trap so devastating that the country could not manage to run its state enterprises.

Through the international monetary fund, a decision was made to privatize the economy so that the government could concentrate on service delivery. It was decided that the economy should be run by the private sector which would source for the required expertise, especially in the mining sector which was the country’s chief revenue source. The decision was also deemed to be appropriate because it would help the government avoid wastage of resources through paying wages and general maintenance costs for some companies that were making losses.

After independence, most experts who used to run the mines went back to their country leaving local people who had not yet fully gained the necessary experience to run the mines profitably. Therefore, selling off these companies was deemed the best recovery path for Chambia but this was easier said than done. The privatization of the state companies was grossly mismanaged. Most companies were sold at way lower values than their actual values.

Most government officials and their friends ended up being the new owners of these companies. They’d go on for decades to blame one another, for political expedience, about who was more guilty than the other for the mismanaged privatization process. Some companies were liquidated sending thousands of employees into destitution, a lot died of depression. The majority of these