Sanitation Isn't Everyone’s Business. Or Is it??

 The article below 1st appeared in the Zambia Daily Mail Newspaper of 26th November 2022.

“Sanitation is everyone’s business.”

Those were the words of Vice President W.K. Mutale Nalumango as she officially opened the Second Sanitation Summit held in Lusaka on 18^th and 19^th November 2022 under the theme The Sanitation Economy: Making the Invisible Visible.

Organized by the Ministry of Water Development and Sanitation and its partners in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector, the purpose of the summit was to stimulate political and technocratic will on existing commitments made during the First National Sanitation Summit in November 2018 and to accelerate action aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene services for all and ending open defecation by 2030.

Participants were drawn from the Government, Traditional Leadership, the United Nations, Cooperating Partners, Non-Governmental Organizations, academia, private sector, and the media.

The event was deliberately timed to coincide with commemoration of World Toilet Day on 19^th November, a day that reminds us of urgent need to tackle the sanitation crisis. Resolutions from the summit will be codified into a Statement of Action that will help Government and other stakeholders implement the various commitments to improve sanitation in the country. 

Like other UN members, Zambia has signed up to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), all of which have to be attained by 2030. SDG 6 enjoins member countries to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Zambia is behind on this goal of ensuring safe toilets for all by 2030. That is why it is important for all stakeholders in the WASH sector, with strong Government leadership, to implement the various commitments and national strategies to improve the state of sanitation in the country.

Although the United Nations officially recognised access to sanitation as a human right 12 years ago through Resolution 15/9, many people still lack access to safely managed sanitation. Many do not even have a decent toilet of their own. 

Safely managed sanitation is the bedrock to protecting groundwater and positively contributes to good health outcomes. The failure by one household to construct a proper septic tank or pit latrine frustrates not only current aspirations but also the future ability to access clean and safe groundwater.

To achieve progress, all stakeholders should understand their obligations and responsibilities to reach everyone with sanitation services, hence the clarion call by the Vice President that “sanitation is everyone’s business.”

Sanitation is  not just about a clean environment.  The Sanitation Economy has the potential of monetising toilet provision, products and services to provide benefits across businesses and society. This can be done in many ways such as converting faeces to fertilizer and biogas and supporting the entire sanitation value chain.

There are several windows of opportunity for the sanitation subsector.

For instance, taking advantage of the increase in Constituency Development Fund (CDF), local authorities could scale up sanitation efforts and partner with private sector to achieve sustainable service delivery. The increase in CDF thus presents unlimited opportunities for the private sector and local authorities to tackle some of the sanitation challenges communities face.

Most, if not all, of the mushrooming informal settlements in Zambia are not connected to either water or sewerage systems, leaving that to individuals as they construct their houses.

In addition, most families still rely on privately-owned boreholes and shallow wells which – if not properly managed – are often contaminated with raw sewage.

Commercial utility companies have the mandate to inspect and ensure property developers comply with prescribed guidelines in the construction of water and sanitation facilities. However, enforcement remains inadequate and in some cases absent.

Non-traditional markets such as rural areas have for a long time been considered unattractive to private sector due to their perceived lack of profitability. But with appropriate risk management tools, market assessments and linkages, private sector should be encouraged to enter rural markets and provide sanitation services. 

Promoting the sanitation economy is not a zero-sum game but a win–win situation, protecting groundwater against faecal contamination whilst making a livelihood out of it.

Investing in sanitation has positive economic returns like creating jobs and contributing to energizing the economy. Failure to invest in sanitation has a huge negative impact on a nation’s economy through mortality and morbidity arising from diarrheal diseases caused by contaminated groundwater.

THE NAME OF THE GAME: CORRUPTION

Almost a week to the first ever World Cup in the Middle East, taking place in the natural gas reserves and oil reserves rich country of Qatar, American streaming giant Netflix released FIFA Uncovered, a four-part documentary highlighting the global scale of the corruption that was happening at Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the world football governing body. HOW CONVENIENT? 

Throughout the documentary – and of course from the discourse that emerged after the awarding of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup – one country comes out as ‘The One’ which should have been given the hosting. I will leave this to you to find out on your own. However, here is what I have leant from this documentary:

Blatter was never loved by his people in Europe

?

In 2002 FIFA presidential election, UEFA supported Issa Hayatou's – the then Cameroonian football executive and president of the Confederation of African Football - FIFA presidency ambitions because they were just looking for someone they could control after failing to control Blatter. Isn’t this hypocrisy

Was FIFA corrupt?

Certainly. As late the Lucky Dube concisely had put it in his song titled Freedom, too much power in one man’s hands is dangerous. You can have such a huge organization that is only accountable to itself with carte blanche to make decision. As a result, corruption was institutionalized in the organization.

Prior to the 2002 FIFA election, Emmanuel Maradas - who was Blatter's advisor Africa and behind African Soccer Magazine - claimed that Sepp gave him money which he distributed to all Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA) members to help them build Football Association (FA) Headquarters to the tune of $400,000 each. But from the documentary, this money was never audited nor were the FAs requested to report back. How much did our own Football House cost to build?

Did Blatter sell the World Cup to Qatar?

According to this documentary, Blatter was also against giving the World Cup to Qatar because inter alia, Qatar’s lacked the football culture and enough infrastructure to hold a world cup as all the stadiums and hotels had to be built from nothing. He was also betrayed like everyone else that feels betrayed. The real villains are Jack Warner (CACACAF), Issa Hayatou (CAF), Michel Platini (UEFA) and Nicolas Leoz (CONMEBOL) who used their influence to tip the scale towards Qatar. Muhammad Bin Hammam (AFC), on the other hand, was just being patriotic. He was the son of the soil.

When some country lost the 2022 World Cup hosting rights, they went flat to bring FIFA down. Would we have known about FIFA's corruption if they had won? I leave you to answer this. Corruption is a consumer satisfied crime. When both sides are happy, everything's cool. We mask corruption with nice names when we are involved: gifts, blessings, answered prayers, deserving and all sorts.

Causes of corruption

There are many causes of corruption but in this documentary, they are twofold: the greedy and insatiable appetite of those in privileged position. And poverty.

I want to talk about the latter since the former is well known with several examples from people hoarding money in their homes and fields to people acquiring property within a short period without a clear financial trail.

Poverty is rarely seen as an enabler of corruption. While poverty in the north is caused by greed, corruption in the south is mainly caused by poverty. One thing that is also clear from this documentary is that to fight corruption, you have to fight poverty first. The documentary offers reasons as to why vote buying may have influenced in Qatar hosting this world cup:

• Qatar sponsored the CAF conference that was held in Luanda, Angola.
• Qatar paid $1,500,000 to Cameroon, Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire FAs presidents for ‘their countries’ football development.’
• Qatar gave cheap oil deals to a number of countries.
• Qatar Airways started flying to new destinations where they didn’t initially go before their world cup campaign was launched.
• Politicians at the highest level of governments and politics would see this as an opportunity to push for their ambitions. Leaders like Nicolas Sarkozy and Lula da Silva got involved to broker vote buying.

To be clear, I’m not trying to be a corruption apologist. Far from it. I believe that corruption is a crime against humanity and should be treated as such. But what I’m trying to dispel is the perception that the South is more corrupt than the North. And yet it’s the banks in the North that advices how to avoid tax and hugely benefits from corrupt transaction from the South.

Is the anger towards Qatar justifiable?

Not at all. Like South Africa which ended up paying $10,000,000 in the name of Diaspora Funds (whatever that meant) to Jack Warner in exchange for votes to host the 2010 World Cup, Qatar was also taken advantage of by these players of the game. Qatar may have parted away with so much looking at how many people and governments they had to engage to win the 2022 World Cup hosting rights.

Why are people angry at Qatar then? Because of how political this World Cup has been, its difficulty to really ascertain the validity of the human rights abuse claims. We should never have allowed politics to infiltrate football, we have created a monster that will be impossible to slay. In this case, anger stems more from those that feel entitled to have hosted this World Cup. It is called transferred aggression or misdirected aggression. This happens when a person feels threatened or upset by an outside stimulus but is unable to focus their animosity on the stimulus. Whoever is weakest and closest to the offender may be the target of their aggression. This is Qatar’s position since FIFA has been ‘cleared’. South Africa suffered a similar bad publicity leading to the 2010 World Cup. And so, did Brazil in 2014 and Russia in 2018.

Next week, the global showpiece begins in Qatar. We will be watching as we whet our appetite for the 2026 World Cup which will be held by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Coincident? 

Kaputa District Celebrates Open Defecation Free status

 After having been certified and declared open defecation free (ODF) in 2021, Kaputa district held its celebration on Friday, 21st October 2022. The celebration was also used as an opportunity to recognize community members for their hardworking through the awarding of certificates to al the 212 headpersons and Community Champions who pushed for such an achievement. This makes Kaputa the 5th ODF district (out of 116 districts) in Zambia. ODF is a situation when the entire communities have shifted to using toilets instead of open spaces. a highly undignifying practice. This practice is a common cause of diarrheal diseases as human waste usually returns to communities through many pathways and contaminates streams and wells, which in most cases, are the only source of drinking water. Despite more than a year having past from the time certification was made, the district has managed to sustain the achievement (for now) by having approaches that are encouraging people to climb the sanitation ladder and also be their 'neighbours keepers' in providing peer to peer sanitation compliance monitoring.

To show its commitment to ensuring that the entire country is by 2030, Government of Zambia rolled out the 2030 ODF Strategy and has courted many stakeholders to realize this vision. One of the approaches government and development agencies are using to achieve this the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), an innovative methodology for mobilizing communities to raise sanitation and hygiene standards in their localities.  In Zambia, CLTS programming has been using a 3 Rope Approach (3RA) or 3-pronged approach as a facilitation management strategy with traditional leaders, civic leaders and technocrats forming a power influence triangle to scale up access to good sanitation.

The Kaputa achievement wouldn't have been made possible without the leadership from traditional leaders - Senior Chief Kaputa and Chief Mukupa Katandula - who provided and continues to do so through a quarterly monitoring of all villages and weekly radio program dubbed Community Concerns, the backstopping by penalizing defaulters on the agreed-on by-laws which pushed for a greater sanitation coverage and positive CLTS outcomes. Working with District Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Education (D-WASHE) committees, the project mobilizes communities to act on improving household sanitation and hygiene through the construction of toilets and installation of handwashing stations.

The private sector must see this as an opportunity for introducing and strengthening the sanitation value chain. This will reduce the possibility of slippage and provide people with wider sanitation options. ODF achievement involves to a great work of behavioural change, sustenance of which requires concerted efforts by all stakeholders.

https://melomediazambia.com/2022/11/01/kaputa-district-celebrates-open-defecation-free-status/

The Pastor, The Pagan and His Reminisce

I was a pastor at a small church of about 50 members, a church where everyone knows everyone. Because of most people being late for the Sunday morning service which resulted into most coming at 11 AM for the service that was meant to start at 9 AM, I had to change the time for Sunday meeting from 9AM – 12 AM to 2PM – 5 PM. To allow people to attend to household chores and responsibilities in the morning have ‘Time for The Lord’ in the afternoon.

One Sunday I 'discovered' a cute, strange face as I was trying to expound the Bible. After the service I tried to play the I-didn’t-see-you game. But the man in me and his instincts pushed me to the person I had seen earlier, I approached the stranger and started doing what pastor do when they see a new face in church.

As I was moving towards her, she turned, and our eyes met. Suddenly, I forgot where I was and what I wanted to do. Like someone who is sleeping during the day, I could hear the chatters. But unintelligible. Rapid short sounds suggestive of a language I fully understand but here it was inarticulate and indistinct. Then some mentioned the word ‘Pastor’. Boom, I climb down from the scaffold I was using when building my castles in the air.

‘How are you sister’ I was first to speak.

Then my eyes started racing through her morphology, head to toe and back again using the same route.

Then the thought of marriage came to my mind. I remembered the points which father had given me on one of the many wife-choosing-criteria lessons.

‘You see my son, if you want to enjoy your marriage, if you want your wife to be giving you the respect, if want you her to be happy….’

He proceeded to swallow an ocean of saliva that had gathered in his mouth.

You must………….

He swallowed again. My patience would be ebbing away whilst anxieties headed exactly the opposite direction. My heart started racing because father was a man of few words. He kept most of the stories, advices, and anger to himself. I remember him claiming that I may have been cursed by the gods for not marrying yet. He called me a bat. According to him, like a bat, I was in the category of the have-eyes-but-cannot-see type. These are people, as he claimed, who are indecisive. Those, in this case, who competent enough to have their marriage arranged. These arrange marriage ceremonies were usually held at night. I can’t really my finger on why this is the case. The following day one will wake up with the desire, of course not without trepidation, of wanting to see the face of the love of their life.

‘You must find a decent girl and she must have your beliefs. You must marry someone who will be motivating you, someone who will act as you counsel. Look at you mother, she has made me to be like this………

While saying this he was pointing at what we, at the house, all knew as a bookshelf but to others it was just two pieces of planks attached to the wall. This bookshelf only had one whole book, the Bible. Others were pieces of paper on various subjects. It was engraved in me that whenever father made such a venerate pointing, I needed to rush to the shelf and get him his bible. I think the bible was older than all his children. Including his marriage.

I stood up, made a step, stretched out my right hand, grabbed the Bible and pass it to my left hand. I then made a stance, and down I went on my knees while stretching out my hand and fingers diligently holding the Bible. I respected the man whose prowess and viability facilitated by being on earth.

He perused through the through to the book of Psalms trying to find a verse.

Iron sharpens iron……………….mmmmmmmm……………………

I could hear him say to himself as he perused through and through the ripped pages of his Bible. Of course, I knew that it was Proverbs 27:17 he was looking for but hey I couldn’t spoil his moment. Never rain on someone’s parade.

As he was busy flapping from the first Psalm to the last and back again, there was this loud silence as I was thinking how long his advice was going to last since it seemed a century had passed already.

Suddenly, there was this sound blast, which almost had my brain crushed. I tried to reconstruct what I had heard in an understandable way. Luckily my brain did a quick reboot.

Fine, thank you. How are you pastor?

A sweet girlish voice brought me back to reality.

Are you coming to join our church or maybe you’re just visiting our church? I asked.

I am assessing and if I am happy, I will be congregating with your church.

Fair enough this is one of the most honest answers I have ever heard, I thought to myself.

Forgive my manners, may I know your name and where you are staying? I finally remembered that I still don’t who she’s is.

I’m Mikayeli Mwinko. I stay…

So, you are the most acclaimed daughter of Mr. Mwinko or senior headman Mwinko?

I interjected her from finishing. I cut her short because I wanted the conversation to end as youths who came with her were waiting for us to finish while looking at us suspiciously and surreptitiously. I was conscious of everyone looking at us in my peripheral vision.

In addition, I had already heard a lot about her. Some said she was the most beautiful girl in the village. Some claimed she was best mannered. Yet some said she would the most spoiled daughter of Mwinko village because of the education which her father was determined to give her.

‘Girl child education is the destroyer of morals and the eventual killer of our culture. A woman is a custodian of culture as she easily transmits it to her children because the man is not usually home. What will she be teaching her children when all she does is bath every hour?” some people could be heard speaking exaggeratively.

However, some parents were eager to have their daughters educated. This garnered some debates in churches, drinking spots, water fetching points, even in household. One would hear such topics during the Chimutengo meetings where headman Mwinko was a regular. He would proudly talk about his daughter and his ambition to make her a teacher at the nearest school, some 10 kilometers away.

Now every weekend, the village men would gather underneath a huge Kachele (fig tree). The tree was believed to be the oldest and the source of wisdom for the village soothsayers. No wonder it was a source of pride for the village. Men would sit the whole day drinking kachasu, wine, 7 days and everything that would intoxicate them. This was done while they played nsolo and draughts and discussed on everything that matters to the village at that hour. These meetings were regular and systematic.

My ideas can be seen from the breed that I have produced. I believed no one is blind enough not to have seen the beauty of my daughter. Even this blind Joni knows how beautiful my daughter is. I have the most perfect mould which gave me the most beautiful, the most learned and the most upright daughter in this village.

Headman Mwinko would boast as his interlude his speech. He usually compared his ideas with his daughter.

However, every time this didn’t go well with Mr Joni who was indeed blind. Anyway, Mr Joni would start answering back. And if one didn’t know how these two related, they would make a mistake of joining or thinking that they will end up fighting. People who understood their relationship would just sit and enjoy listening to the two tears each other apart.

Mr Joni was the soothsayer of the village. Rumor had it that he exchanged his sight for wisdom. I didn’t even know his real name as the name Joni was short for Johannesburg, South Africa. He claimed he was the only in the village who had successfully gone to Joni, as he called it, to work in the mines. Other people claimed he was only faking the blindness and could see. How else does he manage to stagger back home regardless of how drunk he is? Something in me agreed with them.

I ate on the same tables with Muzungus, therefore I am the only one who knows what education can do to people not this Kapunjunju. He would say while he correctly pointed to where the headman was sitting.

He would start speaking a strange language that he called Chibunu, the language of the Muzungu, it was a mixture of English, Ndebele, Afrikaan and Nsenga.

After death of my parents, the only Christian in my house is Mikayeli. My wife. I have never been one. I was just fitting in with what my father demanded.

Children who grow up in religious home turn out to be of 2 kinds. The virtuous, religious kind may even end up to be ministers themselves. The other kind, generally want to get as far away from the church as possible. Growing up in the church mean that one has a front row seat to just another community institution with bad politics and an unusual amount of unfairness. Be gentle to children growing up in religious homes.