Africa-Press – Zambia. Many of us have lived in poverty both as children and as adults, and we can say with full confidence that it is a life-crushing force. We hated it. Poverty is despair and desperation-inducing. Poverty is soul, dream and hope crushing. Poverty is like being enclosed in a prison cell with no doors or windows. It feels claustrophobic, as if there is no way out. Only the most resilient do not give up. Still, there is no guarantee that life will get better—and those in poverty know this all too well. They either become hardened or submit to fate. You don’t live life, you don’t thrive—you survive. You wonder if you are predestined, like a caste in another country, to live out a life destitute of fulfilment—whether financial, professional or just having a better life.
These are the very thoughts that consumed many of us in times of poverty. And yet, we never stopped believing that there must be a way out. The very thing that brought despair and darkness motivated us to dig out of that prison, to fight with everything within us, to find that light that must exist outside of the walls.
Available official government statistics show that poverty levels stand at 20.2 per cent in Lusaka, 30.9 per cent on the Copperbelt Province, 56.2 per cent in Central Province, 57.6 per cent in Southern Province, 66.4 per cent in North-Western Province, 69.3 per cent in Muchinga Province, 70 per cent in Eastern Province, 79.7 per cent in Northern Province, 81.1 per cent in Luapula Province, and Western province at 82.2 per cent.
Compatriots, these are extreme poverty levels by any standard. A better life is certainly possible. But we have to struggle for a Just, fair and equitable Zambia.
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