ZAMBIAN MODERNITY

Tabitha Lilungwe, a mass communications graduate from the University of Zambia and content creator at Bloggers of Zambia, explained to me in an interview that “modernity has to do with popular culture and being up to date with what is trending…dressing, music, and having access to the Internet” (June 2020). In a separate interview, singer Jane Banda aka Adasa observes that “modernity is the lifestyle of nowadays...technology, fashion, infrastructure...”

(June 2020).

Matimba Choombe, Program’s Officer at Bloggers of Zambia who I interviewed on the same day I interviewed Lilungwe, remarks that “modernity …has elements of advancement…value addition, and 

trends…improving on…processes, state of being…” (June 2020)

Anthropologist Debra Spitulnik (2008) notes that modernity in Zambia is the desire to move toward a better life and a more progressive society away from traditional life. “…Equated with novelty or newness, the present, urbanity, action, style, consumption, and progress (Spitulnik, 2002).

In the Bemba language, spoken mostly in the cities in northern Zambia, words that signify a modern identity include ubulaya [being affluent or unban], shino nshiku [these days],ukuchampuka [being alert], and ubusungu [being European or foreign] (Spitulnik, ibid). Zambian musician Paul Nyirongo aka Paul Ngozi best summarized Zambian modernity in his 1980s hit song “Vinabwela Mochedwa va Chizungu (European Things Came Too Late)” sung in the Nyanja lingua franca, spoken in the capital Lusaka and other urban regions. 

In the song,Nyirongo calls sky scrapers, double-decker buses, traffic lights and bell-bottomed pants that took over the Lusaka’s landscape of the ‘80s va chizungu (of Europe). Nyirongo’s use of the term, va chizungu in “Vinabwela Mochedwa” aligns with Spitulnik’s definition of modernity in Zambia.

Banda, Lilungwe, Choombe, Nyirongo and Spitulnik all note that notions of modernity in Zambia include: current, urbanity, activity, consumption, progress and being up-to-date with global trends. In the song “Vinabwela Mochedwa,” Nyirongo foregrounds urbanity, advanced technology, improved transportation, and fashion trends in the city of Lusaka as some of the means through which modernity can be experienced and expressed. Access to these facilities provide opportunities to engage with modernity and consequently a better life. Vinabwela mochedwa ([Things] came late) implies to be out-of-touch with trends, uncivilized, stale, and to

have no access to modalities of modernity. 

In “Vinabwela Mochedwa,” Nyirongo is disappointed with Phiri who is visiting the city from a village. Being unfamiliar with cultural and technological advancements of life in the city, Phiri is out of touch with Zambia’s modernity and therefore has trouble navigating it. Often, as Spitulnik (2002) observes, people in the peripherals of social and economic activity are excluded from the march to modernity because they do not have access to the means that can connect them to it or are too poor to afford them. Over three decades after Nyirongo’s song was released va chizungu is a phrase that one still hears in conversations on the streets in Zambia. 

Late Zambian Musican Paul Nyirongo aka Paul Ngozi

In addition to a myriad of other meanings the phrase has acquired over the years, va chzungu has also come to signify ‘something of better quality.’ James Ferguson (2015) writes that to be modern in Zambia means to be up to date with global trends. While Ferguson’s observation bears some truth, Spitulnik’s (2002), Lilungwe (2020), Banda (2020), Choombe (2020) and Nyirongo’s (1985) conceptualizations of modernity in Zambia suffices here: Foreignness, freshness, urban-ness and a better quality of life. Drawing mostly on Spitulnik (2002, 2008), and Ferguson (2015), I define modernity as having the means to experience social and economic progress, technological and cultural advancements, equal participation in the public sphere by both men and women, and being at par with the Western world.

Shain (2002), and Suriano (2011) observe that modernity in Tanzania and Senegal does not only draw from the West but also from local culture. On the other hand, as observed by Ferguson (2015) and Spitulnik (2002), modernity in Zambia is mostly inspired by the West although local elements of it are also observable.

A modern Zambian Singer ,Mampi during a performance