DAVIES MOYO
TRULY in a good story, ’Sweat precedes sweet’.
Whatever the consequences he told his followers in Lusaka, “we are prepared to pay the price of freedom in this country. If the Government bans the Zambian congress as I hear they intend I promise Africans would continue to struggle. Zambia may be banned, public meetings may be banned but the spirit of Zambia will march on until independence is obtained,” said Dr Kenneth Kaunda, February 10, 1959.
It may sound to us of youth as being just one of those things a people should go through as it seems to be the order of history. Until now, literature has changed my view of the cheers and joy attached to the 24 day of October.
Dear reader ,to remind a nation fifty years later that greatness though mostly viewed as a value of possession is in fact in our context embedded in the effort and sacrifice, toils and bloodshed to the attainment of a noble cause. Take time to think  of what it might have been in the finest moments of our time in history. What the founding fathers of this nation may have gone through is visible in the peace that avails itself in our country today.
Numerous of stories may not have been told of the struggle but we can give meaning to the men and women that rose in times of persecution to secure our independence. Those lives contain character and other affirming ingredients of what is a good story. To forget this truth is to lose an important interpretative tool for discerning direction and creating meaning to the cause of the struggle.
The statutes we see today may seem to serve as reminders of the past but they are more than history. They are a living testimony of valour, gallant minds, strength and purpose, a desire not only to free themselves, but also the generations to come. I thank the Almighty God for the opportunity to belong to the generation as we celebrated the golden jubilee
“They have banned the great name of Zambia but the greater name of freedom is now spiritual. It is beyond their reach and so they cannot ban it. We shall organise our people when we get out of (detention) in the name of freedom now. Africa, our mother Africa must be free and it has fallen to our lot to free this part. Be of good cheer we are just beginning’ (April 28, 1959).
These words of Kenneth Kaunda explain the smiles, the laughter and that the free-ness that we see on mother Zambia’s face did not come from without but from the thousands that dreamt of such a free time and a peaceful land.  Therefore we must not forget our dreamers, our fore fathers, the founders of this great nation – the men and women who truly live in our history and in whose dreams we live.
For their triumph 50 years ago gave birth to the golden jubilee we have just celebrated.
The author is a technician at Konkola Copper Mines.