Keeping the peace in CAR

CAPTAIN Barbara Musonda was promoted to the rank of Captain on September 17, 2018. The picture was taken while she was in the Central African Republic (CAR) mission area as a Lieutenant.

 

NKOLE NKOLE

Lusaka

THE day was April 30, 2016 when Captain Barbara Musonda first reported for a peacekeeping mission in the town of Birao, Central African Republic (CAR).
It was her first time to be deployed in a country experiencing war where she would be expected to fight at the battlefront alongside her fellow male officers.
She was to be based in Birao, where the headquarters of the Zambia Army Contingent in CAR is situated.
If she had any anxiety about what she was getting herself into prior to her departure, this was reinforced when she touched down at what seemed nothing like an airport in appearance or function.
“When I got to CAR I realised there was nothing to look forward to. There was run-down infrastructure at the airport and there were no roads,” she says.
Growing up, Capt Musonda was familiar with the uniform. Her father, Michael Musonda, once served as Assistant Commissioner under the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Zambia Police Service.
Her aunt, Patricia Musonda, is presently based at the Kabwe Municipal Council as a firefighter.
And so when an opportunity arose for Capt Musonda to join the Zambia Army in January 2011, she grabbed it by the lapels.
Before joining the army, she studied social work at the University of Zambia (UNZA) from 2006 to 2010 and with her undergraduate degree, enlisted in the Zambia Army.
“Because I joined with a degree, I joined as a specialist,” she shares.
In between January and December 2011, she trained under the Zambia Army and upon being successfully commissioned at the end of her training, she was sent to Chipata under the 4th Battalion, Zambian Regiment.
There she was appointed Platoon Commander under the Corps of Infantry or ground forces.
This meant she was given the authority by the President to command a body of men; a responsibility she considered an honour especially as to date there aren’t many female officers that have filled this role.
In March 2014, she was transferred from the Corps of Infantry to the Corps of Medical, which is under the 5th Battalion of the Zambia Regiment in Kaoma.
There she was based at Luena Camp Hospital as part of an HIV/AIDS management programme.
“I found it very fulfilling to be there and worked not only with the men in uniform but with people from different backgrounds,” Capt Musonda says.
She stayed in Kaoma until August this year when she was again transferred from the 5th Battalion, Zambia Regiment to the Zambia Army Headquarters at Arakan Barracks as Protocol Officer.
Between April 2016 and April 2017, the Zambia Army piloted the Female Engagement Teams (FETs) training comprising 30 officers and Capt Musonda was one of the lucky 30.
The training was part of the Zambia Battalion II (ZAMBATT II) deployment and is a concept in line with the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) policy requiring all member states to deploy trained FETs by August 2018 in some of their infantry battalions operating in missions with a Protection of Civilians mandate.
FETs are well trained officers with developed skills in the fields of protection of civilians, community engagement, child protection and conflict-related Sexual Violence.
According to the UN, Zambia is considered a leader in ensuring the involvement of female peacekeepers by spearheading the FETs training.
Zambia’s history in peacekeeping dates back to 1988 with the first troops deployed in Chad and to date has deployed a total of 718 military observers and staff officers since 1982.
The UN Security Council adopted resolution 1325 on women and peace and security on October 31, 2000.
The resolution reaffirms the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction.
Among the many lessons peacekeeping taught Capt Musonda was the value of sacrifice.
“Personally as a peacekeeper I sacrificed my life because I left a daughter behind and went to a war stricken country where anything can happen,” she shares.
But taking peace to the people of CAR who she says needed it more than her was far more important than staying home.
During her time as a peacekeeper under the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission (MINUSCA), her original appointment was as a Gender and Child Protection Officer.
“It meant I had to coordinate the local women and the children. Some of the women were being sexually assaulted and raped by rebels but had no one to talk to,” she explains.
One of the things she had to do to help her adapt was learn a little French which is the official language spoken in CAR.
Capt Musonda also forced herself to learn greetings in Sango, CAR’s other official language and to adjust to the extreme temperatures in the Central African country which on a blistering hot day can rise as high as 46 degrees Celsius.
As her time there progressed, she began to empathise with the people of CAR. She ate their food and drank their sweet tea which is naturally taken while hot and in this way warmed to their culture.
In Birao her day-to-day activities involved coordinating the local women. Many of them had experienced rape and sexual assault as a result of the ongoing conflict but had no one to talk to.
Because CAR is a Muslim country, female peacekeepers are the ideal links to the local women who ordinarily are not allowed to have friendships with males other than their spouses.
More often than not, the local women hold a lot of valuable information and are the secret keepers with indirect links to rebel leaders.
To help the women open up and share their experiences, Capt Musonda got close to them. The war had confined the women to their homes and her task was to organise them into women’s groups.
“They had women’s groups at one point but they were dormant,” she says. “As female peacekeepers we had to win their trust and convince them that we would protect them as they met in these groups.”
Through the groups, the women were able to bond and to speak openly about the trauma they experienced especially as victims of rape and sexual assault during war.
Together with the women of Birao, Capt Musonda and her fellow female peacekeepers regularly cleaned the only hospital in Birao.
Other than the women, the children of Birao were also a delicate group to work with but she found a way to connect with them.
Part of the Zambian contingent in CAR comprised qualified teachers who she approached to teach the children of Birao.
“The children didn’t like school so much, especially in the war environment, so sometimes we organised games for them to play according to their ages,” she shares.
This exercise helped the CAR children experience a part of their childhood they were missing as a result of war.
Outside the geographical and cultural challenges were the gender stereotypes Capt Musonda had to conquer.
“Generally in peacekeeping missions, the number of male officers to female officers is higher. When deployed in a foreign mission, the men will not expect you to work at the same capacity as them, so as women, you are belittled. If you don’t move with your head high and set boundaries, it can be frustrating,” she says.
Capt Musonda has no regrets about joining the army and would gladly lend her service to a peacekeeping mission again.
As for the FETs, she says: “Female Engagement Teams have come in handy because we are the only ones with access to the women in countries such as CAR. That is the greatest thing that I did. It was worth the sacrifice. I learnt so much, gained so much experience and found my daughter in one piece when I returned.”

Evelyn Nguleka shattered the agricultural ceiling

NKOLE NKOLE

Lusaka

Former World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO) and  Zambia National Farmers’ Union (ZNFU) president, Evelyn Nguleka is remembered as a bold advocate for the small scale farmer.

THE agricultural world has lost a pioneer and the smallholder African farmer, a fierce advocate who used her passion and influence to speak on their behalf.
Evelyn Nguleka, who died in Lusaka on Saturday after an illness, was born in Zambia in 1970 and later studied Veterinary Medicine at the University of Zambia. She was raised by her grandmother in Ndola and had previously attended Fatima Girls’ Secondary School during her high school years.
In an interview with the Independent Observer last year, Dr Nguleka had shared her vision to see Zambia as the anchor for food, safety and security and as a place of refuge for the Southern African region, and the true bread basket of Africa.
“I would like to see farmers making money out of agriculture, getting out of poverty and having a decent living. I want to see many rich farmers – both small scale and large scale,” she said.
She desperately wanted to make farming more profitable through good food policies, reduced cost of production, mechanising agriculture and going more into value addition of the country’s products.
In her line of work, Dr Nguleka was drawn to two specific groups of people – women and the youth. This is because she believed they had much to offer and had a lot of reason to achieve more in life.
She was also the mother of two sons who gained inspiration from women who worked hard to provide food for their families.
Passionate about veterinary science and agriculture, she would later make her mark not only locally but on the international stage as well.
In 2013, she was elected the first female president of the Zambia National Farmers’ Union (ZNFU), and prior to the election she had also served as first female vice president of the ZNFU.
Widely regarded an advocate for the protection of local family farmers and food producers, Dr Nguleka was also a smallholder family farmer herself. As such, she was a reference point for local farmers who, in Sub Saharan countries like Zambia, have considerable difficulties treating diseases that affect their livestock.
On June 25, 2015, she again made history when she was elected president of the World Farmers Organisation (WFO) during the organisation’s General Assembly in Milan. During the event, she famously delivered the line: “Farmers ensure the nutrition of the world.”
The WFO is an organisation of agricultural producers that aims to strengthen farmers’ positions within value chains, with a particular focus on smallholder farmers by advocating on behalf of farmers and representing their interests in international policy forums.
Her election as a woman to head one of the world’s biggest agricultural organisations made big news in the agricultural arena and highlighted the importance of the too often overlooked role women play in agriculture as well as in fighting hunger.
“Women contribute to more than 60 percent of the world’s food production. Therefore, statistics show that women are a central and pivotal figure in agriculture, especially if we look to Africa and Asia. As a woman and as a small scale farmer, I am not only a food producer, but also a real economic actor of a sector that is not different from any other economic sector,” she said following her 2015 election as WFO president.
The WFO considered Dr Nguleka part of the million small scale farmers who, through their daily work, are the real foundations of agriculture worldwide.
In addition to her qualifications in Veterinary Medicine, Dr Nguleka obtained a diploma in International Poultry Breeding from IPC Barneveld in the Netherlands. It is partly thanks to this qualification that she was always ably involved in the diagnosis and treatment of major diseases that affect poultry farming.
Her veterinary background led her to practise poultry husbandry and disease control. She worked at different levels of production for many years and her experience with poultry also made her a NEMAS Community of Practice (COP) member.
Dr Nguleka was interested in learning about different value chains in poultry and identifying where she could play a role. As a farmer, she produced vegetables and reared layers and goats. She also explored areas of pig production and fish farming.
By starting Golan Poultry Solutions, she would go on to run a business which involved the sale of poultry inputs, including feed, chicks, medicines, vaccines and services that go with rearing pullets such as injecting chickens and de-beaking.
In addition, the business offered consultancy services and information on management and production processes.
Kingsley Kaswende, who worked closely with Dr Nguleka at ZNFU for close to three years, remembers her as a dedicated and hardworking woman who had no limits to what she could achieve.
“In her circles, so many people used so many adjectives to describe her: bold, brave, daring, tough, resilient, strong.
“They all suited her perfectly,” he shares.
Mr Kaswende recollects fondly that she was the sort of person to break glass ceilings and move mountains; one who was quick to make decisions and stick to her guns once she believed in something.
“She always kept saying ‘It’s good to compromise with others, but we can’t compromise for the sake of it, there must be reasons’,” he says.
Her striking record was dented when she was arrested and charged by the Drug Enforcement Commission in September 2016 together with former ZNFU executive director, Ndambo Ndambo.
The pair were jointly charged for allegedly obtaining money by false pretences and for money laundering.
The arrest followed separate audits by KPMG Finland and EMM Corporates in which both the embassies of Finland and Sweden in Lusaka commissioned separate forensic audits that exposed extensive fraud, embezzlement and theft of over K34 million at ZNFU.
The donors withheld further funding to the union and demanded criminal prosecution of the culprits as well as a refund as the money embezzled was from tax-payers in their respective countries.
Following the arrest, Dr Nguleka resigned from her position as president of both ZNFU and WFO.
While still enduring her fair share of public criticism and court appearances, her death came as an absolute shock when it first filtered through last Saturday. It was reported that she died at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) after being admitted to the Intensive Care Unit last Wednesday. She was 47. Her supporters are sad that she died before having chance to clear her name and believe that she was an innocent person merely dragged into a scandal as an easy scapegoat.
They cite a slow, lazy justice system and cyber bullying as factors that only added injury to what they feel was an insulting arrest.
Even with her international recognition as WFO president, Dr Nguleka still insisted that she was a small-scale farmer just like her associates.
This powerful quote came following her election as WFO president: “For too long the role of the farmer was taken for granted, almost as if we were vending machines for food, called to respond to that role, who carry out with joy the task of feeding the planet in a compulsory and annihilating way, without margins of profits.”
The international spotlight did not lead her away from what remained close to her heart: the struggling small-scale farmer seeking to eke out a decent living each day.
Yes, she died young and suddenly, but not before leaving a lasting legacy and passing the baton to women pursuing fair recognition despite conventional limitations in the contemporary era./