I have been accused of raising a couple of provocative and thought-provoking issues on this column concerning the state of the country.
This is understandable considering that I am a product of an era when things worked with standards religiously adhered to.
Enter the 1991 democrats, and everything changed. Although the reformers working with the late second Republican president Frederick Chiluba meant well by liberalising the country’s economy, they failed to put regulatory measures.
This lackadaisical approach spawned a myriad of educational institutions, ecclesiastical buildings, health centres, transportation companies and many other institutions all devoid of regulatory bodies to police them.
If these regulatory bodies existed, they were usually weak to monitor the mushrooming institutions leading to offering of mediocre products and services.
The free market economy and unbridled liberalisation succeeded in breeding mediocrity.
Now, almost all institutions leave much to be desired because mediocrity has calcified and the citizenry can’t see anything wrong.
Since we have lost the plot over the years, it has to take massive surgery to right things to maintain an appropriate standard.
Sadly it seems very few are willing to accept responsibility considering that these dysfunctions did not start yesterday because, like a cancer, they have a genesis.
It is hugely hypocritical then for anyone to suddenly wake up now, look around and smell decay when we all saw the carcass festering before our eyes.
The culture of mediocrity has become so pervasive in Zambia and calls for a speedy intervention to bring back the enviable status the country enjoyed sometime back.
It is this decay that makes me disillusioned about many things making me not shy away from saying since there seems to be few Jeremiahs to sound the clarion call.
A lean choir of concerned people are expressing their anger on some Facebook pages that give an opportunity to non-writers who have been empowered by the cyber technology to use it as a weapon of navigating the labyrinths of the world.
Thus the Internet can be hailed as the world’s number one wonder, offering new opportunities and challenges and taunting our expectations of community by making everyone a digital native.
Since 1991, we’ve spent years in pursuit of mediocrity. After decades of erasing a once awe-inspiring excellence, institutions have been able to replace that standard of excellence with a much lower quality and performance level.
Since we are rarely exposed to excellence, all we seem to know is mediocrity which is more accepted than quality.
Be it in the academic world, media, judiciary and even the church, mediocrity has taken its toll, becoming more acceptable than excellence.
This has seen acceptance of mass-produced gon’ga-second rate products and even services.
Apart from poor goods and services on the market, mediocrity has manifested in the lack lustre performance of our national team, hypocrisy by our clergy and even our own conduct as citizens.
In short mediocrity has become the new norm. Until someone comes along and tells us that a C+ really is not good enough to make the honour roll, we go with it for some reason.
Many critics of our woes have fingered corruption as the number one problem, but we seem to have a myriad of ills, among them, widespread celebration of mediocrity.
Compared to European societies, underachievement seems to be the rule in all facets of our society.
Yet as this circus is peddled before our eyes, we are busy attending numerous workshops and conferences where resolutions are incessantly made to improve our society.
I remember attending one ‘high profile’ workshop where serious resolutions were made. The only problem was that the organisers themselves were part of the problem concerning time-keeping, demanding large amounts of attendance monies and not sticking to the discussion.
Despite these shortcomings, over cocktails, everyone congratulated each other over the wonderful workshop — that started two hours late, of which the most animated part was undeniably lunch, and in which not a single tangible decision had been made.
The sad part of the all scenario is that when meritocracy is replaced by mediocrity, people get to the top by knowing the right people and pleasing equally incompetent leaders.
Where excellence meets no gratification, what remains to be celebrated is underachievement. That is why it is not uncommon to find Zambians congratulating each other with substandard results.
It is safer to cuddle up comfortably in shared mediocrity than to question it, since the latter might also expose your own less-than exceptional performance.
I imagine the frustration of the many Zambians who do care for their work, who take pride in their outcomes and who feel the award is in a job well-done.
When you know beforehand that excellence will not be rewarded, you are bound to do the economical thing and limit your investments to accomplishing the bare minimum.
This makes Zambia a pretty cumbersome place for anyone striving for perfection.