I REMEMBER  With Alfred Mulenga –

Exactly five years later I found myself at Kazungula border on December 1, 2015 in a queue of hundreds of early morning travellers and international transporters from Zambia and other parts of Africa who were eagerly waiting for the pontoon to ferry them across the fast-flowing Zambezi River to Botswana.
The last time I passed through the Kazungula border-gate was in December 2010 as a returning Zambian citizen. But in sharp contrast with the situation on the Botswana side of the frontier, which was in superb condition characterised by computerised Immigration and Customs facilities, the situation on the Zambian side was, as in previous years, pathetic and a source of embarrassment.
Squalor, chaos and milling crowds of marketeers fighting to cross over to the other side to buy their wares for sale in Livingstone and surrounding villages greeted travellers, including foreign tourists who streamed into Zambia to see the Victoria Falls, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and visit other tourism attractions in the country at the expense of Zimbabwe, which most Western countries opposed to President Robert Mugabe’s rule had then blacklisted it as a pariah State.
But upon arriving at Kazungula on board a Lusaka-Gaborone luxury coach, I was amazed at the dramatic transformation that has taken place on the Zambian side.
The place has been paved it no longer looks like a muddy skating rink that it used to be particularly during the rainy season. It was nice to see that everything now looks neat if not perfect: The Immigration and Customs and Excise offices, including the Zambia Police building, have been renovated and freshly painted, thus putting to rest once for all the humiliation Zambians suffered in the eyes of visitors from developed countries like the United States of America (US), United Kingdom (UK), France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands (Holland), Norway, Sweden and Canada, who found it incredible that one of the world’s top copper-producing countries had suddenly become so poor that it could not afford to build new or even maintain the infrastructure it inherited from the colonialists in 1964.
As my wife Ethel and I proudly surveyed and admired the area and its new-look environment, I glanced in the western direction (from where we were standing) and saw a few metres away – and just on the edge of the Zambezi River – that work on the construction of a temporary Kazungula Bridge by contractors had started in earnest.
I am not in the habit of ‘patting myself on the back’ (if there is such a thing) but on this one, I felt proud at the realisation that a project that I had proposed in a feature article that I first wrote for the Botswana Gazette weekly newspaper – and which was later published in the Botswana Government-owned Kutlwano Magazine (with an artist’s impression of a suspension bridge by Zambian architect Alick Nyangulu) – will in two years’ time become reality as authorities in both Lusaka and Gaborone had resolved to do something about it.
In the said article, edited and appropriately titled ‘Dreaming of Kazungula Bridge’ by the late Managing Editor of the Botswana Gazette Clara Olsen, I suggested that ‘only a permanent bridge’ linking Botswana and Zambia at the current pontoon crossing would help end the ‘congestions, inordinate delays and more importantly the horrific accidents in which many innocent men, women and children had lost their lives’.
Complaints of loss of business by international transporters ferrying cargo from South Africa to Zambia, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and East African states – and vice versa – were the order of the day as their vehicles were often marooned at the Kazungula pontoon crossing for weeks if not months.
The situation was equally bad if not devastating for the ordinary motorists who like the overseas tourists were compelled to risk their lives by driving non-stop – and at high speed – in order to reach Kazungula before 6pm (18 hours) when both the border and pontoon operations officially closed. It was a dreadful nightmare for the traveller in those days because failure to get to Kazungula border in good time to complete Immigration and Customs formalities meant one had no option but to spend the night in the open or for truck drivers inside their vehicles until the next morning when business resumed at 6am.
But the need to construct a permanent bridge became more urgent after (if my memory serves me right as amnesia is creeping in) about 15 travellers mostly Zambians drowned when a South African truck on the same pontoon tipped over, tossing them and other vehicles on the pontoon into the fast-flowing and crocodile-infested Zambezi River.
I also well remember the fact that during the 2008 Zimbabwe International Trade Fair President Levy Mwanawasa and President Festus Mogae of Botswana at the time conferred with President Mugabe in Harare and discussed the issue of constructing a bridge on the Zambezi River and at a point where the four countries of Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe meet.
However, the project could not take off immediately due to a number of hurdles that arose in the process.
One of the major hiccups was Zimbabwe’s disputed 2007 elections, which President Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party won amid accusations of vote-rigging by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). It was widely reported at the time that due to pressure from Western donors and would-be cooperating partners, Zimbabwe was excluded from the deal.
Furious at the turn of events Mugabe would not allow the project to go ahead as the envisaged bridge was originally planned to be erected partly on Zimbabwean territory, thus forcing Botswana and Zambia to find an alternative site.
As I recalled all this I found myself on the Botswana side after a five-minute cruise aboard the modern and faster pontoon that has replaced the slow-moving and antiquated machine that was in use between 1991 and 2010 when authorities expected a flood of soccer fans from all parts of the globe to trek to South Africa for the first FIFA World Cup to be played on African soil.
Standing on the paved Botswana embankment, I look back on the Zambian side and felt proud of my country because it looked beautiful – picturesque – as the water of the Mighty Zambezi River flowed effortlessly downstream where it cascades into the spectacular Mosi-o-Tunya, the Smoke that Thunders.
My wife had earlier made an interesting observation as the pontoon reached midstream: In all directions the Zambezi River looked full – may be due to the fact that Mwinilunga District, the source of the Zambezi, had been experiencing much rainfall, a welcome sign that the depleted Kariba Dam would soon have much water so that the hydro-electricity power crisis gripping Zambia and rest of the SADC region would soon become a thing of the past.
After completing Immigration and Customs formalities at Botswana’s Kazungula border-gate we caught a taxi to take us to Kasane Airport for a schedule 10.30 flight to Gaborone’s refurbished Sir Seretse Khama International Airport (SSKIA).
As the taxi sped towards the airport, which is also being upgraded to international standards, I saw that a new compound has been constructed at the foot of the hill on the eastern side of Kasane, Botswana’s tourism capital. And as if there had been some telepathy, the driver broke the silence, saying: ‘What you see over there is a camp for Kazungula Bridge construction workers.’
The Chinese, he explained, had just completed building the houses in record time so that their workers could be accommodated within walking distance to the Bridge construction site, literally a stone’s throw away from the towering Baobab Tree, a popular tourist attraction located near the banks of the Chobe River, as the Zambezi River is called in Botswana.
I knew from then that the Botswana and Zambian governments and their cooperating partners, indeed, meant business and the project of my dream will (not would) become a permanent fixture that will go a long was in accelerating regional integration of the entire Southern African Development Community, as envisioned by its 1980 principal founders: presidents Kenneth Kaunda, Sir Seretse Khama, Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) and Samora Machel (Mozambique) among others.
The houses in the newly constructed camp also served to remind me of a story published on September 15, 2015 in which Botswana and Zambian ministers, under whose portfolio the bridge project falls, castigated the contractor for the ‘slow progress’ despite the fact that the project contract was awarded to them a long time ago.
Headlined ‘Mukanga, Mabeo chide Kazungula Bridge contractor’ and written by Times of Zambia staffer Brian Hatyoka, said in part: ‘Zambian minister for transport, works, supply and communications Yamfwa Yaluma and Botswana minister of transport, and communications Tshenolo Mabeo have chided the contractor for the Kazungula Bridge project over the slow progress made to construct the facility.
The two ministers who inspected the bridge on Sunday afternoon, said people from the two countries would not want to be given excuses but that the infrastructure should be delivered on time.
Mukanga asked the contractor to increase on labour and work hours to catch up with the project time-frame.
‘Why should we have many catch-up plans and now you have given us a catch-up plan number five? Next time you will give us catch-up plan number six and we are losing time. We are wasting time and we need to complete by 2018 as planned. We cannot afford waiting while the contractor is doing his own programme,’ minister Mukanga charged.
He said the two governments expected progress and commitment – and not catch-up plans.
His Botswana counterpart Mabeo echoed similar sentiments, saying the two countries wanted assurances that the project would be delivered on time.
‘Whatever we are doing behind the curtains as experts, people are looking for the bridge. Can you do the work; this is a reputable project. Let’s work,’ Mabeo is quoted as saying.
In response, contractor and project manager William Kim assured the two ministers that the project would be delivered by 2018 as planned ‘without compromising quality and safety’.
I also remembered that In September 2014, former vice presidents Dr Guy Scott and Dr Ponatshego Kidikilwe of Zambia and Botswana respectively officiated at the historic groundbreaking ceremony at Kazungula after the two countries had concluded a deal with various stakeholders, including South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering Construction for the construction of a 923-metre long and 18.5-metre wide bridge with provisions for both rail and road transport.
Two one-stop border facilities – one at each end – and access roads – are also be built at an estimated cost of estimated of US$259 million, creating over 2, 000 jobs in both countries during the construction period. The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) are among the project financiers.
So as we enter the New Year 2016, a year when Zambia will be going to polls, people should be as thrilled as I am at the prospect of crossing the Zambezi River on ‘dry ground’ like Israelites did after God, using his servant Moses, parted the waters of the Red Sea, leaving their Egyptian pursuers completely non-plussed.
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