The LuangwaValley- those three words evoke images of elephant, lion, leopard or perhaps a carmine bee eater.   Whatever your wildlife preference, the Valley is renowned for its natural beauty, and rightly so.  Less well-known is its long and rich cultural history.  Did you know that people have lived in the Valley for at least one million years, or that the first farmers arrived 2,000 years ago?  Probably not, unless you just happened to bump into the researchers from the University of Liverpool, England, who have been working in the Valley in recent years.  The first phase of their ‘Past Peoples and Environments’ programme is now finished, and before the second begins it is time to take stock, look at a few highlights and consider the uncertain future of the Valley’s cultural heritage.

How long have humans lived here?

When the project started, no one could say just how long humans have lived in the Valley, and we are still trying to answer this basic question.  Stone tools litter the surface in some areas – and have been reported since the 1930s – but such finds tell us only that the tools are there, not when they were made.  To establish the age of the artefacts we need to find them buried in sediments where they have lain undisturbed.  Modern scientific dating methods can then give us an age range for the sediments surrounding the artefacts – that is the good news.  The bad news is that the sands of the Valley are difficult to date using conventional methods, so we have had to use more experimental techniques.  The results tell us that early humans were already in the Valley one million years ago, and probably much earlier.  Similar stone tools have been found in the Rift Valley of East Africa where they have been dated with great accuracy to at least 2.6 million years old using volcanic sediments.  Unfortunately, we don’t have such sediments in the Valley and there is another problem we face with the early record: it is eroding away.  Our one dated site is (was) along an active tributary of theLuangwa, and seasonal flooding has washed away the sands containing the oldest stone tools.

But there is no need to despair, because erosion also reveals new sites. In a large and still unexplored region we can and must rely on ‘nature’ to do some of the hard work for us.  The public can help by reporting any new exposures with stone (and bone if you’re extremely lucky) to the National Heritage Conservation Commission and the Zambia Wildlife Authority (and not picking things up!).  Our research also suggests that very early sites may be preserved closer to the Muchinga Escarpment, further away from the erosive effects of seasonal flooding.  Part two of the project will target this more remote area, and we hope to bring a new dating method into the field which will help unlock the age of the very earliest human settlement.

Farmers meet hunters 2000 years ago

At the other end of the time scale, theLuangwaValleycan now boast some of the best evidence in the region for the arrival, 2000 years ago, of farmers who brought with them a new way of life.  They arrived in a landscape already inhabited by peoples who lived by hunting and gathering foods.  Humans have long been hunters and we can see evidence of inventions in the archaeological record – like the stone-tipped spear – that made us even more effective predators.  The bow and arrow was a later innovation (perhaps 70,000 years old in southernAfrica) that came into use well before farming.  The ‘Later Stone Age’ hunters and gatherers of the Valley left their characteristic small stone tools over large parts of the landscape.  With a little training, you can quickly spot these artefacts that once were the hafted inserts of knives, scrapers and arrowheads.

A combination of systematic survey with excavation has given us an excellent understanding of where these hunter-gatherers lived in the Valley during the past 10,000 years.  They chose locations that offered a mix of water, plant and animal foods and the resources for making tools.  The escarpment and Nchindeni Hills also provided rock shelters as temporary homes, and these were often painted in the same geometric patterns found elsewhere inZambia(visitNachikufuCaveor the many caves at Kasama to see examples of this widespread tradition).

For me, the most interesting ‘moment’ in the Valley’s long prehistory was the first contact between the resident hunter-gatherers and the immigrant farmers.  Two very different cultures met 2,000 years ago, and from the archaeological, historical, and genetic evidence we’ve gathered we can say that they lived side-by-side.  It is only recently (circa 1800 AD) that we lose sight of the Later Stone Age peoples.  Some may have adopted farming and others may have left the Valley in search of hunting grounds elsewhere.  Perhaps their descendants are the Batwa who live today in the wetlands of northern and centralZambia.  The fate of the Valley’s first peoples will be a focus of our next phase of research.

A heritage for all to see?

We have just scratched the surface of the Valley’s prehistory, figuratively as well as literally.  Huge gaps remain in our basic understanding of all periods, but at least we have made a start on piecing together this enormous puzzle.  Another challenge now remains: to find a local home for all the artefacts we have uncovered.  The people of Mfuwe and visitors alike ought to be able to see and learn from this material.  That is not yet possible, but we hope that a local heritage interpretation centre will be built soon which can be a place of study, education and enterprise.

We have more than prehistory in mind – the predecessors of the dinosaurs once roamed here.  There is much recent history too from European explorers including Livingstone to the ravages of the slave trade, and in the 20th century the establishment of the national park and the relocation of the Bisa and Kunda.  The heritage interpretation centre is one way of giving back a past to the Valley’s humans as well as helping to make a more informed future – for locals and for tourists.

To learn more about the proposed heritage centre: www.liv.ac.uk/giving/africa

By Larry Barnham

A potsherd representing the early farmers in the Valley

Stone pick ('Early Stone Age') more than 300,000 years old

There are two major sides to the ‘biscuit’ story in Zambia, one that relates to the frightening levels of child stunting and malnutrition and the other that is about sharp business acumen and an eye for opportunity.

Shortly after independence our school children received milk in a school feeding programme. Linked to this was an initiative where tons of Australian milk biscuits were donated for distribution inZambia. A 1969 document reads “The biscuit contains no reducing sugars and can therefore be made using conventional biscuit-making equipment and baked in a conventional oven. The composition of currently produced biscuits is as follows: protein, 20%; fat, 20%; carbohydrates, 50%, plus Ca, Fe, I, vitamin A, thiamine, riboflavin and nicotinic acid; the caloric value is 50 kcal/10-g biscuit. The major ingredients are butter oil, co-precipitate, castor sugar, wheat flour and full-fat soya flour. The biscuit is dough-nut shaped; packed in a moisture-proof package it has a very good shelf-life under tropical conditions.”

Similar biscuits were eventually prepared and sold by the old parastatal-run Dairy Produce Board in the seventies and were really quite tasty. Since that time it has been left to the private sector to put a decent tea biscuit in every child’s school lunch box.

Even though our thriving sugar industry and wheat production levels does make the production of biscuits good sense for local manufacturers  it is quite a challenge to BUY ZAMBIAN on the shelf alongside the competitors from Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa. But they are there, usually in brightly labeled packaging with catchy names. Anybody who listens to the radio can’t have missed the advertising for ‘Chicco’ and ‘Musa’ biscuits and now the ubiquitous Trade Kings is distributing an ‘Amazon’ product called ‘Spinners’.

Manufacturers’ details, available on the internet when you google Zambia Association of Manufacturers, will yield names such as ‘Batul’, ‘Liberty’ and ‘Sunrise’ Biscuits. But not everything is sweet in the industry. Cases of quarrels over brand names have already hit our local court system as we share the market with our neighbours in COMESA and rivaling competition from SADC.  Stories of bitter rivalry between regional manufacturers abound.

Going back to the issue of micronutrient malnutrition it is a fact that your ordinary tea biscuit is relatively cheap, light and palatable to most children, so we hope that this is an avenue that will engage the Zambian corporate more towards balancing the profit motive with social responsibility. As far as we know the fortification of sugar with Vitamin A is still an obligatory component of production and many of the local biscuits have a soya component, so your little one should be getting more than just a sweet treat!

Any reactions from our readers that will help us suggest the best food-value Lowdown ’Christmas Hamper’ for the more needy, including orphaned and vulnerable children’s shelters that have sprung up over the past years are very welcome. The right time of the year to be more discerning about the ordinary packet of locally produced biscuits beyond checking the ‘sell-by’ date!

This month, as we celebrate Zambia’s forty eighth year of Independence, we look at another Zambian symbol – Mulungushi Rock of Authority.

As a child and teenager, we often heard about Mulungushi Rock on the news, always in the context of a UNIP meeting. Not being much interested in politics, I never thought too much about it, nor did I think much of the history and what was so important about this rock. In fact my disinterest in politics was such that when plural politics returned to Zambia in 1991 and political meetings were still being held, I still did not think any further, leaving it to the politically active to ponder over it.  My interest was only piqued when I started thinking about which Zambian symbol I was going to cover in this article.

In 1960, the nationalists who had broken away from the Zambian African National Congress wanted to arrange a conference under the banner of the new party, the United National Independence Party (UNIP) on the direction of the party and how to achieve independence. To do this, they needed to be away from the ever-present eye of the colonial authorities, not easy for a crowd of two thousand who would be there for some days. The site chosen was a rocky area close to theMulungushiRiver, north of what was then Broken Hill (now Kabwe).  The river provided a good supply of water and it was felt that this was a good place for the participants to meet and to camp. The camping was not in tents, but in temporary shelters. This conference led to UNIP, under the leadership of Kenneth Kaunda, becoming the major party of independence.

After 1964, Mulungushi Rock was used for UNIP party conferences and for major policy speeches such as the Mulungushi Declaration in 1968 when government declared its intention to acquire what was termed equity holdings (usually 51% or more) in a number of foreign-owned firms. These firms were to be controlled by the parastatal Industrial Development Corporation (INDECO). By the beginning of 1970, majority holdings had also been acquired in the two major foreign mining companies, Anglo American Corporation and the Rhodesia Selection Trust (RST); becoming Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines (NCCM) and Roan Consolidated Mines (RCM) under another parastatal body, the Mining Development Corporation (MINDECO). This was followed in 1971 where control of insurance companies, building societies and some foreign banks was acquired and run under the Finance and Development Corporation (FINDECO).   INDECO, MINDECO and FINDECO were brought together in 1971 under another monolithic parastatal, the Zambia Industrial and Mining Corporation (ZIMCO), creating one of the largest companies in sub-SaharanAfrica, with KK as Chairman of the Board. The nationalisation programme was closely followed in 1973 with the massive increase in the price of oil and in 1975, the halving of world copper prices. These two factors coupled with the well known and well documented inefficiencies of parastatals was the start of the downward slide ofZambia’s economic performance and by 1976Zambiahad a balance-of-payments crisis, and we very quickly became massively indebted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A mere ten years later,Zambiawas one of the most indebted nations in the world. But the vagaries of our economy is not the subject of this article.

Today, many political meetings are still held at Mulungushi, although as far as we can understand they no longer take place at ‘The Rock’ but at the convention centre which has been built a few kilometres away, close to Mulungushi University. Reading through old press reports, it is clear that some interesting incidents have taken place at these meetings – Ministers being ‘chased’ because they were not wearing  ‘third-term T-shirts’ and police confiscating a total of ninety two pistols from cadres attending a meeting.

Putting aside the politics, we set off for a visit to Mulungushi Rock to see for ourselves, not knowing what to expect. A monadnock or inselberg is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain. I am not a geologist, but I would not describe what we saw as a monadnock or inselberg – it did not rise high enough like the inselbergs at Mutinondo. Instead, I would call it a granite dome or a good southern African word – a kopje. But like Mutinondo’s inselbergs, the mat-forming sedge, Coleochloa setifera, is in abundance.

With the large expanse of rock and a tributary of the Mulungushi River only about half a kilometre away, one can see why it was chosen as a meeting place. Sadly on our visit there, the inevitable bush fire for this year had already swept through the surrounding bush and up parts of the rock destroying the vegetation and leaving everything blackened.  But it was a pleasant day out and had we been better prepared, it would have been a pleasant place for a picnic.

To get there, from the railway crossing in Kabwe (a landmark you can’t miss), proceed north along the Great North Road for 22.5 km. Turn right into the Mulungushi University premises at the second entrance (not the first one with the concrete arch).  After entering the University grounds, proceed straight for 1.4 km along the tarmac road, turn left down a small dirt road for 550 metres. Turn right down another dirt road and proceed along that road for 2.3 km. At this point, if you look to your right you will see The Rock through the bush and if you follow the small dirt track to the right, it will take you to The Rock less than one hundred metres away. GPS co-ordinates are 14°17’53.46″S, 28°34’52.66″E.

Having visited Mulungshi Rock, I have now sated my curiosity, but I have one remaining question. Sometime in the intervening years, the rock became known as the Mulungushi Rock of Authority. Where did the addition of the word ‘Authority’ come from?

The annual migration of straw-coloured fruit bats Eidolon helvum is regarded as one of the greatest wildlife spectacles in the world and it takes place in Zambia’s Kasanka National Park. For example, CNN recently listed it as one of the 20 “must-see places in the world” and in his latest book “Ultimate Wildlife Experiences”, esteemed naturalist Mark Carwardine has included the bat migration at Kasanka as one of the top 25 wildlife experiences in the world.

This international acclaim has helped spread the word about one of Zambia’s smallest national parks and has tempted tourists from all over the world! Given that Kasanka is approximately six hours from Lusaka and even closer to the Copperbelt, along good tar roads, it also makes Kasanka a very popular destination for residents of Zambia, too.

En-suite rondavels overlook Lake Wasa and are located only a short drive from the bat forest. It is from the Wasa Lodge that most guests depart for the ‘’bat experience safari’’, taking a guided game drive through the miombo woodland towards the mushitu forest where the bats roost. Here, guests can climb one of the hides to observe the bat extravaganza where densities reach up to hundreds of bats per square metre.

The annual bat migration from Central Africa to Kasanka is synchronised with the mass fruiting of water berry and masuku trees and they start arriving around mid-October and typically stay until the end of December. This gives visitors only a short window of opportunity to experience the phenomenon and makes for a very busy season at Kasanka. It is not uncommon for up to 100 visitors to come to Kasanka over a weekend and one of the biggest challenges for the Kasanka Trust management is to facilitate this increasing demand, whilst mitigating disturbance to the bats.

The estimated 8 to 10 million bats spend the daylight hours roosting within an area of mushitu evergreen swamp forest known as the Fibwe Forest. Monitoring the movements of the roosting bats over several years has shown that there is a clear preference for a patch of mushitu closest to the Musola Stream. Bat densities are highest in this area, and it is the part of the forest normally occupied throughout the bat season. With daytime temperatures exceeding 35 degrees, it is thought to be the flow of cool air generated by the stream, together with the closed canopy of swamp fig that makes this area a preferred roosting location.

Prior to 2007 visitors were permitted to walk through the forest to observe the roosting bats, whilst supervised by an armed scout. In 2007, a number of tree platforms were constructed, primarily to facilitate a crew from the BBC, filming part of David Attenborough’s ‘Life’ Series. Three of these platforms were constructed in the centre of the roosting area. During 2008 and 2009 it was decided to utilise the platforms for tourism.

2010 was busier still, with four filming crews, several groups of professional photographers, together with increasing tourism pressure. The KTL management formulated strict codes of conduct for all parties to minimise disturbance and conflicts between visitor groups.  Despite this, massive localised migration within the mushitu forest was documented, clearly indicating that roosting areas were abandoned as a direct result of human activity. Notably the presence of humans upwind from roosting sites seemed to have a negative impact.

This disturbance increases bat stress levels as they are forced to roost in sub-optimal habitat resulting in reduced fitness and potentially increased mortality. Shifting roosting also increases the area that is used, and with that the number of trees collapsing from the sheer weight of the bat masses. Ultimately, this disturbance could result in the bats abandoning this site, and this great phenomenon being lost forever.

With these concerns in mind, it was decided to prevent any access to the core roosting area. The hides in the centre of the forest were abandoned and new hides were constructed downwind from the main roosting site. Following these measures, in 2011 the entire colony moved back to the core area, on top of the abandoned hides – a sure success in protecting the bats and ensuring that many more tourists will be able to enjoy this spectacle.

The Kasanka Trust’s policy for the 2012 bat season aims to maintain the preferred bat roosting areas, whilst giving tourists a thrilling wildlife encounter. Visitors who join the “bat experience safari” will be hosted on an improved and enlarged central platform, which provides a stunning panoramic view over the core roosting area from a safe distance. Visitors will be accompanied by an experienced guide who will explain more about the bats and their behaviour, as well as making sure everyone has a refreshing sundowner in their hand as the bats emerge. Two public viewing areas are available from where visitors are able to enjoy views of the bats emerging from the forest. The bats can also be seen from the famous ‘’Fibwe Hide’’, boasting breath-taking views over the swamps

By monitoring the migration year on year, KTL can safeguard the long-term conservation of the bats and their habitat. This in turn will enable the Trust to give visitors an unforgettable bat experience, and to reinvest funds from tourism into future conservation and community initiatives. For more information about the bats and Kasanka, contact wasa@kasanka.com or visit www.kasanka.com.

By Frank Willems, Heather Ashcroft & Sam Philips

Once again, suppliers of electricity, ZESCO, have submitted a proposed tariff increase, to become effective November this year. At press time, this application was still in the hands of the Energy Regulation Board (ERB), the date for submissions from the public having expired.

I don’t believe that there is even one ZESCO customer in Zambiawho will say that they are happy with ZESCO’s performance.  Ask anyone and they will complain about load shedding, voltage fluctuations, slow response times when outages occur. Many times, even getting Faults to answer the phone is an exercise in futility.

Having said this, I do see some efforts being made to improve service or perhaps I should say efforts being made so that customers have a perception that service delivery has improved.  I took the time and effort to register my account with ZESCO’s ‘SMS Service’.  This means that one receives notifications via SMS of planned outages or load shedding. This works … sort of.  Sometimes when experiencing load shedding, I will receive an SMS advising me of this. But usually this is only received an hour or so after I have called Faults to report the outage.  Should this not be notified in advance (even just a few minutes) so that I don’t waste my time and the call centre’s time reporting the outage?  But one also doesn’t know whether the delay is with the phone system and not with ZESCO.  Over the last few weeks, I have been receiving advance notification that my supply might be load shed that evening or the following morning. This is infinitely more helpful as it does enable me to plan my work or at least get dinner cooked early. And it is always nice when the load shedding doesn’t happen, presumably because there is no need.

But back to the tariff increases.  I have done some digging around on the ERB website and other places to get to grips with these, seemingly, perpetual tariff increases.  Over the last few years, it seems as though ERB has made some inroads into working with ZESCO to improve their performance, not only in electricity generation, but in administration and other areas as well. A very interesting and very shocking, if you will pardon the pun, document is the Cost of Service study for the period 2002 to 2006.  Key revelations from that document are:

– Five straight years of losses;

– Increasing cash flow problems;

– More than one-third of all customers not metered;

– The average cost per employee doubled every two years between 1999 and 2004 and their total staff costs are 50% of their total annual expenditure;

– The average cost per employee was K 9.5 million per month in 2005/06

– Mining clients use 50% of the power generated but their rates are at a level 28% below the cost of generation.

– ZESCO employees do not pay for power

– Donations amounting to K 9.5 billion; entertainment costs amounting to K 436 million; and ZESCO United Football Club costs amounting to K 4.7 billion.”

– Exported power is sold 15% below cost

Unfortunately, an updated Cost of Service study is not available but it would make very interesting reading.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) were developed and these are being monitored. The ERB has emphasised the need for ZESCO to meet their KPI’s for any future tariff adjustments, including the one now being considered. But a look at ZESCO’s submission to the ERB and the progress on the KPI’s for the last quarter of 2011, shows some gaping holes:

– Only 16% of new installations had meters installed

– 21% of customers are still unmetered

– Only 6,134 out of a targeted 8,000 meters were installed at already existing connections

– Only 89% of customers are billed regularly

– Of the existing debt, K 96,484,199,000 is for Pre-Paid customers

– The customer/employee ratio is at 95 as opposed to the targeted 100:1

– Since 2009, an additional 500 members of staff have been employed, yet the number of staff and the annual cost of these staff is supposed to be reducing. ZESCO project a 10% increase in staff costs in 2012/13

– ZESCO claim one of the justifications for the tariff increase is the increase in the cost of copper products. Yet they continue to supply the [copper] mines at subsidised rates when world copper prices remain high.

Having highlighted the above, do you believe a tariff increase is justified?  I quote from the ELO hit song, Confusion:

Confusion,I don’t know what I should do.
Confusion,I leave it all up to you.

Kabwe, almost exactly half way between Lusaka and Ndola, is not a town where one would plan a weekend away (unless it’s at Mulungushi Dam). For most of us, it’s a ‘dirty little town’ on the road between Lusaka and the Copperbelt, a town where we know that Zacaria Phiri is going to be out in force checking vehicles, a town where we are going to get stuck behind a slow moving truck and a town where there are speedhumps to slow down your approach to and departure from the railway line.  The fact that the trains don’t seem to run very often, so much so that mishanga sellers have set up their stalls across the railway lines, obviously didn’t figure when the road engineers planned the speed humps. But the fact remains, most of us keep to the ‘main’ road,Independence Avenue, never turning down a side road to see what might be found around the town.

I say the ‘main road’. Ask any resident of Kabwe and they will tell you that Independence Avenue is not the main street of Kabwe. Rather, the main street is Freedom Way, the road running parallel to Independence Avenue to the south. It is in this street that you will find one of Zambia’s declared monuments and national heritage sites – the Big Tree.

The Big Tree is a fig tree, and I am reliably informed (by Mike Bingham) that it is a Ficus wakefieldii.  This species of fig tree is usually found much further north and it is thought that this tree originated from a planted specimen although there are many mature trees of the same species in and around Kabwe. But this tree is special – its canopy stretches about fifty metres from side to side – a truly gigantic specimen – which must be a hundred years old or close to that. Photos taken in the 1950’s show an already enormous tree. The tree, in days gone by and still today, is a popular meeting or gathering place for the town’s people.

But all is not well with the Big Tree. On closer inspection, one can see some of the leaves have turned brown and a look underneath the green leaves and on some of the stems shows a white mealy substance. The experts tell us that this is woolly aphis or what is also known as mealy bug.

The question, of course, is what to do about it.  First choice is obviously an organic pest management regime and there are many recommended – scrubbing the aphid colonies with a stiff-bristled brush, using an earbud dampened with alcohol to remove the bug, a mixture of mild detergent and water and wipe the bugs off with a soft cloth, spray Tabasco sauce or garlic extract on the aphids. Clearly none of these are achievable in this case.

Malathion is the recommended pesticide to use for woolly aphis and with its relatively low human toxicity, this may be a solution. But how to apply it?  Ideally it should be sprayed where the damage is noticeable but with a tree this size, how does one do that? For house plants they also recommend spraying the organic material below the plants which may harbour the bugs. Will spraying the soil beneath the tree have any effect?

Will some pruning of the worst infested areas help?  Certainly getting more air circulating around the leaves will help the general health of the tree. Or do we just leave it and hope that, as Mike Bingham says, it may shake it off on its own?

What do our other tree experts think? Are any of them prepared to take on this, if you will pardon the pun, monumental task?