I must admit. I am not reading newspapers in Zambia often, not even every week. The reason is that I can’t take bad journalism. The Post and Weekly mail newspapers I sometimes browse through and get an idea what the president has been busy with. Or not so busy. I don’t mean to undermine him or anybody else. Except the journalism.
Recently I noticed a thin magazine called Bulletin&record. Already from the contents I got interested. And from a huge picture of the vice president Guy Scott. I didn’t know much, if anything about him, so I decided to buy the Bulletin. And was very pleased about its quality. The February number includes plenty of interesting articles and themes: new Muchingu province in the north, Choma as the new provincial capital for the Southern province, a local couple producing tea in Ndola, Livingstone and its current hiccups, money and banking in Zambia etc.
Take the current situation with Choma versus Livingstone. The latter will lose its province capital status. Livingstone is already losing tourists. After ten years of downhill, Victoria Falls Town on Zim side is back on the map also for tourists. At the moment even a bit cheaper than Zambia. According to Livingstone Tourism Association chairperson Kingsley Lilamono, the relocation of the provincial headquarters to Choma doesn’t take much away from Livingstone. It has to start concentrating only on boosting tourism.
Then there is the case of Lusaka. The face of the capital city has changed enormously in the last, only two years time with all the new Manda Hill, Levi and Makeni malls. Will there be clients for all? At the same time there is a huge challenge making Zambia the area’s breadbasket, which could be the case. If... more efficient methods in agriculture were being used and if Tazara railway connecting Zambia to the big sea-port in Dar es Salaam would be used for its all potential of six million tonnes instead of 500,000 tonnes per annum.
And then.. there is the issue of gays. I was actually surprised about the article even published as homosexuality is illegal in Zambia. Bulletin&record interviewed a 19 year old Zambian man, whom the editors named John. He had spent only a few minutes chatting with the journalist in a restaurant and was very nervous. One can understand his feelings considering the harsh penalty of being gay: 14 years in prison. According to ‘John’ the gays meet nowadays in the internet facebooking. Still being careful and afraid all the time.
Bulletin&record is a breath of fresh air in the journalism field in Zambia. For how long as it costes only K5000. Anyway, I have started looking forward fresh numbers.
Ansku Tiilikainen
