FORGOTTEN SON POPS UP

I grew up in Lubumbashi, Zaire (now Congo DR), where my grandmother lived. It was while there that I first came to know about my father, and this was way back in 1966.”

ONE afternoon in May, 1992, I was seated in my office at the Zambia Daily Mail head office in ?usaka when : received an unexpected guest. Tall, dark in complexion and clad in blue overalls, the man stood at attention, like a soldier, while he waited for me to offer him a seat. That done, he muttered a “thank you” and scanned the office for a moment.

“My name is Limbikani Katwishi Kalinso Gudumilile,” the stranger introduced himself, pronouncing each name slowly and distinctly as if to ensure that I made no mistake about it.

“Yes, Mr. Gudumilile, what can I do for you?” I asked my guest.

The man said he was the long-forgotten son of a wellknown local politician, Mr. Crawford Gudumilile, and that he had come to see me over “this important issue.”

He said he was 40 years old, although I thought he looked much older.

He went on, “You may not have heard about me, of course, but the fact remains that I am the old man’s offspring. I have come here to get advice because some people are trying to make it difficult for me to contact my father.”

I looked at my guest closely just to satisfy myself that I was not dealing with a mental case. The man looked quite normal to me but what was he talking about? He seemed to be talking nonsense because I had never heard that Mr. Gudumilile had any other children apart from the ones I knew.

After he had introduced himself, I demanded to see his National Registration Card (NRC). The only names appearing on his NRC were Limbikani Katwishi Kalinso, so I asked him, “How do you call yourself Mr. Gudumilile’s son when his surname doesn’t appear here? Aren’t you merely trying to defame somebody’s character?”

To my utter surprise, upon hearing this, the man rose to his feet, looked into the ceiling and with his right hand raised swore in God’s name that the information he had given me was “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

I took another hard look at the man. All of a sudden, my brain “opened” and this time I could see some resemblance between him and Mr. Gudumilile. “But tell me,” I felt I should ask, “where have you been all this time? You are telling me you are 40 years old. How did it happen that Mr. Gudumilile came to be your father?”

The man confessed that it was a long and complicated story. “To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have known who my father was if my mother didn’t tell me about him,” he said. “You see I grew up in Lubumbashi, Zaire (now Congo DR), where my grandmother lived. It was while there that I first came to know about my father, and this was way back in 1966.”

“What happened?” I asked, getting interested in his story.

“Well,” he went on, “it happened that my mother had gone to a local market to buy relish. She came back with an old Zambian newspaper in which there was a photograph of a certain man. She pointed at the photograph and said ‘this is your father. He is a famous politician in Zambia.”

According to Kalinso, he was thrilled to learn that his father was still alive and, what more, holding an important political post in Zambia. “I then asked my mother to tell me more about this Mr. Gudumilile, my father, like how she came to meet him and so on.”

The story, as told by Kalinso’s mother, goes like this: way back in 1951, a certain young man, who was later to be identified as Crawford Gudumilile, fell in love with a girl from Luapula Province whom he intended to marry. The girl’s name was Mulenga (later Kalinso’s mother). This was then in Luanshya. However, when Mulenga told her parents about the relationship, they told her to “forget it” on learning that the suitor came from a different province. They told her in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances would they allow any of their daughters to marry outside their tribe.

But then Crawford and Mulenga loved each other and were determined to marry whether by hook or by crook. In their childish minds, the lovers thought that if the relationship resulted in a pregnancy, their parents would have no choice but to allow them to marry.

And so it came to pass that in the course of time, Mulenga conceived. She hoped that when her parents came to know about it, they would chase her away and then she would marry the idol of her affection, Crawford. But then she was gravely mistaken .

When Mulenga was about two months pregnant, her father forced her to marry a Mr. Himanje Kalinso, a local businessman who also hailed from Luapula Province. By that time the girl had not said anything about her condition to anyone and simply proceeded with the forced marriage, hoping that things would sort themselves out later.

From the word go, it became quite apparent that Kalinso loved his wife very much. Perhaps because he was much older than her, something like 15 years his junior, he literally treated her like an egg. She had no reason to complain as far as food and clothing were concerned. And when, a month later, she disclosed that she was pregnant, the businessman became even more loving towards his wife, not knowing that a shock awaited him.

Kalinso was shocked and bewildered when his wife gave birth to a healthy baby boy at seven months following their marriage. He would not have suspected anything had it been a premature baby but a healthy one at seven months! He demanded an explanation from his wife.

After some grilling, Mulenga confessed that the baby was not her husband’s but that of her former boyfriend Crawford Gudumilile, who had by then shifted to Lusaka to continue with his political activities.

The baby at the centre of the controversy was, of course, the fellow who was later to be known as Limbikani Katwishi Kalinso.

Knowing that her son would not be safe in her household, especially that her husband had made it clear that he would have nothing to do with him for as long as he lived, she decided to send him to her mother who was living in Lubumbashi. The father had gone there for work.

Kalinso told this writer that since his return to Zambia in 1980 following the death of his grandmother in Congo DR, he had tried on many occasions to get in touch with his father but to no avail. “I want to see my father because I want him to help me with a job,” he stressed.

He claimed that each time he went to his father’s workplace in the town centre, security guards manning the gate to the premises turned him away. They called him an impostor, “which I regard as a big insult because I know that the old man is my natural biological father,” he said.

“But why don’t you go to your father’s house?” I asked, wondering why he was only keen on visiting his office.

“Going to the house I can, but I don’t think it would be prudent for me to do it now,” he replied.

“Why not?” I inquired. “Because I wouldn’t want to cause sudden shock in the old man’s family,” he said. “I want to introduce myself to him first, then it will be up to him to finalise everything. I hope he doesn’t disown me,” he chuckled.

A few weeks later, this writer was to learn that Kalinso had been found a job in one of the government departments as a clerical officer with the assistance of the prominent politician…..