Mosi oa tunya: An ecological splendour and a painful paradox, By Omoniyi Ibietan

In one of the presentations at the APRA conference, African countries have been found to earn far less than 10% of what countries in the other hemisphere earn from tourism. Suffice it to say that, as we strategise on rebranding our continent and for our historical and endowed sites to bear befitting names, we must have a rethink about how Africa can prosper appropriately from her endowments. MAYIBUYE AFRICA! Come back Africa!

The denouement of the annual conference of the African Public Relations Association (APRA) is usually a tour of the host country’s most memorable sites, either in natural locales or in the built environments.

So, in concluding the APRA Lusaka Conference of 2023, we set out on a long journey of about an eight-hour drive from Lusaka to the town of the waterfalls, originally known as ‘Mosi ao Tunya’ (the smoke that thunders). It is a breathtaking waterfall already designated by UNESCO as a world heritage site, but the town is now called Livingstone, named after the missionary, David Livingstone – possibly the Victorian era’s most famous Scot, at once a physician, a Christian missionary, and an explorer back in the day.

A discussion with a member of APRA who said Livingstone discovered Victoria Falls gave me the inkling I was embarking on a mentally engaging journey. “No”, I retorted. “He couldn’t have found the Falls. He was probably the first non-African of the Caucasian kind to see the waterfalls”. I told my sister from a southern African country, with whom I was having the conversation, that African people had lived for centuries in organised societies before the coming of the colonialists. I reminded her of the introduction to my paper at the Conference, where I relied on the irrefutable works of Cheikh Anta Diop to disprove Hegel’s poor conception of African history.

I told her that the most notable sciences, including Mathematics, started in Africa, and many Greeks, including Pythagoras, Thales, Plato, and Aristotle, studied in the Egyptian Mystery Schools that focused on philosophy and the sciences. I was emphatic that there is no argument about the African origin of human civilisation, including the fact that the original people of Egypt are unarguably ‘Black’.

Besides their pigmentation, the noses of ancient Egyptians were indeed flat like mine and that explains the deliberate destruction of the noses of the human figurines like The Great Sphinx at Giza and elsewhere, by irredeemable bigots and nihilists, who want to pervert African history. Because my discussant was a lady (physically and biologically), I also referred her to the pioneering works of the Nigeria philosopher, Professor Sophie Oluwole, particularly, Socrates and Ọ̀rúnmìlà: Two Patron Saints of Classical Philosophy, where I gleaned that Orunmila, the Yoruba deity of knowledge and wisdom, was more sagely than Socrates, despite their similarities.

Our journey progressed, though there were no sufficient, sightly things to see as we commuted through Mazabuka, Monze, Choma, and Kalomo. Nevertheless, it was a good, pleasurable ride on the 60-seat classical coach – the type I had used between New York and Bowie in the US two decades ago. We had music (mostly Nigerian), movies (I remember Black Diamond), and drinks of all varieties on offer as we journeyed. We also stopped at two major towns (while going and when returning), so that people could use washrooms, (though there was an aircraft-type convenience on the bus), and to buy snacks and other foods. But we had enough to keep our mouths busy with food. Zambia is a nation of astonishingly hospitable and kind people. If most of us were destined to die from overeating, we would have perished in Zambia.

Anyway, as we approached Livingstone, the city in which Mosi ao Tunya is located, my colleague and I resumed our conversation. She had been busy making us comfortable earlier. So, when I found her much relaxed and free, and as we got closer to the city of ‘the smoke that thunders’ (so called because of the palpable eruptions and smoky features that attend waterfalls), I asked my APRA colleague: “Do you think it is proper for us to continue to call this city, Livingstone and the waterfalls, Victoria Falls?”.

To assure my mate that I did not set out to denigrate southern Africa but that I am actually bemoaning the pan-African phenomenon of acquiescing to the Western tendency to distort the African heritage, I cited examples of many nauseating vestiges of colonialism across Africa, including in Nigeria where we have one of our nation’s choicest city hubs named Victoria Island, and one of our most appealing cosmopolitan cities (the largest in the Niger Delta region), Port Harcourt, taking on the name of a one-time colonial secretary in London, Lord Viscount Harcourt. My colleague responded that she got my point, but it is what it is. So, I told her that its time we started an intentional process of rebranding historical phenomena that had been improperly branded.

Yet, the waterfalls remain quite defining in any narration of the Zambezi River. Across the gorge and a river flowing from the Falls is a bridge and a rail line at that particular border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The bridge also serves as operating point to those who are willing to take the risks of ‘bungee jumping’ and a terminal point for those who wish to travel on the ‘zip line’.

By my reckoning, in splendour, magnitude, and significance, Mosi ao Tunya is more astonishing than Niagara Falls, its North American ‘cataract crescent-shaped’ equivalent that further binds the United States of America and Canada, in the way its African type binds Zambia and Zimbabwe. New Yorkers remember Niagara Falls once they remember Niagara River, the way Zambezi river is ever in the consciousness of Zambians, Zimbabweans, Angolans, Mozambicans, Congolese, and even Namibians.

Indeed, like the city in Zambia where Mosi ao Tunya is partly located by nature, Niagara is equally a city in a region southeast of the Province of Ontario in Canada. Its name, Niagara, is a derivative of an Iroquoian word, “onguiaahra,” meaning ‘thunderous noise’. After all, Mosi ao Tunya also means ‘smoke that thunders. Indeed, anyone who has visited Niagara and Mosi ao Tunya will agree that noises produced by the Falls are as thunderous as they reverberate. The Iroquoian language is a genotype and therefore constitutive of the group of languages of the indigenous people of North America. Coincidentally, it was also missionaries who anglicised ‘ONGUIAAHRA’ as Niagara.

In the case of Livingstone, he was either less intelligent or he deliberately decided not to find an approximate word in English as a substitute for ‘Mosi ao Tunya’, the way his tribe had done in North America. He simply named another people’s heritage as ‘Victoria Falls’, and even worse, the city of the Falls has been named after him.

This is what our people call insult upon injury. As if it wasn’t tragic enough that the nations of Zambia and Zimbabwe were hitherto called Northern Rhodesian and Southern Rhodesia respectively, taking their colonial names from Cecil John Rhodes, a brutal, crazily inordinately ambitious light of British ravenous exploitation, and insatiable imperialism. Rhodes was central to the annexation of many parts of southern Africa by the British.

The Zambezi River, one of Africa’s largest bodies of waters, with its majestic flow, descends rapidly into the uncommonly deep Kariba gorge, creating eternal thunderous noise before continuing its flow towards Kariba Dam, where science meets nature to provide the people of Zambia their major source of electricity, some of which is exported to neighbouring countries, particularly South Africa. Ironically, as nature works, during certain periods of the year, Zambia also suffers from energy crises and resorts to power rationing. I believe there is wisdom in harvesting the sun for solar power and other alternate sources of energy, to mitigate shortage. No country in Africa should suffer a perennial energy crisis. After all, Niagara Falls continues to be a source of power generation in North America, even as I write.

Zambezi River also persists as a source of ecological support for an array of human activities and, of course, animals, many of which would otherwise have become extinct, like rhinoceros, hippopotamus and elephants. The river continues to be a source of life for the floral and fauna of that ecosystem.

Yet, the waterfalls remain quite defining in any narration of the Zambezi River. Across the gorge and a river flowing from the Falls is a bridge and a rail line at that particular border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The bridge also serves as operating point to those who are willing to take the risks of ‘bungee jumping’ and a terminal point for those who wish to travel on the ‘zip line’.

To get to the Angels’ Pool requires travelling via a canoe across the Zambezi river just before the water cascades that flow to the falls. The canoe drops adventurers off on the other side, where the masters of the pool guide people through the exploration process. Indeed, everything about Mosi ao Tunya is mind-boggling.

There is another thing of interest. It is a bridge, the Knife Edge Bridge, which is a footbridge across the gorge, close to the Falls. The narrow foot bridge, maintained by Zambian breweries, provides the link to those who want to explore the boiling point of the waterfalls. After the bridge, there are hundreds of man-made steps that lead to the boiling point, where the impacts of the Falls are more visible, partly in the incredible bubbles they create on the ground.

On the bridge, at certain periods of the year, depending on the water level of the Zambezi river, the waterfalls cause huge splashes of water to create a perpetual rainfall on the Knife Edge Bridge. Anyone who crosses the Knife Edge Bridge at these points in time will certainly be drenched.

As I explored the Knife Edge Bridge, I recalled the story I was told about my paternal grandfather, Peter Atoyebi Ibietan, who passed long before my birth. He was a community leader and mobiliser. I heard that he was a very neat man and stylish dresser, but importantly, he was central to mobilising the community to construct the only bridge connecting my homeland of Ogidi, Ijumu, with Kabba. I was told of my grandpa’s exploits as an active participant in that project, even as I do not know if anyone died during the erection of the project. My village bridge project certainly falls into insignificance in comparison to the Knife Edge Bridge, though the later is a foot brigde. By any element of contention, the construction of the Knife Edge brigde across the Kariba gorge is one of the most courageous acts of men.

However, a scarier reality is the exploration people undertake on the Zambezi River, very close to the waterfalls. A portion lies close to the Falls and was hitherto called the Devil’s Pool, later renamed the Angels’ Pool, where people can actually swim with the guidance of human lifesavers, who ensure that no one crosses a particular point towards the falls, otherwise such life ends there, because it is impossible for anyone to survive a fall into the gorge.

To get to the Angels’ Pool requires travelling via a canoe across the Zambezi River just before the water cascades that flow to the falls. The canoe drops adventurers off on the other side, where the masters of the pool guide people through the exploration process. Indeed, everything about Mosi ao Tunya is mind-boggling.

Regrettably, not much in terms of earnings have come from the tour or cruise on Zambezi River and the waterfalls, both on the Zambian and the Zimbabwean sides. In Europe and North America, countries earn much more from tourism than we do in Africa.

In one of the presentations at the APRA conference, African countries have been found to earn far less than 10% of what countries in the other hemisphere earn from tourism. Suffice it to say that, as we strategise on rebranding our continent and for our historical and endowed sites to bear befitting names, we must have a rethink about how Africa can prosper appropriately from her endowments. MAYIBUYE AFRICA! Come back Africa!

Omoniyi Ibietan is the Head of Media Relations Management at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).