SIMON MWANSA KAPWEPWE’S LETTER EMERGES
MORE THAN AN INSPIRING EMAIL: PERHAPS A CALL TO LEADERSHIP!
By Kenneth K Mwenda
Today, Sunday, September 27, 2020, I woke up to a pleasant email from one of my former postgraduate law students at the University of Warwick in England, my good friend, Siddharth Raja, based in India.
It is now more than twenty (20) years since I left Warwick. I taught Siddharth at Warwick in 1997/98. In his message this morning, he reminded me of those good old days at Warwick. What a pleasant surprise after twenty-two (22) years! This is the beauty about academia. It is not about money, but making a difference in people’s lives.
Even more inspiring, and a reason why I am sharing this message (with Siddharth’s permission, of course), is the fact that Siddharth’s grandfather taught Zambia’s first Vice- President, Mr Simon M Kapwepwe, in India. And Siddharth has just shared with me a letter that Mr Kapwepwe wrote to his grandmother. It is the first time ever that anyone in Zambia is seeing this highly prized letter. I have attached it to this posting. Also, following below is Siddharth’s email to me. Thank you, Siddharth. Greatly appreciated.
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Dear Prof. Mwenda,
I trust this e-mail of mine finds you well and safe.
I am not sure if you will remember me — as one of your students at Warwick University in 1997-98…
There is another reason I am writing to you — and that too today; here’s a note I’ve written and as attached:
“What a Sunday discovery!
Earlier today, Meghna (my daughter) and I — on a lark — decided to open up and plough through some of the papers left behind by my paternal grandmother, Meghna’s great grandmother, Mrs. Lakshmi Raja. Her old tartan cloth suitcase lies quite forlorn in our attic, and we brought it out, and unzipped it (yes, it has a zipper that still works after almost half-a-century!).
And, while we found many family memories, this one caught my attention. A folded letter, that is quite faded, written on very thin, almost like butter paper. Dated 1st February 1952, well nigh 68 years ago. Addressed to my grandmother on the unexpected passing of her husband — a “ministering angel to you and to his children and in whom I have lost a man where I could go for advice.”
The author concludes: “I pray our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave only the cherish (sic.) memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the knowledge-imparting alter.”
And then he signs off: “Yours very sincerely and respectfully, S. M. Kapwepwe.”
This then, ladies and gentlemen, is Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe, later the 1st Vice President of Zambia under the legendary Kenneth Kaunda (KK) and a stalwart of that country’s independence movement, writing as a 30-year old student of my grandfather’s in Bombay, at the Tanning Institute, Bandra.
My uncle recalls: “[Simon Kapwepwe] stop rigid and unmoving at the feet of Anna [as my grandfather was fondly called] for the whole time that he lay, as droves came to pay their last respects.””
I do hope to stay in touch.
Warm regards,
Siddharth
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Siddharth Raja, Esq.