Western Province – eller Barotseland – adskiller sig fra resten af Zambia på grund af sin udbredte fattigdom og den store Lozi-stammes dominans. Nu taler mange lozier om løsrivelse, skriver IRIN news.
LUSAKA, 25 January 2011 (IRIN): High poverty levels and the skewed (skæv) distribution of resources in Zambia’s poorest province is stirring secession talk – with an ethnic dimension.
– The tensions in Western Province are a consequence of the neglect that the place has suffered in terms of socio-economic and infrastructure development, Thomas Mabwe, head of Development Studies at the Zambia Open University, told IRIN.
– Poverty levels in Western Province are the highest in the country, and there is very little to show in terms of infrastructure development. So, to some extent, people are just reacting to that under-development of their region, he said.
Earlier this month Mungu, the capital of Western Province, saw pro-tests demanding independence for the region: Violent clashes with security forces left three dead, including a nine-year-old child, and 12 others were hospitalized.
The protests started with a poster and flier campaign by a group calling themselves the Black Bulls, which urged all of the province’s “non-inhabitants” (non-Lozi) to leave the province by 15 January 2011, or risk being hacked to death.
Western Province is home to the Lozi-speaking people, one of the biggest of Zambia’s 73 ethnic groups. The minority Nkoyas and Mbunda ethnic groups in the province were classed as “non-inhabitants” in the poster campaign.
Police have arrested 24 Lozi-speaking people and charged them with treason, an offence that carries the death penalty.
COLONIAL TREATY
Western Province was a British Protectorate known as Barotseland [Land of the Lozi people] while the remainder of Zambia, then known as Northern Rhodesia, was administered as a British colony.
Ahead of independence (1964) and to facilitate a unitary state, the two territories were united by a pact known as the Barotse Agreement, which among other things, called for equal distribution of resources.
“The Government of the Republic of Zambia shall have the same general responsibility for providing financial support for the administration and economic development of Barotseland as it has for other parts of the Republic and shall ensure that, in discharge of this responsibility, Barotseland is treated fairly and equitably in relation to other parts of the Republic,” said the 1964 Barotse Agreement signed by Zambia’s founding president, Kenneth Kaunda; Northern Rhodesia’s last governor, Evelyn Hone; and the then Lozi king Mwanawina Lewanika.
In October 2010, the government removed the Barotse Agreement from the new draft constitution, which immediately led to widespread protests in the province.
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