{"id":939,"date":"2020-04-08T11:03:49","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T10:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/?p=939"},"modified":"2020-04-08T12:03:06","modified_gmt":"2020-04-08T11:03:06","slug":"are-you-drunk-or-is-there-something-wrong-upstairs-in-your-brain-unparliamentary-expressions-in-zambia-1964-1974","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/archives\/939","title":{"rendered":"‘Are you drunk’ or is there ‘something wrong upstairs in your brain’? : Unparliamentary expressions in Zambia 1964 – 1974"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Caroline Marchant-Wallis, Daniel Millum and Tracy Wilson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re taking the opportunity of our (temporary) exile from\nour beloved BLDS collection (personally given its resemblance to a Cold War\nnuclear shelter I voted that we should spend the lockdown period in the IDS basement\nwhere the collection is housed, but University management thought differently)\nto spend a bit of time writing about some of the interesting and unusual items\nwe\u2019ve already found as part of the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are found in unlikely sources. At first glance the title The Zambian Parliament 24th<\/sup> October, 1964 to 31st<\/sup> December, 1974<\/a><\/em> sounds of course worthy of inclusion in the collection, and of interest to scholars of Zambian political history, but possibly a little dry. Yet delving inside shows the Zambian parliament to have been a more colourful and contentious forum than you would expect the official record to reveal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"
The first Cabinet of the Republic of Zambia upon its Independence from Britain on 24th October, 1964. Credit: Mwebantu<\/a> via The Gambian Observer<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In his introduction, President Kenneth Kaunda solemnly states that he has \u2018repeatedly reaffirmed our complete confidence and trust in democracy\u2019, and this is followed by a quote from Edmund Burke stating that Parliament should be a deliberative assembly of one nation guided by the general good. However, it appears that not all members had taken this lofty Burkean approach to parliamentary discourse, as can be seen from a brief perusal of appendix one, which contains a list of \u2018unparliamentary expressions\u2019 for each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s quite hard to ascertain what criteria is being applied,\ngiven that in 1964 the two entries listed are for \u2018scum\u2019 (probably not that\nparliamentary) and \u2018Chaps\u2019 (surely relatively innocent), but what we can say is\nthat things go rapidly downhill, with 1965 recording 16 instances (favourite\n\u2018any dunderhead in the street\u2019) and 1966 34 (including the evocative \u2018cow dung\neconomics\u2019, the seemingly innocuous \u2018boy\u2019 and \u2018boss\u2019 and the\nwonder-what-the-context-was \u2018bottoms\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1967 only saw four examples, but there seems to have been a\nrunning theme, as three of these were \u2018and booze\u2019, \u2018and drunkards\u2019 and \u2018are you\ndrunk?\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1968 things get really out of hand. There are 126\ninstances, and a lot more non-English parliamentary language, including \u2018chola\nboys\u2019 \u2013 this translates from Chibemba (the most widely spoken of Zambia\u2019s more\nthan 70 local languages and dialects)  as\n\u2018a bag carrier or what Zambians refer to as \u201ca yes bwana<\/em>\u201d\u2019\n(see a\n2012 spat centred on this insult<\/a> for more detail as to why it may have been\ncontentious). Among the English phrases are the scatological (\u2018suffering from\ndiarrhoea\u2019), the intriguing (\u2018milk you\u2019) and the inexplicable (\u2018Harry\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether the language improved after this or standards\nslipped is hard to tell, but for the remainder of the period until 1974 there\nare only 35 more remarks deemed to have crossed the line, though there are\nstill some which whet the appetite (\u2018something wrong upstairs in our brains\u2019\n(1973), \u2018bottom glued on the table\u2019 (1974) and the seemingly uncontroversial\n\u2018phew\u2019 (1972)). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One wonders what Bercow would have made of it. Probably not\nthe same as Kenneth Kaunda, who ended up abolishing multi-party democracy in\nthe early 1970s. We can only guess if this was in some way a reaction to being\ncalled a \u2018F—- B—–\u2019 (1968) in his own parliament\u2026(1)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To arrange to see this item when the library reopens, and to access the parliamentary records on which it was based, just drop us a line at bldslegacy@sussex.ac.uk<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

(1) To be fair to Kaunda, a former schoolteacher who consistently sought to prioritise Zambian education, the rationale was to increase popular participation in the country\u2019s political economy – \u2018participatory democracy\u2019 as opposed to \u2018parliamentary democracy\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Caroline Marchant-Wallis, Daniel Millum and Tracy Wilson We\u2019re taking the opportunity of our (temporary) exile from our beloved BLDS collection (personally given its resemblance to a Cold War nuclear shelter I voted that we should spend the lockdown period in the IDS basement where the collection is housed, but University management thought differently) to … Continue reading ‘Are you drunk’ or is there ‘something wrong upstairs in your brain’? : Unparliamentary expressions in Zambia 1964 – 1974<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":332,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[150885],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9fi5f-f9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/332"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":947,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939\/revisions\/947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/libstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}