There is a saying in the Republic: a hungry man will believe any mouth that smells of food.
Joseph Kunda grew up in Mumbwa, a village of three hundred souls where the nearest tarred road was a two-day walk and the nearest politician was as far away as the moon. Every five years, a man in a suit arrived in a convoy of black cars, stood in the shade of the mango tree, and promised the village everything — roads, clean water, a clinic, jobs, dignity. And every five years, after the votes were counted, Mumbwa remained exactly as it was.
Joseph decided he would be different. That was his first mistake. His second mistake was believing it.
He ran for president on a promise not to forget where he came from. He won in a landslide. He moved into a forty-seven-room palace built by the colonial government — and, one reasonable compromise at a time, the palace began to change him. The fishing licences he'd promised to cancel were "renegotiated." The fertiliser subsidy he'd promised farmers was "restructured" into vouchers redeemable only at dealers six hours away by bus. The mine safety inspections he'd promised were scheduled forty-eight hours in advance, so they found nothing.
Three years later, a woman named Mama Chileshe — the same elder who had once asked him, under that mango tree, "What makes you different?" — took a three-day bus ride to stand silently outside his palace. She carried no sign. She didn't need one.
"I did not come for you to see me," she told him that night, on the phone. "I came so that you would see yourself."