02/01/2024
ADAMSON MUSHALA, THE UNTOLD STORIES PART 1
==================================
ONE DAY IN DECEMBER 1972,
Adamson Mushala bundled his wife and five children, including a two-weeks-old baby, into a brand new Land Rover 109 station wagon and drove off from his home in Mufumbwe.
He had told his wife that they were going to attend a friend’s wedding in Mongu, Western Province, but they soon found themselves crossing the border into Angola.
That was Mushala’s escape out of the country to begin his armed rebellion against the Kaunda government that would last from 1976 to 1982.
Before he was finally killed by government soldiers, Mushala had morphed into an enigma who inspired both fear and admiration.
Thirty-six years after his death, his widow, Rejoice, remembers a smartly dressed gentleman with a beautiful smile.
On the wall of her living room hangs a black-and-white studio photo of her husband.
“He took that picture when we were in Angola,” she says calmly after noticing my curiosity as we sat in her living room.
Rejoice lives in a small settlement called Kivuku in Kasempa, North-Western Province.
Her house is just a few hundred metres from where she first met her husband – at Mukinge Mission School, back in the 1950s.
When Mushala completed his Standard Six Upper, he went to train as a game ranger, while Rejoice went to live in Chizela (now Mufumbwe), where she worked as a community school teacher.
It was here that the two former school-mates ran into each other again and fell in love.
Rejoice says she had a number of suitors before Mushala, including Emmanuel Mulemena, who later became a kalindula music maestro.
“There are many people who proposed to marry me, but I think God arranged for Adamson to be my husband,” she says, a slight glint in her eyes.
She adds: “I don’t know what attracted me to him. Of course he was tall and very smart. He really looked nice in his suits, but I think it was just God who brought us together.”
Wait for Part 2
