ZAMBIA - THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE AND THE AFTERMATH

Autor/in

Chisembele, Sophena

Sophena Chisembele is the surviving wife of Sylvester Mwamba Chisembele. She was born in London, England in 1936 and is of mixed parentage. Her father, Yusuf Mohammed Ali, came to the U.K. as a seaman travelling on merchant ships which traded between India and the London Docks during the 1920s. He met and married a woman of Scottish descent, Ethel Emma Wallace. Sophena's father served in the R.A.F. during the Second World War but he did not survive and he is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Brookwood Military Cemetery in England. She and her three siblings were brought up by their mother on her own. Her sister Dr. Sheila Ahern went to New Zealand and held the post of Head of Department, History, at the Victoria University in Wellington. Sophena in her turn went to Zambia in the early days of independence, under the auspices of the British Crown Agents. Sophena worked as secretary/pa to Sylvester Chisembele. In 1969 she became a pawn in a political intrigue which saw her arrested and declared a prohibited immigrant. The attempted deportation was aborted at the last moment when the plot failed, causing political repercussions which are described in this book. She married Sylvester Chisembele in 1970 and played a full part in his life and activities. After his death in 2006 she published articles in a local newspaper which were a critique of the administration, the corruption and a description of the circumstances of the death of Sylvester Chisembele, the consequence of which saw the newspaper temporarily closed and banned from publishing any further article from her. Since the death of her husband she has submitted papers to various universities and institutions which have been accepted for their archives, among them the Vatican, the Bodleian Library Oxford, Cambridge University, SOAS University of London, University of Cape Town, universities in Zambia. She survived an armed break-in at her residence in Lusaka where she was living alone after the death of her husband, an ordeal which saw her tied-up and threatened at knife-point. She then followed earlier advice from the British High Commission and left Zambia in 2009 and is now living in Axminster, England.