Present Day
The ceiling fan in State House office turned in slow circles, pushing cold air from the AC around the massive space. President Phiri sat with his back to the window, though he could still hear the protesters through the glass. Not the words, those had blurred into a single sustained note of anger, but the rhythm. The way a crowd sounds when it has stopped hoping and started demanding.
Bob stood by the door, a file pressed against his chest like a shield. His beard had gone mostly grey in the last three years. The bald spot at his crown had expanded from a coin to a palm. He was forty-one looking sixty.
“The Minister of Health is thinking of resigning,” Bob said.
“He left a note. Said your promises were impossible, we promised too much.”
Prez didn’t turn around. He was looking at the framed newspaper on the wall, Zambia Daily Mail, Election Day, six years ago. The headline read: THE CITIZENS HAVE SPOKEN: SWAGGER AND STRATEGY TO RULE THE NATION. Below it, a photo of him and Bob on stage in Ndola, soaked through, grinning like men who had won the lottery.
“Twenty hospitals,” Prez said. “That was the promise.”
“I remember.” Bob retorted
“How many did we build?” Prez asked
“Three.” Bob responded not bothering to look up
“Three.” Prez let the word sit in the air. “And one of them doesn’t have a working X-ray machine. And one of them has doctors but no medication because Health hasn’t delivered in four months. And one of them …” He stopped. The contractor had taken the advance poured foundation and vanished, but the details were too exhausting for him to recall out loud.
The red phone on his desk blinked. He ignored it.
“How did we get here, Bob?”
Bob set the file on the chair. For a moment something flickered in his face, the old Bob, the one who’d dared Prez to run for student council body in seventh grade, the one who’d always believed they could talk their way out of anything.
“Remember the podcast?” Bob said. “Amina? The way that chat exploded?”
Prez’s eyes drifted from the newspaper. He wasn’t seeing the headline anymore. He was seeing Bob’s living room. The thrift-store lamps. The three camera phones on tripods. The way the rain had sounded like cluttering tin against the roof that night, eight years ago, when everything changed.
— — —
EIGHT YEARS AGO
“We go live in twenty.” Bob’s voice came through the bathroom door, tight with the particular anxiety he reserved for technical checks. “Camera one is good, camera two has a flicker, camera three is fine. I’m routing through the laptop because the phone keeps dropping signal.”
Prez, he was still Prez then, dropping the other letters to hide his eastern heritage, not Prsident, just Prez splashed water on his face and looked in the mirror. His afro needed picking. The scar over his right eyebrow, the one Bob had given him with a cricket bat in seventh grade, caught the light. He patted his hair into something resembling intention and stepped out.
The studio was Bob’s living room in Chelston, which meant it was also his bedroom, his kitchen, and his editing suite. The walls were covered in fabric Bob had found at Soweto Market, bright chitenge prints in green and blue, hung deliberately crooked so it looked like they meant it. Two ring lights cast everything in a warm amber that made the secondhand furniture look expensive. It was a lie, but it was a good lie. Their audience of forty thousand had bought it completely.
“We’re having a guest today,” Bob said, not looking up from his laptop. “Amina runs the community garden in Kamwala. The one the council sold to that Chinese developer.”
Prez pulled on his flannel shirt, blue and green, slightly too big, bought at a secondhand stall in Kabwata. His uniform. “The garden girl? The one who fights with the mayor on social media?”
“That’s her. Massive two hundred thousand followers. Five thousand signatures on her petition.”
“Which the council ignored.” Prez quipped up
“Exactly.” Bob finally looked up. “That’s why she’s perfect.”
The countdown ended. The little red light Bob bought just for going live turned on.
“Welcome back to What Now? The show that’s as confused and surprised at the happenings of the day just like you” Prez said, leaning into the couch, his grin already finding its mark. “I’m your host, Prez, and as always I’m joined by the man who makes me look brilliant, Bob!”
Bob waved from behind the couch, positioned just outside the main frame. “That’s the nicest thing he’s ever said about me.”
The chat scrolled. @Maya_online. @GreenMom. @LusakaBoy. Their regulars.
“Today we’ve got someone special,” Prez said. “She’s fighting the council, she’s fighting developers, she’s fighting for green space in a city that keeps paving everything over. Please welcome Amina!”
Amina stepped into frame. She was twenty-five, short natural hair, a smile that kept trying to retreat. She wore a plain black T-shirt with a small logo, the garden’s name in green letters.
“Thanks for having me.”
“Tell us about the garden,” Prez said.
And she did. She talked about the garbage dump they’d cleared, the compost they’d built from market waste, the grandmothers who taught young people to plant maize, rape and tomatoes. She talked about the small market they’d started, feeding two hundred families a week, the only fresh vegetables some of them saw.
“So what’s the problem?” Bob asked from behind the couch.
“The council sold the land,” Amina said. Her hands, resting on her knees, tightened into fists. “To a Chinese developer. They’re building a shopping mall. The council said the tax revenue is more important than green space. That five thousand signatures meant nothing.” She said through gritted teeth
Prez leaned back. “Five thousand people. And they just threw the petition away?”
“Politicians don’t listen to petitions. They listen to donors. They listen to polls. They listen to anyone with money.” Amina said holding her knees for comfort.
“Then why don’t you run?” Bob interrupted, squeezing a stress ball “You clearly care more than anyone in that building.”
Amina laughed, nervous. “Me? I’m a gardener.”
“See, that’s the thing,” Prez said, sitting up. “Everyone says they can’t. Too complicated. Too messy.” He waved his hand. “How hard can it really be? Balance the books, free the nation. Simple.”
Bob snorted. “Famous last words.”
The chat exploded.
@LusakaBoy: Prez for President 2041
@GreenMom: I’d vote for you over these clowns
@truthseeker69: You’re saying it’s easy? RUN THEN
@bobsfanclub: Bob for VP!
Prez laughed. “Guys, we’re joking. We have a podcast. We find you local heroes. We are not local heroes.”
@Maya_online: I did comms for the Mayor of Lusaka. I know how broken the system is. I’ll help manage your campaign.
Prez stared at the screen. “Maya, you’re joking too, right?”
A new message. Verified account.
@james_okonkwo: If you’re serious, I’ll write the first piece. “The Podcasters Who Promised to Fix Everything.” This is content gold.
The chat became a waterfall. People tagging friends. Someone had already made a logo, a silhouette of Prez’s afro with the words WHAT NOW? ? in bold letters. A WhatsApp group link appeared, then another.
“We’re just a podcast,” Prez said quietly.
@user_476: I’M IN. I’LL DO SOCIAL MEDIA.
@chipego: I’LL DO GRAPHIC DESIGN. I’M SERIOUS.
@mwana_wamayor: MY DAD IS A COUNCILLOR. I CAN GET YOU INSIDE.
Bob had stopped laughing. He was scrolling, his face blank, in the way it got when he was processing too much at once. “Prez. There’s… there’s a lot of people. Someone’s already set up a WhatsApp group. Three hundred members.”
“Delete it. Tell them it’s a bit.”
“This woman says she’ll donate her entire savings.” Bob held up his phone. “She says her daughter got sick at Kanyama Clinic. They didn’t have malaria medication. The nurse told her to buy it herself. She says politicians never listen to people like her. She’s asking if you will.”
Prez’s throat went dry.
Amina was watching them, her eyes wide. She’d turned from guest to witness. “They really want this,” she said softly. “They want someone who will listen.”
Prez opened his mouth to make another joke. To laugh it off. To save himself.
Instead he looked at the camera, at the thousands of strangers watching, waiting, hoping for something they couldn’t name, and said: “I don’t know if I can fix anything. I don’t know anything about politics. But if you’re serious… if you’re really serious, then maybe we should find out.”
The chat went absolutely ballistic.
Bob was already on his phone. “Maya just called. She’s coming over. She says we need to start paperwork tonight.”
“Paperwork?”
“Registering a political party. She says if we’re not legitimate, the Mayor’s office will block us. They’ll say we’re a joke.”
“We are a joke.” Prez muffled
“Not anymore.” Bob reminded, showing him the messages in the chat
Amina stood up. “I have a friend. A lawyer. She does human rights work. She can help with the registration.”
“Wait,” Prez said, holding up his hands. “This is moving too fast. I didn’t even…”
“We just told forty thousand people you’re running for president,” Bob said, gesturing at the chat. “One of them is a journalist. Another is the daughter of a councillor. And Maya, our Maya, is already drafting a press release.”
Prez looked at the camera. At the frantic scrolling. At the messages flooding in.
The woman whose daughter got sick at Kanyama Clinic.
The gardener who fought city hall.
A thousand strangers who believed a joke could become something more.
He thought about his own mother. The clinic in Matero where she’d died. The doctor who’d shrugged and said, “We’re doing our best,” while the power cut out and the generator didn’t start because there was no diesel.
“Fine,” Prez said. The word came out steadier than he felt. “Fine. We’ll try. But if this goes wrong….”
“It can’t,” Bob said his voice hiding a tremor. “It can’t. These people believe in us, Prez. We can’t let them down.
Leave a Reply