imported_Lusaka
23-12-2003, 15:36
The boy Derek-
In 1957 Derek Igomo was born near Lake Rukwa in Roycelandian East Africa. The eldest son in an ethnic Lusakan subsistence farming family young Derek received little formal education, and taught himself only the most basic literary skills during what free time he could steal away from the fields.
The family’s tiny farm was situated on land that was barely accepting of cultivation in an otherwise fertile region dominated by the vast farms of Roycelandian colonial immigrants.
At just fourteen years of age Igomo set out –on foot- to look for work in Lusaka, capital of Roycelandian East Africa’s Zambian province. His youthful thirst for knowledge stood young Derek in good stead as he found employment in a warehouse where he sorted stocks in alphabetical order for barely enough pay to give him a leaky and well shared roof.
Residing for several months in various run-down shared accommodations Igomo began to make friends, not least notably amongst them was one Colin Olongwe. Olongwe, a revolutionary-minded mechanic’s assistant, was a little older than Igomo and would be a significant influence upon his bright-eyed young friend.
Igomo the traveler; Rhodesia beckons-
In his teens Derek’s recognisably great stature began to show and it was during this time that the broad-shouldered Igomo insists he was spotted by a Rhodesian wrestling promoter, after fighting off a pair of would-be thieves at the warehouse. Still short of his sixteenth birthday –though he has apparently always looked older than is true- Igomo traveled to neighbouring Rhodesia and Nyasaland where he competed for several months on local wrestling circuits. It almost appeared that Derek might make a living for himself, and achieve minor celebrity so far as a black man could in colonial sub-Saharan Africa, until badly torn ligaments in his right leg ended the teenager’s career.
Not to be beaten, Igomo fed off his local popularity for so long as he could milk it, staying with relatively well to do fans and reading at length during his physical recovery.
In 1974, as the Portuguese Empire in Africa began its final collapse, the seventeen-year-old Igomo left Rhodesia and Nyasaland, evidently keen to find his old friend Olongwe. Sure that Olongwe would have much to say on the bubbling conflict around Rhodesia, Derek –now walking with a subtle limp that was never to leave him- returned once more to the city of Lusaka, where he worked much as before, ever inquiring after his friend.
(Note- in this reality Rhodesia and Nyasaland remains to this day a unified state on Lusaka’s southern border, Salisbury evidently having defeated the rebels and successfully defied London’s diplomatic efforts and the UN’s sanctions)
Igomo the politician is born; trouble begins at home-
Between 1974 and 1976, Igomo and Olongwe became active in local politics across subsistence farming communities around the regional capital. His convalescence in Rhodesia and Nyasaland had left Igomo a fairly well read man amongst his downtrodden peers, and Olongwe had instilled the spirit of revolution in him. This spirit was only fired further by the contrasts increasingly evident in the region with the collapse of Portuguese authority and the rise of hopeful rebel factions in Rhodesia.
In December of 1976 Roycelandian authorities arrested Colin Olongwe on charges related to public disorder and incitement after a fiery speech in the city proper ended in clashes between police and spectators. Olongwe spent New Year in prison. By the time of Colin’s release in February Derek had founded the Social Progress Party, an institution that would see many of its number at odds with the authorities over the next year.
As SPP popularity grew, and fighting increased in and around neighbouring Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Roycelandian authorities began to panic, cracking down on Igomo’s associates with increasing frequency and force.
The long memory of the law; revolution brews-
During ’77 and ’78 luckless rebel fighters and activists from the south began to associate with Igomo’s wildly popular and increasingly confrontational SPP. As revolution brewed in Roycelandian East Africa, Soviet agents began to appear, with Moscow keen to replace faltering western influence in the region.
In early 1978 Roycelandian authorities issued a warrant for the arrest of Derek Igomo on charges of assault- apparently one secret service branch or other had picked up on the event more than five years earlier that lead to Igomo’s brief wrestling career. Unable to make anything else stick, the authorities would send Igomo down for striking another black man, an offence usually that would have been forgotten long before five years had expired.
However, police chanced to track Igomo down at a rally lead by his previously arrested hotheaded friend Olongwe. Dozens of villagers on hand prevented police from ceasing Igomo, who fled into the bush with a handful of close supporters, several calling themselves Zimbabwean or Mozambican.
For weeks Igomo and his associates lay low, living off the charity of poor families in the area, and all the while increasing support for their Social Progress Party. Contact during this time with Soviet agents in the vast country finally lead to the establishment of the Lusakan Revolutionary Alliance Corps.
Manned by ethnic Lusakan peasants such as Igomo, and by displaced Zimbabwean rebels and newly free Mozambicans, the LRAC received largely obsolete Soviet weaponry in no large quantity.
Igomo the rebel; the fight for independence-
In March of 1978 Igomo resurfaced in the city of Lusaka, of course drawing heavy police interest. This time, however, the LRAC was waiting. Igomo allowed himself to be taken, famously remarking that, "A prayer's as good as a bayonet on a day like this". Regardless, the local police station was quickly over-run by armed SPP supporters, and the war of independence had begun.
The well planned freeing of Igomo served as a rallying cry across the territory of Roycelandian East Africa, and Lusaka became the focal point of early LRAC operation.
While Roycelandian forces moved to crush the apparent heart of the uprising, the scale of resistance to their imperial rule was little realised. With its strength concentrated in the southwest, the army suffered elsewhere as the LRAC conducted a vicious bush-war throughout the land during 1978.
LRAC guerrillas moving across the vast nation were fed by the generosity of SPP supporters in villages everywhere, while army supply-lines became graveyards. Most revolutionaries fought with bolt-action rifles, and each came to fight more as a sniper than a regular foot soldier. Olongwe himself became Igomo’s most effective and aggressive General leading his prolific unit, known as the Vultures, on raid after raid, sapping Roycelandian resolve by the day. Though Derek himself, still only 21 years old, was an unlikely soldier with his limp, the passionate young man was positively inspired by dreams of African unity and self sufficiency, and fired many a shot against his colonial rivals.
While the revolutionaries had little with which to fight heavy armour or air power, these assets proved equally ineffective against the pervasive yet invisible LRAC with which Igomo fought. The realisation that victory was not forthcoming, and that persistence against such popular opposition would only become more costly, Roycelandia began to withdraw forces and government assets late in ’78.
A nation reborn-
In December, Igomo declared the independent Allied States of Lusaka, and flew for the first time the now familiar Lusakan flag over the city of the same name.
A committee of which Igomo was part designed the flag with specific political motives in mind. The vulture sat central, chosen as the new state’s national bird for its tenacity, keen sense, and even the lack of respect it suffered from the Roycelandian population. It came to symbolise the Lusakan cause. The green background was intended to win-over the large Muslim population of Zanzibar island, which looked likely to pursue its own independence apart from the mainland, while the red bars were added in the spirit of revolution through which Lusaka as a nation was born.
Arise, President Derek Igomo-
In 1979 Roycelandia ceased large-scale military involvement in its wayward colony and by 1980, with Derek Igomo’s Social Progress Party risen to power after polls hastily arranged by the LRAC, the old colonial master officially recognised Lusakan independence. This was not done without a word of protest over the manner in which the Lusakan Revolutionary Alliance Corps policed the election of the man who had humiliated the empire- not that Lusaka listened. In fact Igomo was quick to use the protests to his own ends in a series of speeches vilifying the old regime and glorifying both the SPP and LRAC.
Through the 1980s Lusaka struggled with the economic consequences of sudden Roycelandian withdrawal, and with the rise of various warlords and drugs barons, though Igomo clung to power and popularity largely by blaming Roycelandia, and talking of reform. The next decade saw increased co-operation with both African neighbours such as the African Commonwealth and Lumbosa, and with distant nations enticed by Igomo’s apparent socialist sympathies. Disorder in neighbouring Lumbosa brought the region back to the world’s attention, and Igomo’s passion for African solidarity and strength ensured his nation’s involvement. By the end of the brief Lumbosan war Igomo had secured major financial and military aid from nations such as Hrstrovokia and Soviet Haaregrad, and millions of pounds worth of investment in the nation’s new capital, New Lusaka City. Igomo’s forces were now able to aggressively target the tribal militias and warlords aligned against the SPP, bringing greater stability to Lusaka.
With this stability came yet more investment, as President Igomo secured multi-billion dollar contracts with the likes of Sambezi and old allies Hrstrovokia, exploiting Lusaka’s considerable natural resources.
This modern age and all its pains-
As ever with Igomo, these gains have been punctuated with turn-arounds, and Lusaka has suffered repeated recessions. Recovering a post-colonial African economy is no easy task.
Igomo’s long-held ambitions have lead him to expensive military deployments first in Lumbosa, then Ghana, and recently to Boroglia in support of Hrstrovokia. The on-going border dispute with the African Commonwealth threatens land important to one of Igomo’s major foreign mining investments, while the resurgence of Rhodesia and Nyasaland after a long isolation, and the collapse of friendly Lumbosa further damage confidence.
Today Igomo continues major efforts to reform the military, going to great expense in his desperate effort to secure the disputed territory without destroying a potentially profitable relationship with the Commonwealth. The old enemy is back as Roycelandia has established a colony, taking advantage of the anarchic situation in the disputed borderlands, and Igomo was recently laid-up in bed for a week after a stress-induced collapse.
None the less, President Derek Igomo remains Lusaka’s most colourful and famous character. The nation has been renamed the United African Republic of Lusaka, and Igomo’s most famous words have become the national motto. Colin Olongwe is Igomo’s Defence Secretary, and the LRAC sits proudly at the core of the national armed forces- the Vultures re-born as the 17th Division, attached to the LRAC.
http://www.nigerianarmy.net/images/homepageimages/COASBig.jpg
President Derek Igomo pictured just months ago at the beginning of the AC border crisis
In 1957 Derek Igomo was born near Lake Rukwa in Roycelandian East Africa. The eldest son in an ethnic Lusakan subsistence farming family young Derek received little formal education, and taught himself only the most basic literary skills during what free time he could steal away from the fields.
The family’s tiny farm was situated on land that was barely accepting of cultivation in an otherwise fertile region dominated by the vast farms of Roycelandian colonial immigrants.
At just fourteen years of age Igomo set out –on foot- to look for work in Lusaka, capital of Roycelandian East Africa’s Zambian province. His youthful thirst for knowledge stood young Derek in good stead as he found employment in a warehouse where he sorted stocks in alphabetical order for barely enough pay to give him a leaky and well shared roof.
Residing for several months in various run-down shared accommodations Igomo began to make friends, not least notably amongst them was one Colin Olongwe. Olongwe, a revolutionary-minded mechanic’s assistant, was a little older than Igomo and would be a significant influence upon his bright-eyed young friend.
Igomo the traveler; Rhodesia beckons-
In his teens Derek’s recognisably great stature began to show and it was during this time that the broad-shouldered Igomo insists he was spotted by a Rhodesian wrestling promoter, after fighting off a pair of would-be thieves at the warehouse. Still short of his sixteenth birthday –though he has apparently always looked older than is true- Igomo traveled to neighbouring Rhodesia and Nyasaland where he competed for several months on local wrestling circuits. It almost appeared that Derek might make a living for himself, and achieve minor celebrity so far as a black man could in colonial sub-Saharan Africa, until badly torn ligaments in his right leg ended the teenager’s career.
Not to be beaten, Igomo fed off his local popularity for so long as he could milk it, staying with relatively well to do fans and reading at length during his physical recovery.
In 1974, as the Portuguese Empire in Africa began its final collapse, the seventeen-year-old Igomo left Rhodesia and Nyasaland, evidently keen to find his old friend Olongwe. Sure that Olongwe would have much to say on the bubbling conflict around Rhodesia, Derek –now walking with a subtle limp that was never to leave him- returned once more to the city of Lusaka, where he worked much as before, ever inquiring after his friend.
(Note- in this reality Rhodesia and Nyasaland remains to this day a unified state on Lusaka’s southern border, Salisbury evidently having defeated the rebels and successfully defied London’s diplomatic efforts and the UN’s sanctions)
Igomo the politician is born; trouble begins at home-
Between 1974 and 1976, Igomo and Olongwe became active in local politics across subsistence farming communities around the regional capital. His convalescence in Rhodesia and Nyasaland had left Igomo a fairly well read man amongst his downtrodden peers, and Olongwe had instilled the spirit of revolution in him. This spirit was only fired further by the contrasts increasingly evident in the region with the collapse of Portuguese authority and the rise of hopeful rebel factions in Rhodesia.
In December of 1976 Roycelandian authorities arrested Colin Olongwe on charges related to public disorder and incitement after a fiery speech in the city proper ended in clashes between police and spectators. Olongwe spent New Year in prison. By the time of Colin’s release in February Derek had founded the Social Progress Party, an institution that would see many of its number at odds with the authorities over the next year.
As SPP popularity grew, and fighting increased in and around neighbouring Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Roycelandian authorities began to panic, cracking down on Igomo’s associates with increasing frequency and force.
The long memory of the law; revolution brews-
During ’77 and ’78 luckless rebel fighters and activists from the south began to associate with Igomo’s wildly popular and increasingly confrontational SPP. As revolution brewed in Roycelandian East Africa, Soviet agents began to appear, with Moscow keen to replace faltering western influence in the region.
In early 1978 Roycelandian authorities issued a warrant for the arrest of Derek Igomo on charges of assault- apparently one secret service branch or other had picked up on the event more than five years earlier that lead to Igomo’s brief wrestling career. Unable to make anything else stick, the authorities would send Igomo down for striking another black man, an offence usually that would have been forgotten long before five years had expired.
However, police chanced to track Igomo down at a rally lead by his previously arrested hotheaded friend Olongwe. Dozens of villagers on hand prevented police from ceasing Igomo, who fled into the bush with a handful of close supporters, several calling themselves Zimbabwean or Mozambican.
For weeks Igomo and his associates lay low, living off the charity of poor families in the area, and all the while increasing support for their Social Progress Party. Contact during this time with Soviet agents in the vast country finally lead to the establishment of the Lusakan Revolutionary Alliance Corps.
Manned by ethnic Lusakan peasants such as Igomo, and by displaced Zimbabwean rebels and newly free Mozambicans, the LRAC received largely obsolete Soviet weaponry in no large quantity.
Igomo the rebel; the fight for independence-
In March of 1978 Igomo resurfaced in the city of Lusaka, of course drawing heavy police interest. This time, however, the LRAC was waiting. Igomo allowed himself to be taken, famously remarking that, "A prayer's as good as a bayonet on a day like this". Regardless, the local police station was quickly over-run by armed SPP supporters, and the war of independence had begun.
The well planned freeing of Igomo served as a rallying cry across the territory of Roycelandian East Africa, and Lusaka became the focal point of early LRAC operation.
While Roycelandian forces moved to crush the apparent heart of the uprising, the scale of resistance to their imperial rule was little realised. With its strength concentrated in the southwest, the army suffered elsewhere as the LRAC conducted a vicious bush-war throughout the land during 1978.
LRAC guerrillas moving across the vast nation were fed by the generosity of SPP supporters in villages everywhere, while army supply-lines became graveyards. Most revolutionaries fought with bolt-action rifles, and each came to fight more as a sniper than a regular foot soldier. Olongwe himself became Igomo’s most effective and aggressive General leading his prolific unit, known as the Vultures, on raid after raid, sapping Roycelandian resolve by the day. Though Derek himself, still only 21 years old, was an unlikely soldier with his limp, the passionate young man was positively inspired by dreams of African unity and self sufficiency, and fired many a shot against his colonial rivals.
While the revolutionaries had little with which to fight heavy armour or air power, these assets proved equally ineffective against the pervasive yet invisible LRAC with which Igomo fought. The realisation that victory was not forthcoming, and that persistence against such popular opposition would only become more costly, Roycelandia began to withdraw forces and government assets late in ’78.
A nation reborn-
In December, Igomo declared the independent Allied States of Lusaka, and flew for the first time the now familiar Lusakan flag over the city of the same name.
A committee of which Igomo was part designed the flag with specific political motives in mind. The vulture sat central, chosen as the new state’s national bird for its tenacity, keen sense, and even the lack of respect it suffered from the Roycelandian population. It came to symbolise the Lusakan cause. The green background was intended to win-over the large Muslim population of Zanzibar island, which looked likely to pursue its own independence apart from the mainland, while the red bars were added in the spirit of revolution through which Lusaka as a nation was born.
Arise, President Derek Igomo-
In 1979 Roycelandia ceased large-scale military involvement in its wayward colony and by 1980, with Derek Igomo’s Social Progress Party risen to power after polls hastily arranged by the LRAC, the old colonial master officially recognised Lusakan independence. This was not done without a word of protest over the manner in which the Lusakan Revolutionary Alliance Corps policed the election of the man who had humiliated the empire- not that Lusaka listened. In fact Igomo was quick to use the protests to his own ends in a series of speeches vilifying the old regime and glorifying both the SPP and LRAC.
Through the 1980s Lusaka struggled with the economic consequences of sudden Roycelandian withdrawal, and with the rise of various warlords and drugs barons, though Igomo clung to power and popularity largely by blaming Roycelandia, and talking of reform. The next decade saw increased co-operation with both African neighbours such as the African Commonwealth and Lumbosa, and with distant nations enticed by Igomo’s apparent socialist sympathies. Disorder in neighbouring Lumbosa brought the region back to the world’s attention, and Igomo’s passion for African solidarity and strength ensured his nation’s involvement. By the end of the brief Lumbosan war Igomo had secured major financial and military aid from nations such as Hrstrovokia and Soviet Haaregrad, and millions of pounds worth of investment in the nation’s new capital, New Lusaka City. Igomo’s forces were now able to aggressively target the tribal militias and warlords aligned against the SPP, bringing greater stability to Lusaka.
With this stability came yet more investment, as President Igomo secured multi-billion dollar contracts with the likes of Sambezi and old allies Hrstrovokia, exploiting Lusaka’s considerable natural resources.
This modern age and all its pains-
As ever with Igomo, these gains have been punctuated with turn-arounds, and Lusaka has suffered repeated recessions. Recovering a post-colonial African economy is no easy task.
Igomo’s long-held ambitions have lead him to expensive military deployments first in Lumbosa, then Ghana, and recently to Boroglia in support of Hrstrovokia. The on-going border dispute with the African Commonwealth threatens land important to one of Igomo’s major foreign mining investments, while the resurgence of Rhodesia and Nyasaland after a long isolation, and the collapse of friendly Lumbosa further damage confidence.
Today Igomo continues major efforts to reform the military, going to great expense in his desperate effort to secure the disputed territory without destroying a potentially profitable relationship with the Commonwealth. The old enemy is back as Roycelandia has established a colony, taking advantage of the anarchic situation in the disputed borderlands, and Igomo was recently laid-up in bed for a week after a stress-induced collapse.
None the less, President Derek Igomo remains Lusaka’s most colourful and famous character. The nation has been renamed the United African Republic of Lusaka, and Igomo’s most famous words have become the national motto. Colin Olongwe is Igomo’s Defence Secretary, and the LRAC sits proudly at the core of the national armed forces- the Vultures re-born as the 17th Division, attached to the LRAC.
http://www.nigerianarmy.net/images/homepageimages/COASBig.jpg
President Derek Igomo pictured just months ago at the beginning of the AC border crisis