Patrick Phiri

The ancestors of Patrick Samu Mkozokele Phiri migrated from Mpika to settle in the eastern sector of Luangwa Valley long before the proclamation of the then Northern Rhodesia under the British Colonial Empire. He was born on 21 October 1940 in Mkozokele Village in the District of Lundazi, Zambia. His father worked for the hotel in the coal mine town of Hwange (Wankie), Zimbabwe, where Patrick started his primary education at a Catholic school in 1947. In 1948 he continued his education while staying with his aunt in Mzilikazi, Bulawayo.

In 1951, his parents returned to the village in Lundazi, Northern Rhodesia. He pursued his education at Chasela and Chitemba Schools. Schools were few and far between back then. As a young boy, he had to trek five days on foot from his village to Chipata, just to get onto a bus to travel to Merwe Upper School in Petauke where he completed his Standard VI. He was among the first students who opened Katete Secondary School in 1957. Due to a lack of funds to pay the school fees, Patrick only managed to complete Form II (Standard 8) and opted to take a four-year City and Guilds of London Course in Motor Mechanics at Hodgson Technical College (now David Kaunda Secondary School), Lusaka, in August 1959. He only managed to stay at this College for 10 months. Central Africa was then experiencing political instability. Students at Hodgson College, Chikuni, Chizongwe, and Munali Secondary Schools were protesting against the existence of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which was being probed by the Moncton Commission. The students’ uprising was met with an iron fist by the then Minister of African Education, who closed all politically turbulent institutions in Northern Rhodesia in March 1960. Most affected students were dismissed permanently in a phenomenon that is still remembered as having been “Musumbulwared”. This move ended Patrick’s hopes of a career in automobile engineering.

Having been blacklisted not to get a job in his own country, Patrick slipped into Nyasaland (Malawi) in August 1960, where he found a job as a Field Assistant in the Soil Conservation Unit of the Department of Agriculture. On this job he learnt the use of some survey equipment used in encompassing roads and conservation structures in large tea and tobacco estates in the Southern Region’s districts of Blantyre, Chiradzulo, Mulanje, Thyolo and Zomba. By November 1962, the senior officers realised that Patriks’s mode of thinking and expressions were tainted with unpalatable political inclinations. They were quite decisive in quickly terminating his services without giving any reasons. When Patrick’s job prospects turned gloomy in the entire Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, he sold his bicycle and quietly boarded a bus bound for Lilongwe en route to Tunduma via Mzimba and Fort Hill (Chitipa). In a few days he reached Mbeya, Tanzania, where he met a South African refugee who tried to help him find transport to link up to Dar es Salaam. Unfortunately Patrick did not have sufficient financial resources to sustain his adventures in East Africa. With the help of some Zambian and Malawian residents in Mbeya, he reluctantly returned to Zambia in January 1963.

Jobs were not easy to find. Having been rejected by relatives and actually chased away from a cousin’s home, Patrick opted to stay at the Kamwala Bus Station in Lusaka, where he lived on a loaf of bread and tin of jam daily (supplied by the new Ministry of Local Government and Social Welfare, then headed by Dr Kaunda). In April 1963, his conservation experience gained in Malawi, earned him a job as a Pasture Research Assistant in the Department of Agriculture. This was a turning point in Patrick’s life. Under Mr William L. Astle, Patrick learned the basics of botanical techniques. His new job involved soil surveys, enumeration of plants in ecological plots, and vegetation surveys in Southern, Luapula, and Northern Provinces of Zambia; as well as the maintenance of a small reference herbarium at Mochipapa Research Station. In June 1966, Patrick joined the Botany Department at the University of Zambia as a Laboratory Assistant. This move to Lusaka prompted him to study for his General Certificate of Education, and he completed five subjects by the end of 1968.

In 1969, the University of Zambia sent him to Kampala, Uganda, to study for the City and Guilds of London course in Science Laboratory Technician Advanced Certificate. For his practical experience he was attached to work as a Visiting Technician in the Botany Department of Makerere University. This study was completed with great relief, in June 1971. Idi Amin had a few months earlier overthrown the government of Obote in Uganda. Upon his return to Zambia, Patrick rose to the ranks of Senior Technician and Chief Technician in the newly integrated Department of Biology. Patrick took over the curation and development of the University of Zambia Herbarium (UZL) in June 1971. In 1975, the Inter-University Council of the Commonwealth sponsored him for a working attachment as a Visiting Technician at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London for one month, and the British Museum of Natural History for five months.

Patrick still considered the career in Laboratory Technology as inadequate. He therefore embarked on degree studies on a part-time basis, and completed half the required number of courses in 1978. He later took a two-year study leave, and completed his B.Sc. degree in 1980. In 1982, he enrolled for the M.Sc. degree in Pure and Applied Plant Taxonomy at Reading University in the United Kingdom. After successfully obtaining his M.Sc. degree in 1983, the University of Zambia appointed him as Lecturer. He returned to Reading in 1986 and read for his Doctorate degree in Tropical Plant Taxonomy (1989) with a thesis based on the Flora of the Luangwa Valley, Zambia. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Plant Biology.

Patrick has developed research interests in the systematics of bryophytes, particularly the mosses, systematics and ecology of tropical grasses, and legumes. However, his training has channelled him to specialise in low altitude rift valley tropical flora. Public service has included serving as the first Secretary of the National Committee of the UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Programme in Zambia in 1981–1982; a member of the Research and Planning Committee of the Luangwa Integrated Resource Development Project in 1992–95; a member of the in situ conservation and under-utilised plants regional working group of the SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre (SPGRC). In January 1996, Patrick was instrumental in re-organising a reference herbarium for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Services at Chinzombo Research Station, Mfuwe, Zambia.

Patrick has dedicated many years of his life to teaching, systematics research, and the study of the Zambian flora. He is currently Chairman of the SABONET-Zambia National Working Group, Zambia’s representative on the SABONET Steering Committee, and a member of SABONET’s Executive Committee. Patrick is an extremely valuable, enthusiastic, and much respected member of the SABONET team.

SABONET News 3.3: 118