WEBVTT - Zero Gravity: The Zambian Space Program 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:05.440 You have five minutes. 0:00:07.640 --> 0:00:12.640 It's late nineteen sixty four in the bush outside Lusaka, Zambia, 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:16.840 in southern Africa. The air is hot, the tension thick. 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:21.520 A small crowd gathers into clearing, their eyes fixed on 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:28.240 one man. A man who frankly looks like he just 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:32.599 leaped out of a comic book. Silky red and green pants, 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:37.959 a military helmet, and a cape, yes, a cape, billowing 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:41.920 in the wind behind him. His name is Edward in Colosso, 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:49.000 and he is here to launch Zambia into the space Age. 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.720 Edward and Colosso is orchestrating a plan to send African 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:55.200 astronauts into space. 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:59.080 That's doctor Lucy Gasser, who teaches cultural studies at the 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:01.840 University of Osbrook in Germany. 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:04.240 And his plan is to give the Soviets and the 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.000 Americans a run for their money in the Cold War 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:07.759 space face. 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:13.440 Just months earlier, in Coloso helped Zambia win independence after 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:18.000 decades of British rule. Now he's crowned himself Minister of 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.840 Space and he's hungry to put the new country on 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:23.479 a different kind of map. 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:27.880 He wants to launch Zambia onto the world stage. As 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:30.440 he launches rockets not just to the Moon, but then 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.199 also to Mars T minus two. 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:37.400 Minutes in Coloso hand picks twelve young men and women 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:43.200 to become Zambia's first astronauts in Coloso paces inspecting his 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:47.360 new recruits today, they're attempting a test launch. There's no 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:51.840 time to waste. He's made bold claims that Zambia will 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:54.960 land a man on the moon next year. 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.160 And Colostal positions the Zambian space program as a contender 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:01.840 in the cold Wolf space race, and so not as 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:04.840 some sort of hobbled late comer, but to be ahead 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.920 of the other two on a number of friends, and 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:13.000 he anticipates a future in which independent family is like 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:14.800 at the global forefront. 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:18.480 The other two being the Soviet Union and the United States. 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:22.080 When a reporter later asked in Koloso how he planned 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:26.280 to beat them to the moon, the space minister didn't hesitate. 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:28.680 Perhaps the Americans would like to join me in my 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:32.000 space programs. I'd be most happy, But let's get one 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:34.760 thing straight. I step on the moon and hoist the 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:36.560 Zambian flag first. 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:41.440 Do you minus one minute? In Coloso motions to one 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:46.240 of his astronauts, twenty one year old Godfrey Munwano steps forward. 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.519 In Coloso, plops a combat helmet onto the young man's 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:54.920 head and stuffs him into a forty gallon oil drum. 0:02:55.400 --> 0:03:02.200 The launch site goes quietine in Koloso tilts the barrel 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:08.440 onto its side, takes a deep breath one and shoves 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:16.200 the barrel. The drum lurches downhill, faster and faster. A 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:23.040 dizzy Godfrey starts slipping out until it smacks into a 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:28.160 gum tree in Kloso frowns. He turns to a journalist 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:29.240 beside him. 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:32.160 Well, for one thing, we are going to have to 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:33.120 get a bigger barrel. 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:45.200 Welcome to very special episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:55.520 your host, Zarn Burnett and this is the Zambian Space Program. 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:58.160 Welcome back to very special episodes. So glad you could 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:01.800 join us. If you're new here. Name is Jason English. 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.640 I'm joined by Danias Schwartz and Saren Burnett Y. Each 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:08.880 week we tell one crazy story and this week gets 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.720 a deep dive into the Zambian Space Program. 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:13.800 This is where I get to bring up. 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:16.160 I did, in fact work when I was in high 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:19.360 school at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, so I'm really 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:22.320 something of a space expert. Yes, I love when we 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:26.440 get to tap into your Adler Planetarium knowledge. Yeah, they 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:29.800 should have an exhibit here on the Zambian space program. 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:30.760 They really should. 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:31.560 I agree. 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.680 I really enjoyed the high level pre internet trolling that's 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:36.680 going on throughout this story. 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:38.719 And I love that they want to enter into like 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:40.880 a space race between the US and the USSR. 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:44.440 They're like and Zambia, And I like how mad everybody 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:47.960 seems to be getting at them at every phase. You're like, 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.200 if someone is trying to get a reaction, like, don't 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:54.480 let them. But they succeeded wildly here. It makes me laugh. 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:59.280 It's so funny. Just a few weeks after Zambia gained 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:03.720 independence in nineteen sixty four, Edward and Coloso founded what 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:09.440 he called National Academy of Science, Space Research, and Philosophy. 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:15.680 His mission plant Zambia's flag on the Moon. It was ambitious, 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:21.039 no training, no funding, no and I mean zero experience 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:26.120 in aerospace anything, and no government funding either. Just in 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:28.560 Colosso a cape and a vision. 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:33.800 He trained on his students and by rolling them down 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:35.440 hills inside the drum. 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:37.400 That's doctor Kathleen Lewis. 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:42.200 I'm curator of International space programs and space suits at 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:45.960 the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:50.200 Doctor Lewis knows a thing or two about spaceflight. And 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.520 in case you thought pushing an astronaut downhill was a 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:57.520 one time stunt, oh no, it was the training program. 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:02.880 It was, doctor Lewis admits, unorthodox, but also it kind 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:04.479 of makes sense, which was. 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:09.720 Not completely far off from you know, sitting in a centerfuge, 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:14.320 seeing the fact, disorienting, confusing and testing people. 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:18.400 In Koloso's training methods had to be thrifty, so he 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:21.840 stuffed his space cadets into more barrels and dunked them 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:26.720 in rivers, made them walk on their hands and swing 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:32.480 from high ropes, then cut them loose from the rope. Sometimes, 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:37.599 Encoloso would drive his astronauts to a town far outside Lusaka. 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:40.320 There is a mining shaft up there, four hundred feet deep, 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:42.680 filled with water. We will throw them in. 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:49.919 Strange as it looked, there was a method to the madness. 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:54.840 The river dunk simulated splashdowns the rope, cutting a crash 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:58.559 course in free fall and hurling cadets into a four 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:02.520 hundred foot shaft a test of their nerve m Kloso 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.479 was convinced if Americans and the Soviets could shoot for 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:07.680 the Moon, Zambia could too. 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:10.720 Some people think I'm crazy, but I'll be laughing the 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:12.800 day I planted Zambia's flag on the Moon. 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.680 For launch vehicles, he built crude ten foot barrels shaped 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:23.200 like capsules. Rocket propulsion was out of reach, so he 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:26.840 made a catapult. One launch made it six feet off 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:32.720 the ground. Then came another idea dynamite. What he lacked 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:37.480 in resources he made up in imagination. He was undeterred. 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:41.280 His sites were set on the Moon. In nineteen sixty four, 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:44.480 he wrote an article with an unforgettable title. 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:46.880 It is cold, We're going to Mars, but the space 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:49.440 girl to catm the missionary. 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.679 The promise of a space girl in particular captured people's attention. 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:58.119 He draws out Matame Lambas as his stock after notch, 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.040 and she is the title's space girl who is supposed 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:04.440 to be launched to Mars. 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:08.760 At the time, Mata and Wombo was just a teenager, 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:13.080 but Enkoloso was determined to make her the second woman 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.800 to visit space, the first being Soviet cosmonaut and amateur 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:24.760 skydiver Valentina Terrishkova. Why Mata and Wombo. She had zero qualifications, 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:26.640 but she did have cats. 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.080 They are to provide her with companionship on the long journey. 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:32.319 When she arrives on Mars, she will open the door 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:34.080 of the rocket and drop the cats on the ground. 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:36.760 If they survive, she will then see that Mars is 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:37.840 fit for human habitation. 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:42.600 Enkoloso and Mata, we'd try to train about a dozen cats. 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:46.520 The Russians had already sent up dogs. The Americans launched apes. 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:51.319 Cats were not a completely wacky idea, right if you. 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:54.280 Look at it. You know, cats have that natural ability 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:57.880 to right themselves when they're in free fall, so, you know, 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:00.600 might make a whole lot more sense than then using 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:02.600 dogs and monkeys. 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:07.200 Still the barrels, the ropes, the handstands, the space cats. 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.960 Western journalists descended on Lusaka ground Zero for the Zambient 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:17.040 space program. Most treated it, especially in Colosso, as a joke. 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:20.640 It's one of those stories that has sort of been 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:25.559 simmering per decades. Sadly, it comes up usually as a punchline. 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:28.160 By and large in the West, the tone is one 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.440 of disbelief and ridicule. They make fun of it. 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:36.720 Some writers giggled, some condescended, and others were straight up racist. 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:40.440 Like A. K. Chesterton, author of the nineteen sixty five 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:42.640 book The New Unhappy Lords. 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:47.400 I can't recommend it. It's wildly racists and anti Semitic, 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.280 but it is a historical document I supposed, and in 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:56.240 it Chesterton uses the Zambian space program and as proof 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.599 of the absurdity of the idea that Africans should be 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:00.680 ready for self rule. 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:07.000 In Coloso was unfazed. He reveled in the attention, but 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:11.199 not everybody in Zambia was laughing, and Coloso was up 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:15.360 to something else, something that western reporters might miss. 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:18.520 The question that emerged from me was who's calling the 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.400 stocks here, Who's who's dancing to, who's cheering, who's performing 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.000 for whom? And who who's making fun of him? 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:35.680 Perhaps he was playing them all. To really understand Edward 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:39.520 and Coloso with his capes and barrels and bravado, you 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:45.600 have to rewind to a time before Zambia existed. Okay, 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:48.760 you are in the early nineteen forties. The country was 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:55.200 Northern Rhodesia, a British protectorate. Back then, Edward and Koloso 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.760 was a twenty something. He dreamed of becoming a preacher, 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:02.880 or maybe a science teacher. But thousands of miles north 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:04.800 Europe was in flames. 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:07.880 So what do we know about Colosso he served in 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:08.800 the Second World War. 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:13.600 So he joined the British military, one of fifteen thousand 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:17.840 Zambians who fought for the Allies. His assignment the Signal Corps. 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:22.320 It was technical, disciplined, precise. When the war ended, he 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:26.559 came home to Northern Rhodesia a sense of pride. He'd 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:30.320 served the Empire and now he wanted to serve his people. 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:35.080 He spent the following years championing the rights of Zambian veterans, 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:41.640 but the system wasn't built for him. While white soldiers 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:46.320 received loans to start businesses, scholarships to improve job skills, 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:51.880 black vets got rejection letters. We are entirely forgotten in 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:56.000 Coloso said so. In nineteen fifty six, in Coloso, now 0:11:56.160 --> 0:12:00.760 leader of a large veterans organization, petitioned the Colonne government. 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:08.880 Their response crickets. The silence hardened him. It all came 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.440 to a head in the mid nineteen fifties when white 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:15.120 politicians dug up and moved a cemetery to make room 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:20.000 for settlers. In Koloso snapped. He stormed into the district 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:24.679 Commissioner's office, fists slamming the desk, shouting that the dead 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:28.920 were sacred. The bureaucrats threatened to kick him out of town. 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:34.680 Enkoloso never forgot the insult. Years later, he staged a 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:39.920 stunt at Lusaka's Ridgeway Hotel, a white's only establishment. He 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:43.040 walked into the hotel restaurant carrying the bloody corpse of 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:48.040 a white woman and dumped it onto the floor, declaring. 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:51.000 White men, your time is limited. We have killed the 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:52.160 wife of Wolenski. 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:54.920 Wolenski was the prime minister at the time. 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:57.080 We shall soon pounce on you. 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:00.920 Koloso was lying about the body. It wasn't the prime 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.920 minister's wife. He'd borrowed the corpse from a crooked mortician 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:08.040 and smeared it with goat blood. But the white men 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.360 in the hotel bar didn't know that. They scurried away. 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.280 The room, now empty, in Coloso sat down and started 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:21.120 drinking their leftover beer. His message was unmistakable. In Coloso, 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:25.200 the patriot, the ex soldier was done fighting for the 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:29.360 British empire. Now he was fighting to overthrow it. 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.439 And he was also an active member of the Dambian 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:38.360 anticoloidinal resistance movements, which got him arrested and imprisoned. In 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:41.120 like the mid late fifties. 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:45.400 I think in Coloso became a militant freedom fighter. Accounts 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:49.559 follow his rise to the top of the country's revolutionary hierarchy. 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:53.920 He was called Colonel. He encouraged his fellow citizens to 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:59.840 practice civil disobedience, stopped buying British imports, their food, their chicken. 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:03.760 He encouraged them to stop using knives and forks. It 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:07.360 was time, he said, to throw off the shackles of 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:11.880 the colonizer and embrace their native culture and identity. But 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:15.960 in the speech, one witness remembers he was not opposed 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:16.760 to violence. 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.280 He called on all sections, especially the women and the youth, 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:25.960 to fight and if necessary, die for liberation. Many more 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:29.520 would die yet before freedom was achieved. These deaths must 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:31.560 be regarded as bridges towards our goal. 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:35.480 By nineteen sixty four, the fight was one. The new 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:39.480 Republic of Zambia declared its independence, and one of his 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:44.960 closest allies, Kenneth Cawunda, became its first President. That relationship 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:48.640 thrust in Coloso into a position of power and influence. 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.160 He wasn't just a radical outsider anymore. He had the 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.960 ear of the President, and that's when he started dreaming 0:14:56.000 --> 0:15:02.560 of space. The Space Race is often described as a 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:08.080 proxy war between two world superpowers, rockets as weapons, astronauts 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:10.680 as soldiers in a battle to prove who had the 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:15.680 stronger military, But it was also a giant marketing campaign. 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:20.800 That was also a competition to demonstrate to newly liberated 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.640 nations that you know, which was the best course. Were 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.600 you going to take up capitalism or were you going 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:29.800 to follow a communist's ideal. 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:34.000 By the mid nineteen sixties, dozens of countries had gained 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:38.200 or were fighting for their independence, and many faced a choice. 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:42.920 Aligned with Moscow or Washington. Dominance in the space race 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:45.120 could tip the scales. 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:48.400 And that is what the argument that was being presented 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:52.880 by both sides to these newly liberated states in Africa 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:56.160 and Asia and nine alone states. 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:04.520 Both sides built ground stations cross Africa, Nigeria, Madagascar, tracking signals, 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:11.920 transmitting telemetry, and Coloso saw it for what it was, 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:16.160 colonization in disguise with rockets. 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:22.840 In Coloso, who's a very astute, sophisticated observer of world politics, 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.200 is claiming that this is part of our future too. 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.000 This is not just a great powers future. 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.280 There's some kind of undeniable energy to Zambia's taking a 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:36.920 claim in the space rates at this moment, particularly because 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.960 it does coincide with its moment of claiming its independence 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:41.160 from colonial rule. 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:44.920 Let us make a Zambian rocket today. We shall never 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:48.520 remain behind other races. This is our heavenly destiny, our 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:52.000 natural ambition, and our scientific and cultural hegemony. 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:57.880 Proud, defiant and convinced, Zambia deserved a place among the 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:01.680 stars as an independent nation, and he wanted to stay 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:06.080 that way. There was one problem. Both the Soviets and 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:10.320 the Americans had poached hundreds of German rocket scientists. They 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:14.960 had billions of dollars, vast industrial bases and brains like 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:18.880 Werner von Braun. In Coloso, he had a few science books, 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:22.520 a barrel, and a catapult. He tried scraping together money. 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.440 He asked the United Nations for a nineteen million dollar loan. 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:30.760 He solicited the US embassy too, no reply from either. 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.360 I know that those imperialist neocolonialists are delaying the loan 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:36.560 as long as they can because they are scared of 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:38.119 Zambia's space knowledge. 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:42.600 Western newspapers picked up the story. Donations trickled in a 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:46.600 few dollars here, a telescope from NASA Jet Propulsion Lab there, 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:50.119 but mostly in Coloso got lots of fan mail. He 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:53.159 joked that he had amassed the finest stamp collection on 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:57.160 all of Africa, but even rare stamps wouldn't get him 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:00.680 into space. So what he lacked in funding he made 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:06.000 up for in imagination. The barrels, the dynamite, the space cats, queue, 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:10.080 the ridicule and eye rolls. And then came the comic book. 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:12.560 I get a lot of ideas from this, so have 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:14.359 many American and Russian scientists. 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:20.119 Reporters roared, but in Colosso was onto something. Early rocket 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:24.560 pioneers were inspired by pulps science fiction, first Jules Verne, 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:29.120 then the Buck Rogers comic strip featuring a futuristic ray 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:30.560 gun toting adventure hero. 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:35.679 You have Buck Rogers cited frequently when you talked to 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:39.160 those early pollioneers of Rocket Tree. 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:44.360 Even Robert Goddard, who successfully invented the first liquid fueled rocket, 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:47.320 had been ridiculed, he took it as inspiration. 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:52.760 Goddard was ridiculed in The New York Times over his ideas, 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.240 you know that you could possibly send something, or you 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:59.439 could send blasting caps to the moon with a rocket. 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:05.080 They later apologized for having lambasted him for what they 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:06.480 referred to as a moon hoax. 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.000 So if Encoloso looked like a fool, he stood in 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:13.280 good company. But maybe he wasn't a fool at all, 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.600 because when the world laughed, Koloso may have been training 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:23.480 his cadets for something else entirely, not a moonshot, but 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:27.520 a kind of misdirection, a cover, a play unfolding just 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:28.200 out of sight. 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.320 What in Coloso is actually doing in training his cadets 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:35.320 was training them in an anti colonial revolutionary activity, including like 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:38.000 how to make and use explosives. 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:41.760 In other words, the Zambian space program may never have 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:45.520 been about the stars. It may have been affront for 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:57.120 something far more earthly and far more dangerous. By nineteen 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:01.680 sixty five, Zambia's space program began to s but Mata Mumbu, 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:04.480 the space girl with the twelve Cats, was nearing the 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:08.600 end of training. She completed more than fifty barrel rolls 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:15.200 down a hill until pregnancy forced her into retirement. Progress slowed, 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:19.840 and Koloso claimed one of his rockets was quote sabotaged 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.800 by the foreign elements. More astronauts hit the exits. 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:26.280 Two of my best men went on a drinking spree 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:28.879 a month ago and haven't been seen since. Another of 0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:32.040 my astronauts has joined a local tribal song and dance group. 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:37.399 One cadet reinvented himself as a pole acrobat. Another had 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:38.560 told her reporter. 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:42.320 We aw a dynamic music group when we owned space cadets. 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:44.920 So much for the Astronaut Corps. It was starting to 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.840 look less like NASA and more like spinal Tap. Once again, 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:53.680 mockery rained down. But here's the thing. Maybe the haters 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:58.720 were missing the point. A few years ago, the writer 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:03.680 and novelist None Spel interviewed Zambia's first president and Encoloso's 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:06.280 close friend, Kenneth Gowanda. 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:07.520 And he said, up it was. It was all a 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:11.760 bit of fun, right, He said, it wasn't serious. 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:14.600 A lark, a prank, a bit of theater. Gowanda said, 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:18.359 it's likely that Encoloso knew he couldn't beat the US 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:22.240 or Soviets. To the moon. But he could mock them, 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:26.399 steal their spotlight. He could pull focus and get the 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:28.320 world talking about Zambia. 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:33.560 It was also very scathing commentary on his present time. 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:40.320 He was satirizing and ridiculing the vast expense to both 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:46.160 the United States and the USSR were paying out to 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:48.159 compete in space programs. 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:52.960 At the time, Americans and Soviets were pooring obscene sums 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:57.040 of money into space exploration. Some of that money even 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:00.760 helped build listening stations in Africa, infrastructure meant to serve 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:03.919 Washington and Moscow, not Lusaka. 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:08.760 You have the Americans placing line bases to track their 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:13.480 spacecraft and using the African continent for their own political gains. 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:18.000 If you have colonizers sending money into space and using 0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:24.199 African countries as political pawns in their activities, and. 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:26.960 Colossa wanted to stick it to them to make them 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:31.680 look ridiculous. And he wasn't alone. When Neil Armstrong made 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:35.480 his one Small step onto the Moon in nineteen sixty nine, 0:22:35.920 --> 0:22:39.320 jazz poet and musician Gil Scott Heron cut through the 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:43.080 ticker tape parades with a stinging spoken word poem called 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:44.680 whitey On the moon. 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:49.639 I can't pay no doctor bills, but White he's on 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:53.080 the moon. Ten years from now, I'll be paying still 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:55.720 while White he's on the moon. You know, the man 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:58.200 jumps up my red last night because White is on 0:22:58.240 --> 0:23:01.520 the moon. No hot to, no tallet, no lights. 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:04.160 But why he's on the moon. He wasn't the only 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:07.280 person to ask if there weren't bigger priorities in the 0:23:07.320 --> 0:23:08.760 good old US. 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:11.679 Of a the amount of money that is spent on 0:23:11.840 --> 0:23:16.280 the Space project when so many African Americans were confronting 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:20.080 struggles such radical inequality. It just seemed by spending money 0:23:20.119 --> 0:23:24.240 on this was insulting. It just seems to like, really 0:23:24.600 --> 0:23:27.199 crystallized perfectly when you look at these things next to 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:27.720 each other. 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:33.280 And in that light, a guy wearing a satin cape 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:37.119 rolling teenagers down hills and barrels starts to feel less 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:41.159 like a joke and more like a mirror. In twenty seventeen, 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.320 non Wally Serpel wrote an article in The New Yorker 0:23:44.440 --> 0:23:49.560 asking why were Western writers so oblivious to in Coloso's satire. 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:54.439 After all, Incloso's cocked eyebrows seemed pretty obvious. Take that 0:23:54.600 --> 0:23:58.000 article he wrote about colonizing Mars. In it, he vows 0:23:58.119 --> 0:24:01.920 not to repeat the whole missionary thing to the Martians. 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:06.359 His plan suggests like that the Zambian astronauts might take 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:09.520 on the role of the colonizing force in miles, but 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:11.280 that they would essentially do a better job of it, 0:24:11.440 --> 0:24:15.119 a less violent job of it. Since European colonizes very 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:20.000 much did force Christianity unto colonized peoples, I at least 0:24:20.040 --> 0:24:21.679 find it really difficult to read this part of the 0:24:21.760 --> 0:24:24.480 article not in the key of irony. Right. 0:24:25.400 --> 0:24:28.919 So, while Americans were making in Goloso the butt of 0:24:28.960 --> 0:24:33.000 the joke, his barbs at the quote colonizers of space 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:36.920 went completely over their heads. But here's where things take 0:24:36.960 --> 0:24:40.800 an even sharper turn. There's another theory that suggests that 0:24:40.840 --> 0:24:44.359 the Zambian space program was more than just an elaborate prank. 0:24:44.880 --> 0:24:50.320 It was a cover. It's nineteen sixty six, a few 0:24:50.359 --> 0:24:55.440 miles outside Lusaka. Sits a complex of drab concrete buildings, small, 0:24:55.680 --> 0:25:00.000 unassuming a steel fence hugging the perimeter, but the banalapar 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:05.359 appearance belies what's going on inside. This is the African 0:25:05.560 --> 0:25:11.400 Liberation Center. Inside Gorilla fighters from Angola Mozambique and Rhodesia 0:25:11.600 --> 0:25:16.240 plot to overthrow their white colonial governments. One Western paper 0:25:16.320 --> 0:25:20.440 calls it quote the advanced command post of African nationalist violence. 0:25:20.920 --> 0:25:24.480 Another claims that this is where revolutionaries are making plans 0:25:24.520 --> 0:25:28.399 to invade nearby Rhodesia what is now called Zimbabwe. The 0:25:28.440 --> 0:25:30.520 guy at the center of it all, behind a door 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:34.600 with the word secret stamped in bold letters, is Edward 0:25:34.720 --> 0:25:40.080 and Coloso. His official title here is quote his Excellency's 0:25:40.240 --> 0:25:44.880 personal representative to foreign nationalist parties, which is a polite 0:25:44.960 --> 0:25:48.840 way of saying he was Zambia's fixer, the man tasked 0:25:48.920 --> 0:25:52.840 with wrangling nine rival gorilla groups under one roof and 0:25:52.960 --> 0:25:57.879 keeping them all focused on the prize overthrowing colonial rule. 0:25:58.359 --> 0:26:02.439 According to some, the quote cadet training ridiculed in the 0:26:02.480 --> 0:26:04.760 press wasn't about space at all. 0:26:05.119 --> 0:26:07.840 What Encloso is actually doing in training his cadets was 0:26:07.880 --> 0:26:11.080 training them an anti colonial revolutionary activity, including like how 0:26:11.080 --> 0:26:12.680 to make and use explosives. 0:26:13.400 --> 0:26:16.840 That's the picture painted in nam Wali Surpel's novel The 0:26:17.000 --> 0:26:21.080