Basil Chisonta

Basil Chisonta of the Nyendwa (Vagina) clan was born in Kabwe in 1946. His father belonged to the Mfula (Rain) clan. He completed his primary schooling at Serenje Boma school from 1953 up to 1962 and then pursued secondary education at St Paul’s Secondary School until 1964, the year Zambia gained independence. He joined the government in 1966 after completing a one-year course in community development at Monze Staff Training College. He also attended the Outward Bound course in Mbala. He married Daines Mwewa, with whom he had seven daughters and seven sons. In 1975, he was stationed as a social worker in Chibale. In this capacity, he became involved in the research underlying this site in 1981. Ten years later, he was transferred to Muchinka chiefdom. After retirement, he moved to live near Kabwe in chief Mukonchi’s area. He remained connected to the research in Chibale (in 2004 and 2006/7) and from 2008 until 2013 spent eight weeks twice a year in Chibale as the supervisor of the Butala media project.

In the beginning, his work involved maintaining contact with people who were or wished to be involved in the research, planning trips around the chiefdom, transcribing interviews and song texts, and acting as an interpreter during interviews and conversations. In the course of time, we worked even more closely together on the dialogical way of working, on the interpretation of song texts, on the Butala project, and on the book of proverbs, Mu Zambia Amano Mambulwa, published in 2026.