Not Much to Show for 60 years of Independence
Zambia’s 60th anniversary since Independence (celebrated in 2024) should have been cause for celebration - but it was nothing of the kind.
Internecine strife between the 72 ethnic groups, electricity outages, Presidential authoritarianism and partisanship to his own tribe and political cadres, spiralling international debt, a low Kwacha, overbearing unemployment, and total hopelessness amongst ordinary people (especially the young) is nothing to celebrate.
As we know from history, Harold ‘winds of change’ Macmillan’s Premiership (Prime Minister from 1957 (the year of my birth) to 1963) was peak UK decolonisation. So fast was it, that Great Britain's divestment of African colonies came to look like a UK PLC divesting itself of dead stock to bolster its share price.
Nigeria went first in 1956, Ghana (1957), Tanzania (1961), Uganda (1962) and Kenya in 1963. Zambia, thanks to freedom fighter Dr Kenneth Kaunda (1924-2021) gained independence only in 1964. The head teacher of Mufulira Mine School in Copperbelt became Headmaster of the country and stayed in position for 27 years.
Looking back, we might ask whether Britain’s sudden exit in a fit of sudden high-mindedness might not have been the best thing? The haste with which the new state of Zambia was created meant that in 1964 there existed in the country not more than 100 graduates. Kaunda, for all his skill as founder of the nation, was left to run a ship of state with nothing more than a few ratings.
Similar to other moments of political change (an example being the Russian Constitutional Crisis in 1993), leaders of such shifts are reluctant to make common ground with Ancien Régimes. Had the new state of Zambia done so, it could perhaps have averted disaster. In 1964 its copper output was 700,000 thousand metric tons per annum, making the country responsible for 12% of world supply. The country had enough wealth below its feet to have built sustainable wealth for all.
It was Kaunda’s paternalist approach that was his downfall. He treated the copper industry as the nation's piggy-bank – but it soon became one that sprang a hole.
Lacking investment in, or maintenance of, copper assets following nationalisation into ZCCM between 1969 and 1974, and with incompetent relationships developed by Memaco (Zambian copper’s foreign trade arm), much of the young nation’s wealth went south with little contribution towards the common good. Borrowing replaced income so that when the copper rocks hit the rocks (at 65 cts per lb in 1999) and famine swept the country, Zambia was both starving and bust.
I have recited this story many times but need to rehearse the main parts of the tale again to make a new point.
Pressured by both the IMF and World Bank, Zambia’s second leader, President Chiluba, was told that no more loans would be forthcoming without wholesale privatisation of the copper industry. As history relates, Glencore, Vedanta, First Quantum and others entered the field as the new investors replacing one form of colonialism with another; Glencore enjoying a 20-year tax break on condition they kept the mines open and employment up.
Glencore succeeded in doing this; its investment in Mopani went into billions and the Government of Zambia became subservient to mining companies more powerful than the sovereign government of the country in which they mined.
When Patriotic Front leader President Edgar Lungu seized power upon the death of President Sata in 2014 and was subsequently elected president in 2015, Zambia appeared to take a Zimbabwe-like turn for the worse. Lungu expropriated copper assets and sought to reward his cadres. And yet, to the amazement of the world, opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema (or HH as he was at one time affectionately called), was elected President in 2021 by a thumping indisputable 1 mln votes majority. All this, despite house arrest and being unable to campaign. Democracy, it was thought, was strangely alive and well in this landlocked former British Colony. Zambia had returned to democracy.
That illusion is no longer there.
Now in Zambia’s 60th year order and progress has been replaced with tribal conflict, political arrests, and state corruption. The effects are loss of faith in the system, daily power outages, unpaid government workers, the breakdown of law and order. Zambia today is in a worse state than at any other time in its history. Inflation is about 15%, the Kwacha is near K35 to the Pound Sterling, copper output is half what it was in 1964.
Upon Hichilema’s accession he promised to stamp out corruption. I listened to impressive speeches he delivered in his first year direct to government officials excoriating them for feathering their nests with expensive vehicles and siphoning off government money for personal gain.
Following HH on Instagram and Twitter has been unedifying. Counting the number of luxury international flights he and the First Lady have taken since gaining office he appears to have spent more time outside his country of 21 million citizens (of which 65% live below the poverty line of $2.15 per day) than in it. His selfies and official photos glad-handing leaders all over the globe mocks his own people’s abject poverty.
In Mufulira this last year, outages of electricity have meant there was no electricity 18-20 hours per day, water reticulation and processing is so poor that hospitals have trouble to access clean water. Mopani, after its expropriation in 2021, and absorption into the government entity ZCCM-IH, has been barely producing. Then at COP 28 in UAE at the end of 2023, without due process it was suddenly announced that the Mopani Mine and Smelter was sold to a UAE entity with no previous recorded experience in mining or smelting.
I started this article with reference to the long hand of colonialism. If it is true to say that the British Empire grew out of the buccaneering trade interests and charters of Elizabethan England (with the East India Company even continuing to flourish under Cromwell) then there is no difference between the exploitation of Empire and that of the multinational companies who make no such claims to sovereignty.
Except…with the dominance of UAE and China in Zambia today via its mining entities, matters are so much worse because Zambia is now so weak.
A most revealing event took place in 2011 when our company held an event at London’s National Liberal Club to discuss sulphur pollution at that time blighting the town of Mufulira. In attendance was BBCs investigative Panorama Programme headed by John Sweeney, as well as fourteen students and teachers from Mufulira Mine School and their 14 counterparts at Ansford Academy in Somerset.
For this event much food was provided, and while I was busy giving interviews putting across the case for mining standards to be similar in far off countries to those we would demand here, I did not realise that none of the Zambians had touched the food.
To my shock, as our Zambian guests were getting ready to leave, I noticed this fact too late and asked why this was the case?
The tragic and sad reply I received was simply ‘we did not think the food was for us’.
A country that was run by others had no agency. While Independence appeared to create a sense of freedom, the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ remained.
Today, we see Zambia pillaged all over again and rotten from within, led by a President and his cadres who promised much but delivered little.
This week Edgar Lungu, the former President, boasted that under his leadership load-shedding never exceeded 17 hours, while under HH examples of load-shedding have been up to 48 hours.
Yesterday (as reported in the Lusaka Times) miners at the Chinese-owned Chambishi, and now UAE-owned Mopani Mindolo shaft were trapped underground by a load-shedding event.
They have not yet been rescued; and ordinary patients in hospital are unable to access life-saving medical equipment.
It would appear that for Zambians neither the copper, nor the wealth it could generate for the common good, are accessible either.
The food remains on the table – but it is not for them.
Anthony Lipmann 29.11.24
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