CHANGE TO STOP THE CHANGE …
Today, the 28 September 2006, the people of Zambia are voting, probably – due to the mobile phone revolution and the depth of their discontent, in unprecedented numbers. They will be voting for the present incumbent, President Levy Mwanawasa, or the man of the people, Michael Sata.
There has been a general deterioration in this bit of the old British Africa, independent politically since 1964, where foreign donor aid perpetuates economic dependency, where the comfortable mutualistic parasitic relationship between Government and Donors show no signs whatever of raising Africa up out of its parlous state, what can be done? What is being done?
What has begun is a steadily growing resistance movement against centralized governance, its uncritical donor partners and well-heeled investors, who are carving up, willy-nilly, the natural resource cake. The catalyst for this resistance is the tourism lease given to an empowerment company in the Victoria Falls World Heritage Site - specifically in the Mosi oa Tunya National Park, for the building of two five-star hotels, an 18 hole golf course and 400 or so riverside chalets. Coming under the spotlight is the Zambia Wildlife Authority, the National Movement Against Corruption, Legacy Holdings and its empowerment Chairman, the World Bank, a Chief and a community trust, some silent multi-national conservation NGOs, UNESCO, the Zambia National Heritage and Conservation Commission, and a group of resolute citizen and non-citizens never so united in the defense of something which belongs to the world.
So, do we look forward to a long five years of litigation against Government, of a war against the donors and investors who cut their own deals without recourse to the people, of an indigenization programme modeled on that of South Africa. On the other hand, will we see and support change to effect a change: leadership and duty, discipline, devolution and decentralization, investment and job creation, health and education, a social safety net for the poor, and partnerships with the private sector conducted in an open and transparent manner. That would be a start to getting Zambia back into business, so that no more will we hear, “Zambia has great potential!”
ZAMBIA ERECTIONS
In but 12 hours or so, Joyce and Eunice, two widows with a host of children to look after - not all their own, will shut the door of their huts and walk through the dark to the polling station at the school in Chainda, Lusaka, to cast their votes. For the first time ever, this vote, this referendum for a light out of the dark, is being taken seriously. For years these two salts of the earth have had to suffer the verbal froth of politicians, their lot growing more desperate, the mouths at their pots added like beads to a string as HIV/Aids and a distant Government consign them to deeper poverty. Not that this is Somalia, where the normally effulgent rains found in Zambia is unknown, where clan brigands hold sway with the gun, where the glow of western liberal democracy is but a distant memory. But, hell, they do want change.
They want the Chinese cadre ‘erection’ supporters of the ruling party out, not the Chinese and other investors in infrastructure, mining and agriculture, but the ‘Chinee’ flogging eggs in the compounds and shanty towns, let in through some invisible process not available to the normal investor who has to suffer – and fork out, for the endless circuits of the Immigration Department at the execrable Kent House - a re-make of Vichy France Casablanca, for the Zambia Investment Centre blandishments, for the lawyers requiring a President’s ransom, for the host Ministry for what-ever, for the Banks with their forms endless, for the grasping government departments and their harvesting civil-servants, and for the bloody speed cops sequestered in the shade but a mile from the airport, pens poised, collecting their salary…
Joyce and Eunice: no English, no skills, just the good people of an old culture not yet embracing the terrible allure of the industrial age, witch bound… wanting a Government that will remove the necessity for school uniforms, that will pay the teachers and buy the books, and provide the free medicines in the clinics – not the ‘free of medicines’ clinic, that will provide a bloody house with water and a clean bog. For God’s sake!
