Friday, July 27, 2007

The luncheon affair...




When I received the letter (included in The Post article) from the President of Zambia's Principal Private Secretary, I fell about a bit, pinching myself to ensure I was awake. But my friend, Rolf Shenton, who indeed hosted a number of braais at his house, attended by all sorts of people- one particular lunch attended by the prominant politician Guy Scott, a lady from the World Bank, two members of the Muslim community active in tourism, Yussuf Patel and Goolam Patel, myself, and others, to discuss tourism development and so on, but nothing to do with politics, counselled caution and sound legal advice. The President happened to be out of the country at the time so it was clearly a time when power had gone to the heads of his minnions. So I wrote to this chap, Chipoya, stating what a good fellow I was and that I had not given much thought to overthowing the ruling party or destroying the maize stocks of Zambia.


Gamefields Ltd
Luembe Conservancy Trust
Mbeza Safaris Limited
Postnet Box 245, P/Bag E10, Lusaka, Zambia.
Telephone: (260) 1 28 22 4/Mobile: 260 97 618246
gamefields@zamnet.zm

A.N. Chipoya
Principal Private Secretary
State House
Lusaka.

20 April 06.

Dear Sir,
I am in receipt of your letter of 3 April 2006 – one also addressing Messrs, O. Irwin, I. Asherwood and R. Michelson, and copied to Dr Guy Scott, detailing certain information imparted to the President of the Republic by persons unknown, which would have him believe that I and others are party to a range of actions and decisions causing him and the nation distress - as outlined in your letter.
I must categorically state that as an investor and non-citizen I do not take part in any party political debates or machinations, as is required of me under the conditions of my immigration status; nor did I attend any luncheon with the people whom you have mentioned; nor could I therefore have then been party to any of the alleged resolutions – some of them of an exceedingly serious nature, as they would constitute a grave attack on Zambia and her people.
As the sole corporate member in Zambia of Business Action for Africa (BAA), an organization arising out of the Commission for Africa, my business group – the smallest of all the members, which has - along with fellow members Shell, Unilever and other business giants, been adjudged as being a progressive support for the development of Africa and her peoples. And I have served GRZ in the Department of National Parks & Wildlife for three tours since 1964, having made a small but meaningful and, may I say, altruistic, contribution to natural resource and community development in that time. A steering committee member of the Natural Resources Consultative Forum, I also work in food-aid/poverty reduction advocacy, as a call to the CRBs of Nyalugwe and Luembe, and to the Disaster Management Unit of the Office of the Vice President would confirm.
It is obvious that the Presidency has been deliberately fed information likely to heap ridicule upon it. There lies your enemy.
Yours sincerely,

I. P. A. Manning CBiol
CEO

The end of the chiefly honeymoon...


By the end of 2005, I had become unpopular with the two chiefs in our concessionary area: Senior Chief Luembe, trustee and co-founder with me of the Luembe Conservancy Trust - because I had stopped him alienating more of his land in the open area; Chief Nyalugwe, because i interceded with the Nyimba District Council to stop him selling off more of his land to a businessman; and with Chieftainess Mwape (who adjoins Luembe just north of the West Mvuvye National Forest), for opposing her sale of land that was not even hers i.e. that part of of the West Mvuvye National Forest No. 54 once in her chieftainship. But the land was sold anyway and all attempts so far to have it nullified have ended in failure. Chief Nyalugwe's main point of irritation seemed to be my refusal to pay yet another bill for the repair of the vehicle he had been given by the would-be investor.

The first shot fired on 28 November, 2005...


Regarding the article on Monday 28, November: “7 Safari Firms Escape Prosecution – Kabeta”, by Brighton Phiri, I can only marvel at the resurrective powers of one, Hapenga Kabeta, declared mercifully surplus to requirements as Director General of ZAWA by our President in the Sunday Post (“Things Go Wild at Wildlife Authority”), only to be miraculously brought forth from the dead in The Post of Monday. Did he receive a Presidential pardon, perhaps a stay of execution?

As the MD of a hunting company named in the article in Monday’s edition, and a partner with ZAWA and the local community (villagers and their traditional leaders) in the operation of hunting safaris – a company bought in order to usher in participatory development in a far-flung rural area, I can understand the imperious Hapenga quoting the Queen so fulsomely, “We are not amused with such carelessness!” but was it necessary to go to the press with evidence of such a heinous crime committed by a partner – the shooting of a bushbuck over and above the quota. After all, I am a partner, one of the hunting companies who provide $3 million of the $5 million required annually by ZAWA to perform its statutory functions. But, was I really expecting a tickle in the ribs, a cry of, “You naughty boy?’ No. Instead, Hapenga goes for the ‘foreign’ investor jugular, fulminating at our criminal temerity: ”Should there be the repeat of the same crime, their agreements will be terminated”. Just like that. And I thought partners were friends, mates, taking it on the chin in good times and bad. And ZAWA’s and my partner, the local community – the 5,000 or so villagers in Senior Chief Luembe’s country struggling to find enough to eat, expecting at any minute that the elephant and the bushbuck will steal the food off their plate, they will just have to go along with the decision, I suppose. A curios partner is Hapenga. Or perhaps the article is all smoke and Kapiri mirrors?

The Post readers will be intrigued to know what a quota is and just why some ‘foreign’ rural investors, so essential to the poor of Zambia and the wildlife on which they and ZAWA depend, should be so threatened with the loss of their businesses for something which is not a criminal act, surely. But clearly the quota is something sacrosanct, like the natural law against incest for example. Well, a quota is nothing more than the number of animals of a species which can be kill annually and not effect its population. In other words, my clients shoot some, bushmeat poachers shoot some, others die, some are born, leaving you with the same number. It sounds simple, but to set one accurately, you would have to know something of the breeding biology of the species concerned, the number of animals in the population (virtually impossible to arrive at in Zambia without a great deal of money spent), the illegal offtake (simply massive in our area due to the bushmeat trade and poaching by scouts, and therefore unknown) and the natural mortality. It’s all dodgy wildlife biology. Because of that I refer to quotas as allocations, something the hunting companies and the community have a say in at the annual meetings with ZAWA. In my case, I reduced the allocation to my company, calling for more animals to be given to the rural poor, my true partners. Thus, I reduced the bushbuck numbers, meaning that Hapenga now has a net gain of bushbuck. I wonder if next year, when some nervous hunting client, fresh from Silicone Valley shoots two bushbuck by accident, Hapenga will invoke his heavenly powers and remove my business? And what will we do with Hapenga and his business when next year I catch more of his scouts poaching – this year alone killing the equivalent at least of my buffalo quota? Do I deal with it in the press? Surely not!
Unpublished letter sent to The Post by self

Sunday, July 22, 2007

The Zambian investors' nightmare announced...



The arrival in the post of a smudged, dubious looking photo-copied form from the Department of Immigration - the sort of escape document produced by Allied prisoners at Colditz, informing you that your self-employed work permit renewal application has been denied on the grounds that 'the business is not viable', suddenly stills the wind and dims the lights of sunny Lusaka.

Your immediate thought is that it is obviously a put-up job, a fake, sent to you by a practical joker, or more likely, sent by one of the people thwarted by your campaign on behalf of poor villagers to protect their land. How, you say to yourself, earnestly striving to discover some Cartesian logic while all about you so clearly reveals its absence, can the Government turn down a self-employed permit renewal application from a major shareholder and managing director of a company holding an investment certificate that has so far invested over a million dollars in a trust dedicated to ushering in investment to a rural area. But they have. And the chap sitting at the end of the corridor in that splendid Kent House, surely a film set for a re-make of a Graham Greene Haitian novel, is quite serious when he says that I should appeal at once to the Minister of Home Affairs, 'otherwise the next step will be that we deport you".

A visit to the Zambia Development Agency, mandated under the Investment Act both to provide an investor with a self -employed permit if one brings in $50,000 (now overtaken by the higly flawed Zambia Development Agency Act requiring $250,000 and the employment of a minmum of 200 technical and managerial workers) and to ensure that international investment agreements are adhered to, mutters someting about, 'those immigration people are very difficult'. So I write a letter to the Minister of Home Affairs, a rather stern chap who recently deported a few people on the grounds that they were a threat to state security (one of them being a Dane who was an honorary police officer and had the temerity to order the Deputy-Minister of Home Affairs driver to move out of a disabled parking site), and deliver it in person to his secretary. Then I am told to fork out $500 for a temporary permit while I await the Ministerial decision. Meanwhile, the other two directors, my wife and son, have received no such letter of refusal and spend days lined up at the film set hellhole in wind blown corridors reeking of leaking sewage and jack hammers tearing away at the entrance way. Its a long business: files are lost, files are found, company accounts are handed over to unwilling recipients, letters from accountants shrugged off. After all, the Department of Emmigration - masquerading as Immmigration, does not give a fig about the Zambia Development Agency - a rather weak quango placed in the Ministry of Commerce. Everyone knows that Home Affairs with its police and security apparatus has all the power.

More trips to the film set reveal that my son will soon get his letter of refusal, and that my wife, irrespective of the fact that she is a shareholder and director, being on my file, has also been refused. No reply from the Minister of Home Affairs of course; so I fire off a letter to the Director General of the ZDA and to their legal counsel. And of course, lest I forget, to a couple of safari clients and television documentary makers, cancelling their trip and promising to send back their money. Its safari season after all, and our safari company - just one of the things we do, is gearing itself up with hundreds of villagers clearing tracks and building camps. But the machine, not very well oiled obviously, eructates briefly and falls silent. We are now becalmed, our community partners bemused, our agents - already got to by the enemy, doubtless feeling vindicated in their withdrawal of support. The enemy, sitting back, licks the collective moustache, letting forth agreeable goatly burps of satisfaction at the progress of its campaign.

Monday, July 16, 2007

AN OVERVIEW OF THE ZAMBIAN INVESTMENT CLIMATE FOR TOURISM, CONSERVATION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT...by I.P.A. Manning

Address to the Zambia Business Forum Conference on the Zambia Development Agency Act of 2006, held in Lusaka on 19 June 2007.


At the World Economic Forum Summit on Africa in Cape Town last week one of the main questions posed was just how the private sector could be brought to the African investment and development party. There also came the usual clarion call for the imposition of the same standards of governance in Africa as elsewhere. As I am involved in tourism and rural development, and in efforts to attract investment into our rural areas – in particular protected areas, I am not happy to hear what a prospective investor in tourism said to me recently, “Zambia is such a great country that you have to risk half a million bucks to get a business going in what must be one of the most inhospitable environments for such things, especially for newcomers”. Is this the common perception of our country, does this reflect reality, and if so will the Zambia Development Agency Act No. 11 of 2006, as presently framed, help rectify the situation?

The dissembling and examination of the ZDA Act in isolation will certainly not solve the Zambia investment problem – and there very obviously is a problem. We must take the holistic view. The Act is but one bird in a motley flock of bills, acts, statutory instruments and policy, many of which by stealth and the total absence of consultation swoop upon civil society, published or unpublished, contradictory or not. Investors, most of the people in this country after all, not just the Englishman in baggy tweeds, cigar clamped in jaw in his luxurious tourist lodge, or the Chinaman flogging fish in Kamwala market – where be his investment certificate I may ask, but also the villagers investing their labour to support their children in a world rather devoid of medicine or education, all are affected by such laws as the Lands Act, the Wildlife Act, the Immigration and Deportation Act, Customary law, the Citizens’ Economic Empowerment Act, the Environmental Protection and Pollution Control Act, the Labour Act and so on.

My experience as a small investor and corporate member of Business Action for Africa and dedicated supporter of its program against corruption, find that Zambia presents at times a forbidding investment landscape; perhaps explaining why in a country that 43 years ago at Independence had the same GDP as the Asian tigers – is now 75 times poorer, and still has about the same number of people employed in the formal sector as it did at Independence.

This Act, which has taken the place of the repealed Investment Act, Privatization Act, Small Enterprise Development Act, Export Processing Zones Act and the Export Development Act, and which is the midwife of the quango, The Zambia Development Agency, attempts a number of things, articulating national investment objectives based on generally accepted international norms being one of them. However, it is clear that they are not the result of true consultation with civil society conducted in a transparent and participatory manner as they do not address the cultural and social wellsprings, needs and political utterances and aspirations of contemporary Zambian society. They will therefore remain an idealistic goal ever clamped on the horizon. In plain terms, the objectives should deal more directly with the common refrain of urban Zambians, “ Zambia for the Zambians”.

Government responsibility to foreign investors is poorly delineated, leaving the investor, should anything go wrong, at the mercy of the Arbitration Act, a process anyhow able to be avoided by a Government Executive in which power remains highly centralized, where foreign investors have on the whim of the powerful been in the recent past deported under special powers still in place, powers introduced under a state of emergency by the Chiluba regime. There therefore needs to be introduced an Ombudsman as well as a special committee of the judiciary, set apart from the Executive, to deal with matters affecting investors who are targeted by corrupt elements able to make use of the state security apparatus to serve their own ends. In my case, having served in the Kaunda regime as a warden and biologist in the Department of National Parks and Wildlife with responsibility for empowering local communities in the ownership and sustainable use of the wildlife resources, and having returned here five years ago after a stint as Chief Technical Advisor to the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism in order to develop a suitable model so that investors could enter into smart partnerships with communities – but without alienating customary land, surely something having the highest development priority, I find that championing communities and safeguarding their land and that of protected state land from the corrupt, ignorant or rapacious, rather than receiving the thanks of Government, is strongly resented. Protecting customary land from alienation by corrupt chiefs and writing a weblog on illegal land alienations which criticizes Government, is sufficient to have one placed on the deportation list, have one’s phones and email tapped, mail opened, be subject to sinister phone calls, and have vehicles of the Office of the President parked outside the house gate. As an angry Minister, objecting angrily to my criticism, said, “Zambia is not a democracy like Britain and America”. The message is plain. Come here, but remain silent. But as the author Paul Theroux wrote in his essay, Tarzan is an Expatriate, “A person should not agree to work in a country that demands silence of him”.

The issue of investor freedom of speech needs to be aired and debated, and provisions made for the protection of investors who follow the law, stay out of party politics, but, who because of their work and affiliations, their heritage, their social conscience, insist on certain standards of governance, and voice it. After all many of us come from countries which over the years have provided 40% or so of Zambia’s budget. This should deserve some respect.

The ZDA Act and the Immigration and Deportation Act appear to have arrived here from different planets. The now repealed Investment Act - under which most recent investors were ushered in, confirms that an investor who brings in a minimum of fifty thousand United States Dollars shall be entitled to a self employment permit or resident permit. In actual fact what one receives is a self-employed permit which has annually to be renewed following an inspection of the business premises by a cabal of six representatives – all Government, drawn from the Zambia Investment Centre, Anti-Corruption Commission, the police, immigration and so on, who have to be collected from their scattered hide-outs and transported to wherever one is. And unlucky the investors far away from Lusaka. This temporary status is then held for three years – each year requiring re-validation, in which Immigration, consider one not yet a resident of Zambia until one has obtained an Entry permit (there being no more Resident permits issued). Therefore for three years the investor is made to pay for various licenses normally charged to non-residents. For example, a license to conduct hunting safaris is charged at the non-resident rate of $6000, rather than the $600 resident rate. And no one, not the Zambia Investment Centre (ZIC), not the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA), nor the Department of Immigration appear prepared to change this, sticking to the letter of the law and not its spirit. Surely an investor who moves to Zambia, as elsewhere in the world, obtains the necessary investment certificate and self-employed permit, is a resident. And the lack of clarity and contradictions between the ZDA Act and Immigration Act of what is required of the investor to renew his self-employed permit may lead him into a laborious exercise to provide an audit of all his accounts, one which actually needs to take in the period prior to the issuing of an investment certificate, which if delayed – something not in the interests of the investor, may result in him receiving a letter, as I have, which says that my application for an extension of a self-employed permit is rejected ‘for the company is not viable’. From the Immigration Department’s point of view they are merely following procedure, but receiving such a document obviously places an investment in peril and a deportation notice imminent. I have now to appeal to the Minister of Home Affairs against the rejection, pay $500 for a temporary permit in the meantime, and if he refuses, I am left with the Arbitration Commission, and if that fails, I will petition the High Court. And if that does not work, what then? Does this kind of treatment and process best serve investors, and Zambia?

On the matter of investor incentives, I find the ZDA Act lapses into total confusion. Article 65 renders the attainment of an investment certificate and self-employed permit, as well as the necessary work permits, impossible, for to qualify one has to invest a minimum of $250K and employ 200 people in managerial and technical positions. I have tried to think of one such tourism enterprise currently in existence which would qualify for this. A recent letter from the Netherlands Embassy to the Permanent Secretary of Commerce, Trade and Industry presents the problem more clearly: “It is our understanding that the current minimum threshold for investor status is an investment of USD50,000. The higher thresholds mentioned above are understood to simply add further incentives, without affecting this minimum threshold. However, it appears that there is some confusion over this matter, as well as over the difference between the USD250,000 and USD500,000 thresholds. The confusion appears to be affecting the way that applications are being handled. It has come to our notice that various foreign investors are apparently being required to show proof of a minimum investment of USD500,000 as a condition for obtaining self-employment status and that government has in fact stopped issuing self-employment permits and extending residence permits to companies that are unable to meet or comply with this regulation”.

And what of the development investor such as myself and my partners, we who are hybrids of the made-in-heaven coupling of NGO and capitalist, where profit remains subservient to human upliftment and biodiversity conservation. What Act, what Agency is there to see that incentives are in place for it? My experience of investing in the safari hunting industry in order to support our overall objectives of biodiversity conservation and villager upliftment has been deeply unpleasant. Dealing as a partner in a Hunting Concession Agreement with the Zambia Wildlife Authority, the statutory body who hand out hunting and tourism concessions and who are mandated to conserve our wild life and wild places, particularly the regime of the present Director-General’s predecessor, has been one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life: a trail of corruption, deceit, incompetence, administrative bungling and neglect, endless and pernicious litigation, the failure to negotiate in good faith, the use of blackmail, a shocking disregard for the principles of wildlife management, and a complete neglect of the Community Resource Boards and the impoverished communities whom they should be serving. My past criticisms have now been vindicated and laid hideously bare by the Auditor-General’s report on ZAWA published a few days ago. This brings me no great pleasure. Quite clearly, the Act requires some mechanism to protect an investor who has entered into such agreements with dysfunctional and poorly managed parastatals.

Finally, in assessing the Act and the future Zambia Development Agency itself, we should take care not to become bogged down in the detail. Investment does not require a manual of rules, an instantly obsolete grand investment plan. What it needs is openness and honesty, a sharing of knowledge, and crucially, admitting that Zambia will never grow unless it confers citizenship on residents in accordance with Western standards, unless it takes in suitable immigrants, and most importantly of all, unless investment directly targets the rural poor. Yes, Zambia for the real Zambians.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Gamefields Ltd start in Zambia in 2003...


The Manning family: Brendan, Bronwen, Cathlin, Ian & Hamish


Gamefields, once the telegraphic address of the Kenya Game Department, is the name I gave to a company registered in Gibralter by the Manning family's partner, Khalid Altajir, with a branch in Zambia, having a simple mission: to do something about the complete disenfranchisement of rural communities and the alarming loss of their supporting biodiversity, by entering into partnerships with traditional authorities and government in the investment and management of both customary and protected areas, particularly through the development of tourism. I started the process at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 at the request of a number of conservation NGOs by mounting an exhibition called “The Conservation Investment Fair’ giving the opportunity for all and sundry to showcase their projects and to find investment partners. This lead to my decision to return to Zambia where I had long been active both in the Department of Wildlife and National Parks and in the safari hunting and tourism business, to assist my old department – now a statutory body called the Zambia Wildlife Authority, in further developing public private partnerships (PPPs) in National Parks – having assisted in the establishment of just such a partnership in the Kasanka National Park (formerly in my charge) in 1988. At the request of Judy Carr, the eldest daughter of the late Norman Carr, a former member of the Game Department and well known for his conservation work in Zambia – and a former employer of mine, I and the former M.P. for Mkushi, Rolf Shenton registered the Norman Carr Foundation. As President we recruited the founding President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, whose son Panji had been one of the trustees – along with myself and Norman Carr, of the African Wildlife Trust twenty years before. One of its first jobs was to assist the current Director General of ZAWA, Dr Lewis Saiwana, in the development of PPP national policy for National Parks.

I then searched for a suitable chiefdom in which to develop a land investment model, one that would not alienate the land from its customary owners, but which would allow for a fruitful partnership to be developed between suitable investors and the villagers. I soon settled on the country of Senior Chief Luembe in the Nyimba district, a magnificent part of old Africa encompassing parts of the rift valleys of the Luangwa, Lukushahsi and Luano.

Picture by Brendan Manning
In short time we had registered a non-profit trust (Luembe Conservancy Trust) with trustees drawn from the Nyimba District Council, the Luembe Community Resource Board, the chief and myself (Gamefields) as trustees and co-directors, and Gamefields. This trust was based on a simple structure, initially called the Chipuna – named for the traditional three-legged African stool. The Chipuna seemed the way forward, providing as it does the necessary partners for development of local community, government and investor. I held wide-ranging discussions with all and sundry, but crucial to the development of the Landsafe idea was Rolf Shenton, a remarkably dedicated man whose efforts in conservation and development over nearly two decades in Zambia has no peer.

Chipuna, which we now call Landsafe – in deference to Zambian tribal sensitivities, is being attempted by Gamefields in Luembe, and in other areas by other trusts. The basis of Landsafe is of course a truly participatory landuse plan, one based on the desires and knowledge of villagers, admixed with the land and natural resources capability. The result of this process is the identification of a number of landuse and business development options, which then require investment partnerships. Critically, the use of land is then carried out under usufruct i.e. the lease of customary land, no ownership loss of community land taking place.

As Luembe makes up a greater part of the West Petauke Game Management Area (GMA), an area, which comprises some 1 million acres, home to about 2,000 of the poorest Zambians who live far from services and opportunities for advancement, it was clearly important that we pay particular attention to it. This area had been given out on a tender to Mbeza Safaris Limited for the conducting of hunting safaris on a ten year lease until 2012. Owned by the Mehta brother, it was clear that they should be invited to join the Luembe Trust, for without their participation, they and ZAWA could easily block other development. Having declined to join us, we made and offer of purchase, which was accepted, and we kicked off with a few hunts in the 2005 season. This journal is a chronicle of what has since ensued…