DR GUY SCOTT’S DISMISAL LETTER IN HIS VISITORS’ TOILET
Zambia’s former Vice-President, Dr Guy Scott, is one of my amazing personalities in my Conversations’ book. In 2004, I had a gripping conversation with him about his life story. Among other things, he explained how he was unfairly dismissed as agriculture minister by then President Frederick Chiluba in 1993.
Because he didn’t see merit in his firing, Dr Scott framed his dismissal letter and placed it in the visitors’ toilet in his New Kasama farm house. To date, this letter is hanging in this visitors’ restroom
Below, Dr Scott explains his appointment and disappointment by President Chiluba who also at the same time fired finance minister Emmanuel Kasonde. In fact, Dr Scott and Emmanuel Kasonde wondered why good men changed as soon as they occupied State House. The duo jokingly said there was “juju” that confused good men when they entered State House.
Enjoy the excerpt below from the book: Conversations with Memorable Personalities (2022) by Amos Malupenga, Pages 320-321.
Dr Guy Scott: … 1991 was a very interesting campaign, a bit like Kabila’s takeover of the Congo, with people welcoming us as long awaited saviours in most places. I accompanied Chiluba into North-Western Province, I accompanied Mwanawasa into Southern Province and Copperbelt. I went with Godfrey Miyanda and Chiluba on two separate occasions into Eastern Province.
At this point Michael Sata and I got on very well. I enjoyed his company because he was intelligent and irreverent, with a very sharp sense of humour, and clearly liked getting things done quickly and effectively. I said to him, ‘Listen, I want a rural constituency. As chairman of agriculture, it will be very silly for me to be Member of Parliament for a Lusaka constituency.’
We made a deal. He said, ‘Yes you can have Mpika and I will have Kabwata [in Lusaka]. So, we swapped seats. That’s how I came to be Member of Parliament for Mpika in 1991. And I was appointed the first Minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries in the MMD government.
I would tell you entertaining stories but I signed the Official Secrets Act. But I can tell you things that happened outside Cabinet. I remember one day Emmanuel Kasonde and I were walking away from State House and Emmanuel said to me, ‘There is juju in this place because anyone who comes in here changes immediately from what they were outside.’
It was a very strange experience, suddenly people finding themselves in power and being unsure how to exercise it.
As Minister of Agriculture, my first job was to try and get some common sense to work. You know the ministry was huge but it had no relations with the private sector. These days relations between government and the private sector in agriculture are very close. I started that.
All these small farmers in the villages and the commercial farmers are private sector. But there was a situation where civil servants were just sitting and dreaming what they thought was good for the farmers. So, I forced them to talk to each other and that is how ASIP [Agriculture Social Investment Program] was born. Now we have RoadSIP, BESSIP,
etc. That initiative has changed the way we run our affairs. People are obliged to consult each other across the barriers that divide them. We also had to liberalise agricultural marketing.
People sometimes ask: why did you do what the IMF told you to do? But the IMF didn’t tell me to do anything, it was me who told the IMF, ‘Get out of my office because I am way ahead of you, I don’t need to be spoken to like a child. I have answers to all your questions. Some things I am liberalising while some things I am not for strategic reasons.’
But things were made more difficult in 1991/2 by that drought. We didn’t have enough maize in the country and we couldn’t buy from Zimbabwe or South Africa because it was a regional drought. But we organised to buy maize in America and brought it in by ship and rail. There was no white maize in the world at affordable prices so I came to be known as “Mr. Yellow Maize” and yellow maize came to be known as “Guy Scott”.
How we sorted that drought out without losing lives is still taught in universities, but Mr. Chiluba was evidently not impressed. He fired Kasonde and me in April 1993, just as we were closing down the operation.
Amos Malupenga: Why?
Dr Guy Scott: Probably he thought Kasonde was after his job, and me for backing him as the man who was more fit to be president. But there is an awful lot of kachepa [gossip] in State House; even last week we saw our current President acting on anonymous letters. You never know with
kachepa. It’s possible I was sacked for doing something that I never did or saying something which I never said because that is the way the system tends to work at State House
You may recall that there were a lot of allegations against me around then: that I took commissions on imports of maize and fertiliser, and that I had devised some magical way of making money by killing and burying pigs. I am sure I do not know half the stories that were told to Chiluba about me.
Don’t ask me why kachepa thrives so well in this country; perhaps it is because we are only one generation removed from villages in which malicious gossip is like life-blood
