FACE TO FACE WITH THE DEMONS OF POLITICS – A FIRST HAND ACCOUNT OF SILENT POLITICAL BATTLES IN ZAMBIAN BUSINESSES
Warning ⚠️ Long Article
By Kennedy K. Mambwe
– HOW POLITICAL TOXICITY IS KILLING OUR DEVELOPMENT
For the past six years, I have been an active private sector participant employing 19 young and talented Zambians in the media industry.Together, we have built a brand that is fairly recognisable across the nation and beyond.
During the 6 years of running a media business, I have come across situations that have forced many people in our country to fold their arms or completely shut themselves out and pretend they are not seeing anything. It’s either you conform, play along and thrive or stand by the truth and face invisible shadows of various shades of political demons.
I have decided to pen down these intimate thoughts not to seek attention or cause embarrassment to anyone, but out of duty to the nation. I have come to realise that there are many ugly political demons outthere that we must confront frankly and aggressively if we must correct mistakes that are becoming monstrous in our nation.
I have come to realise that speaking one’s own mind is a very costly undertaking today and the best way to avoid paying the price is to keep quiet. As a result, so many well meaning, educated and intelligent citizens have opted to remain quiet and watch the nation wasting away.
Some of you may identify yourselves with circumstances I’m sharing in this article based on similar situations you might have experienced either during the MMD, PF or indeed now during the reign of UPND. Personally, I have had the privilege of running business between two governments and I have realised, we are building a monster in the name of politics.
I must admit that I’m only sharing my perspective from the media industry. I don’t know what’s happening in other sectors such as construction, contractors, mining, supply, civil service, parastatals or indeed foreign service.
From a personal conviction, Christ paid the price hence I’m at liberty to speak. I get amazed when I meet people or when I get calls from numerous people saying please continue speaking for us. I get shocked as to how we arrived in this place where someone should be thanked for merely speaking out. It’s very evident that unless we correct the current practice of politics, our nation is heading in a very dangerous direction.
BACKGROUND
I stepped out of formal employment 6 years ago to build my childhood passion as a career journalist. I started the KBN project while working as Senior Manager in Zamtel. By 2019, I resigned and devoted my time and energy to building and running a media brand that has fairly become recognisable.
The 6 years I have spent doing this media calling have changed the way I perceive things. I’m convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that we need to change the approach to politics and national building. This article will explain why.
IT’S OUR TIME TO EAT
In a normal and functional society, building businesses and brands should not be associated with political patronage. Citizens must be exposed to equal opportunities where creative ideas are allowed to grow and thrive. It’s the only way we can build a solid private sector that can generate sufficient taxes to fund public service.
Yet in Zambia, it seems you have to toe a certain political line for you to thrive, sometimes while breaking the law. Politics has become a huge insurance cover and an enduring assurance for sweatless success. Across different regimes, we have seen cadres who have never paid the full price of education, but are running multimillion businesses supported by government contracts linked to political patronage.
It’s no wonder we are witnessing forfeiture of assets. People can’t justify how they amassed wealth, thanks to political blind loyalty. To get rich quickly, one must just become a blind loyalist who should never say anything or point out any wrong doing about their leader.
Their main assignment is to insult, harrass and attack anyone who tries to hold their leaders accountable. This is a sad society we have built that even some opposition political leaders who have no business being in politics, have sold their integrity and reduced themselves to surrogates of whichever party is in power. It’s a nation of “sebana wikute.”
We have continued to crown politics while leaving integrity, morality and patriotism bankrupt. It’s shameful that citizens can confidently say it’s now our time to eat. Because eating is more important than holding leaders accountable, corruption, nepotism, and abuse of office have become acceptable as a norm.
It doesn’t matter what these wrongs are doing to our nation, as long as you have access to cash, you play blind loyalty because it’s your time to eat. It’s these demons of politics that make our leaders embrace populist support, yet cover up on criminality that they should frown upon. As long an act of criminality is committed by someone they can draw political capital from, nothing will happen until another regime comes into power. Then they cry that it’s witch hunt.
BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT
Conform or be left out. The moment a nation accepts conforming as a norm, then trouble starts. A close friend of mine whom I respect very highly within the ranks of the ruling party, now serving in foreign service said to me, my friend, your intentions for this nation are very noble. However, you have a business to run and bills to pay. Now that there is a change of government, it’s an opportunity for you to make money cleverly. Basically, I needed to instruct the editorial team to report news and host shows that are perceived to be Government friendly as the only qualification to access advertising support. However, I struggled with that proposition. What I know about journalism was in direct conflict with this generous offer. A number of opportunities have thus passed by.
That incident reminded me about the trouble we had to go through to get started as a business during the PF regime. Firstly, it was difficult to access capital. Banks were not helpful. It took a foreign national from Kenya, who was employed by Madison Finance, to accept titles to my property and 3 months pay slips from my employer then Zamtel. That’s how we accessed the first K300,000 capital that started KBN TV.
To think that it took a foreign national to see value in our business proposition was eye opening in itself. When we needed to refinance, it was easy for FNB to buy the MFinance loan, paid them off and took possession of the property title deeds. FNB then paid me the balance after clearing the MFinance which we later used to reinvest into KBN TV.
Fearing FNB might grab the house and the channel if we didn’t pay the loan, I made a strategic exit from Zamtel and used my gratuity to clear the FNB loan and ensured that KBN TV remained debt free.
You can call it a smart move, but it was a gamble. I left a paying job to become an employer. This is where real lessons started from.
Two years into our operations, we were faced with the 2021 general elections. The then party in power PF, had the luxury of several media houses at its disposal and wouldn’t want anything to do with a new media outfit.
I recall securing the first high-level interview on my programme State of the Nation with a PF Cabinet Minister. I was hopeful with an election coming, we would get support from the ruling party and ECZ through adverts.
To my shock, the Minister sent a proxy to give me an offer to buy off KBN TV. At the very least, I expected some form of encouragement and government support, not an offer to be bought off. I politely declined the offer.
And so the 2021 elections came and went, there was no advertising support from the PF Government. Interestingly, as if to draw lessons, Prime TV had been closed at the time and so we found ourselves with new friends in the name of UPND as a party in opposition.
Because we hosted several UPND officials during the entire 2021 campaign period, we were labelled a UPND television. Ironically, even though we hosted countless UPND officials, the party never supported our young TV station not even with a single campaign advert. We picked up more lessons.
The moment UPND assumed power and had unfettered access to public media, we were no longer their priority and from nowhere, their supporters started peddling a narrative that we were a PF outfit. The reason being we chose to remain professional and continued as we do today, to hold them accountable, the same way we held the PF accountable.
BOARDROOM POLITICS OF STARVING MEDIA – A DEATH SENTENCE ON DEMOCRACY
The world over, democracy only thrives when the media is allowed to operate independently. But for a media house to operate optimally, it requires business support from industry.
However, where businesses themselves heavily depend on government favours for tax incentives, and other lucrative government deals, demons of politics have invaded the boardrooms too.
Any media house that is perceived anti government is instantly blacklisted from accessing any form of business support through advertising. Again, the idea is to whip you into submission using business as carrot.
The consequence is that media houses will only report what is deemed to be politically correct. I hear many people lament about the quality of Journalism, partly the answer lies in this unspoken reality.
We have some of the best journalists in Zambia but media owners are subjected to very unfavourable circumstances that force some of them to choose the easy route. Politics is so toxic that even boardroom decisions hinge on pleasing the political elite some times even when politicians haven’t said a word about a given media house. It’s fear of the unknown based on perception fuelled by invisible shadows of political demons.
Sadly, good citizens in the corporate world with good intentions and the purity of heart, dedicated to serving the nation have been caught up in the web of ugly political machinations. Even if they wanted to act otherwise, a toxic political system can’t allow them. They are always scared for their job.
During the just ended Agriculture and Commercial Show, I contacted an old colleague of mine, a top executive in one of the commercial banks. I said to him, can I send my team to come and cover your stand, without much thought, he agreed.
Later, he sent me a message that summed up the political capture of the private sector. “You can’t come, it’s very sensitive to my bosses,” he said.
A few days ago, I met an old colleague of mine, a very genuine and sincere guy. But I approached him aggressively because for the past 6 years, I couldn’t understand why a Company I worked for at a very senior level, could not support me with advertising. He just said “my brother, it’s politics.” I totally understood.
ACCESS TO CITIZEN’S EMPOWERMENT FUNDS
I had heard alot about some isolated reports that you have to be politically correct or aligned to access funding under the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC). This was the case during the PF and now much more during the UPND. About two years ago, I wanted to test these reports further to ensure I’m not believing hearsay and coming up with conclusions. I hired a consultant to put a business case together and submitted to CEEC. It never received any attention.
Either I didn’t have the right name, or not politically connected. Later, after hosting the Cabinet Minister close to CEEC supervision, I raised the matter with him and he asked me to share a copy of the proposal submitted to CEEC. To this day, nothing has come out that effort.
On the other hand, other citizens continue to access these public resources. Because of political patronage, cadres are failing to pay back their loans and this is at the expense of national development. Whether MMD, PF or UPND, you can’t use political power to stiffle economic growth.
We must introspect and come back to our senses and build a nation based on the viability of ideas not based on political patronage.
POLITICALLY MOTIVATED INTIMIDATION
Lastly, if the demons of politics fail to possess you through the above stages, they will come in the form of politically motivated intimidation. After the the 2021 elections, one of the most unusual things I encountered was to receive a letter from the Drug Enforcement Commission, demanding full disclosure of what each political party spent in advertising with us. I didn’t see the logic, so I resisted the request even though they never stopped knocking.
On 11th May, 2022, what I consider to be a
cowardly act of politically engineered intimation happened to us when purported “thieves” broke into our studios for what l believe was a futile attempt to try and force KBN to close. From 2022, this is 2025, the Police are still investigating and no arrests have been made. Check news report of the incident on this link:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18DpDypVhk/
On a daily basis, we receive incessant intimidation from cadres on our page and most recently on my own personal page threatening to incite the professional and autonomous IBA to find a cause to close KBN TV.
Most recently, Dr. Lawrence Mwelwa, a respected prolific writer, author, researcher and analyst, joined us as a resident Analyst on our Sunday’s Analysis Program.
Surprisingly, the morning following his debut appearance on the Analysis, he received an anonymous call threatening him to stop appearing on KBN TV’s Analysis Program, failure to which he risked a jail term for his dear wife, the Honourable Given Katuta, Member of Parliament for Chiengi who is facing some frivolous court case. The couple have remained resolute and Dr. Mwelwa continues to provide insights to the nation on the Analysis.
Having witnessed these and many first and accounts of how political toxicity is affecting our development and unity, I have chosen to start speaking out at an individual level as a citizen.
I have been contemplating that if we can’t fight the demons of politics from outside, one day, we will be forced to fight the demons from inside to bring sanity to politics.