For Hakainde Hichilema, ‘government’ is ‘business, serious business’
By Azwell Banda,
I steeled myself for the necessary mental discipline required to suffer through Hakainde Hichilema’s ‘End of Year Press Conference’ on Tuesday the 20th of December 2022.
I was rewarded with powerful insights into the soul of Hakainde Hichilema. Ultimately, it all came down to this: Hakainde Hichilema understands and practices politics as ‘business’. He is a ‘businessman’ pursuing business using politics as a business tool, that’s all.
It all makes perfect and very logical sense. A “businessman” engages in business to make money, to accumulate wealth for himself. He is forever looking for opportunities to make money by whatever means available. He makes money to accumulate money as an end in itself. Money is all important, it is everything. A businessman knows that to accumulate money he must spend as little as possible, save, avoid costs, and always act in ways that grow his money. A good businessman is not emotional; he is not moved by the suffering of anybody. A businessman is forever looking for ways to make money, for himself. He dreams about money. He thinks about money. He talks about money, all the time, He even sings for, and about money. He is passionately obsessed with money. Where he cannot see, make and accumulate money, it is a useless place. His whole life is driven by the single minded pursuit, nay, a pathological craving, for money. What is not reducible to money has no value, no meaning, and therefore, it is useless or a cost.
I observed and listened extremely carefully to the underlying motivations, emotions, passions, and deep psychic cravings, in everything Hakainde Hichilema said and did in his long monologue last Tuesday afternoon. I paid particular attention to his voice, breathing, body language, facial expressions and emotional displays every time he spoke especially about money, debt, and of course the Patriotic Front. As he spoke, both before and during the question and answer session, once I tapped into his emotional and psychic relationship to money, all of Hakainde Hichilema’s words, false promises, lies, political behaviour and actions simply fell into perfect order: they are all about one thing, and one thing only: money, and how to find and accumulate money!
It all comes together, it is so simple I am ashamed of myself, for not appreciating, fully, the significance of all this, about HH. Let me apply my findings to some of the key happenings in Zambia today. Let us look at the government health system. Parliament has confirmed that our government hospitals, clinics and health centres are dangerously starved of medicines and other health products they need to serve Zambians and therefore save lives. Parliament has in fact recommended urgent interventions to ensure the medical supplies missing in our public health system are made available.
The UPND has instead defended themselves, and blamed the PF for the pathetic state of our government health system. Government money is available to carry out, with speed, the remedial measures necessary to ensure that medical supplies missing in our hospitals needed to save lives are urgently procured and made available. Of the several important variables at play here are millions of hungry, malnourished poor Zambian patients who rely on government health facilities, the Ministry of Health administration and related state health agencies, Zambian and foreign suppliers of medical supplies, and manufacturers. Hakainde Hichilema is singularly focused on the money part of this complex scenario. If the money cannot move in ways to satisfy businessman HH, medical supplies will not be made available in our government health facilities. We know this means in order to get the money side of things right for HH, health facilities are starved of medical supplies, some patients have died, and more will die: because necessary medical supplies are not adequately available in our government health facilities, countrywide.
Take the Farmers Input Support Programme, FSIP. Huge amounts of money were budgeted for and made available to procure and deliver these inputs. This year FISP is a disaster because the money side was not sorted out to Hakainde Hichilema’s satisfaction. He has in fact said interventions were made to this effect, to satisfy him; even if it meant delivery would not take place in some parts of the country, or would be irreparably delayed. The key parts to this crisis are millions of our rural population among whom many depend on FISP, the rest of the country that needs the cheap food these rural farmers produce, government and of course government money.
For HH, unless the money part of this crisis was sorted out to his satisfaction, no movement would take place, even if irreparable damage would be done to rural farming for this farming season, and the inevitable increased hunger, malnutrition and possible deaths arising from this. National food security takes a back seat, until the management of government money is in a manner that pleases businessman HH. This attitude is also present over exports of food from Zambia: not only have export duties been done away with from several of our food exports, but there is not even a whisper of halting food exports, now, in the face of the food disaster next year. We are told agriculture is a business.
Of course we all know the lies about cheap fuel. Fuel has since become too expensive for many Zambians. The price of fuel is now a monthly rotary. Besides the exponential rise in the connection fees, we must expect the price of electricity to exponentially shoot up next year. It is unpleasing to businessmen that Zambians apparently consume subsidised electricity. This is not good for the electricity businessmen in and outside Zambia. We must buy electricity at ‘cost reflective tariffs’, whatever the employment and income status of most Zambians may be.
Now, all governments of the world understand that fuels and electricity are universal inputs into all domestic and economic activities. Governments influence, and work to control the supply, demand and prices of these vital inputs in the life of any country. The security of the state is directly dependent on how well any government performs these functions. This means no state can claim real social and economic sovereignty over its territory if it cannot assure constant, steady, affordable access for its citizens and economy, to fuels and electricity. For HH, these things like “sovereignty”, “state security” and so on, are secondary to “money”: to pursue his debt restructuring programme with the IMF in order to open the flood gates of foreign money into Zambia. HH actually perilously ignores the significance to our state and economy of affordable fuels and electricity!
Amazingly, in the press conference on Tuesday HH gave everybody a little lecture on the need for Zambia to maintain its share of the “electricity market” by not terminating the exports of electricity, even as Zambia’s economy may sink deeper into the combination of recession and stagnation it is suffering from, and some Zambians may die especially if hospitals are load shaded when they must be carrying out emergency operations. It is reckless to demand terminating exports of electricity without first simultaneously appreciating the human costs to both the exporting and importing country, and the long term political and other relationships this would impact. It is the singular pathological focus on markets and money, and the relegation of other perhaps even more important variables that shocked me, in HH’s comments on this matter of Zambia’s export of electricity, when we have a deficit. We are all aware of the favourable deals being cooked up for the foreign mining companies. HH, in his businessman head, is seeing visions of unimaginable massive amounts money flowing, and opportunities to capture some of this money, as vast quantities of our minerals are mined by foreign companies. He is fixated on the money only, not on Zambia and what this loss of our minerals will do to our environments and future generations’ needs.
All his rumblings about there being no competition in Zambia’s relationships especially between the US and China dissolve into smoke when one considers how, since HH became President, he has related to the US and the West. He actually took some prodding to finally start talking to China, even over the debt restructuring programme. There is a “Cold World War” going on, in case HH thinks we are all blind to the hard dangerous realities of our times. He is a pawn of the US and the West. As a businessman, he sees more money from these, than from the East.
Every businessman dreams, thinks, plans, talks money, lives for money; for himself. This is the iron rule of “businessmen”. “Businessmen” as unlike “captains of industry” are essentially traders, dealers, hustlers of all kinds: they are marketers of their side of the deal, for themselves. Lies are essential to sell the deal. We should all know this. This inevitably makes them liars and, quite frankly, usually con artists too. Zambia is just fast waking up to this reality, about HH and his UPND. It is now absolutely important for HH to make public his business interests. Government, you see, is big business, big money.
Comments to: banda.azwell@gmail.com.