HH and the UPND government: stop mining in the Lower Zambezi!
By Azwell Banda,
Last Friday, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva decreed six new indigenous reserves, including a vast Amazon territory, in a move that also aims to protect critical rainforests from the unchecked exploitation that marked his predecessor’s administration, the world media reports.
Lula da Silva had made this promise and commitment, during election campaigns, to Brazil’s indigenous people – that he would do what he could to protect and preserve their habitats, and the Amazon forest. He still needs to do more. The decrees prohibit mining and other unregulated economic activities in the reserves, while preserving them for use by the indigenous people. This is how a principled politician behaves. Keeping a promise, sticking to his word, in government, Lula has not been seduced by the massive profits and mountains of money to be made in the indigenous forests, especially from large scale mining.
There are absolutely no major, earth shuttering national economic benefits which will accrue to Zambia, today, from the large-scale open pit mining, now expected to start this year, in the Lower Zambezi. Zambia stands poised, once more, to be betrayed by Hakainde Hichilema: when in opposition, Hakainde opposed, correctly, large scale mining activities in the Lower Zambezi. In government, typical of his cunning and lying ways, Hakainde Hichilema and his government are hiding behind “the rule of law”, as is usual their trick whenever a major conflict between their promises when in opposition, and possibilities of defending profits and making money, now that they are in government, arises.
The UPND, if they were a principled political party and seriously committed to a “Green Economy” (something no extreme right-wing, neo-colonial selfish parasitic government such as the UPND government, must be remotely associated with!), would, in the 20 months they have been in government, have cancelled the licence to mine in the Lower Zambezi. Both through Hakainde’s relevant cabinet ministers, or Hakainde himself as President of Zambia, overwhelming constitutional, legal, environmental, climate, and national economic grounds exist to cancel the mining licence, halt and stop the commencement of mining, in the Lower Zambezi.
I hold no brief for any tourism business in the lower Zambezi. I in fact positively despise “tourism” as a local employer. I am fully aware that the bulk of the money especially foreign tourists spend neither fills the pockets of Zambian workers in tourist businesses nor does it significantly boost our national revenues. From hotels, to the smallest tourist chalet, to the most lucrative safari hunting licence, I know that the least benefits actually accrue to local workers! Zambia is no exception from the scandalous low wages, brutal oppression and precarious jobs in the tourism sector. I am demanding that this treacherous betrayal by Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND government of allowing mining in the Lower Zambezi be halted, stopped, and the mining licence be cancelled because the damage to our natural environment and the cheap syphoning out of the country of our minerals in the Lower Zambezi, especially under the current pro mining, low tax regime UPND government, Zambia stands to lose both its minerals and precious ecosystem of the Lower Zambezi, for nothing, literally.
Nothing has changed between now, and when Hakainde Hichilema was in opposition, in terms of why Hakainde himself and the UPND opposed mining in the Lower Zambezi. Hakainde Hichilema himself understood this very well, that Zambia stood to lose a lot, including the irreversible and permanent damage to the Lower Zambezi ecosystem, well before his government put in place mining policies and a tax regime which rob Zambia more than they enrich foreign money, in mining.
Hakainde Hichilema and his Green Economy and Environment minister cannot hide behind the fake excuse that they will ensure that mining is done strictly according to ways that will protect the environment. It is impossible to do this.
From the day the courts gave Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND government the excuse to allow mining to go ahead, they have neither produced and published the ways by which mining will occur without destroying the Lower Zambezi ecosystem, nor have they published the details of the value Zambia stands to benefit from this act of their treachery. The assumption that Zambians are generally ignorant, do not read “complex” documents, and therefore government need not bother publishing information such as the details of the mining, Zambia’s benefits, and measures to protect the environment reeks of absolute contempt, for Zambians, by the UPND government. Zambia is pregnant with unemployed university degree holders in economics, accounts, business, environment, natural resources, geology, mining engineering, sociology, development, natural sciences, climate change, and many fields.
Many Zambians are aware of our history of mining and large foreign money, and the massive environmental damage Zambia has been left to deal with, after the expiry of mining. Zambia has permanent scars made by mining almost in all our provinces, but very prominent on the Copperbelt and Central Province. Our air, rivers and soils have suffered from mining pollution. Our communities where mining is taking place have never been properly and fully taken care of, let alone has their health been a primary concern, of the mines.
We are all too familiar with our poverty inflicted upon us, by our dependence on mining, even during the time when government was squeezing more value from mining than the UPND government ever will. Zambia is a perfect example of a country suffering from the “resource curse”: we are poor because we are rich in minerals.
Now, with the UPND in government, it is better actually to conserve our minerals by leaving them on and under the ground, for better positioned future Zambian generations, than to allow the UPND parcel out licences to extract our natural wealth and get it exported abroad, while Zambia receives peanuts, literally, and figuratively, from this wealth. Hakainde Hichilema and all his ministers know and understand what I am talking about: they opposed mining in the Lower Zambezi when they were in opposition, with their mining policies and tax regime; mining is not worthy destroying the Lower Zambezi!
It is perfectly possible, on the basis of Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND’s well known facts about their opposition to mining in the Lower Zambezi when they were in opposition, a scientific estimate of the damage to the Lower Zambezi by large scale open pit mining in or near the Lower Zambezi ecosystem, a calculation of the estimate and actual benefits accruing to Zambia from such mining, especially during the time of HH and the UPND in government, and any other related matters, to successfully prosecute HH and some of his ministers for breaching our Constitution and certain laws, which charge them to secure, protect and defend the collective interests of Zambia, which they have betrayed, by allowing mining in the Lower Zambezi.
More than at any time in our history as a young country, Zambia now needed a government genuinely rooted in, and committed, to protect, defend and advance the collective national interests of Zambians as a whole, rather than a government such as the UPND which clearly is advancing the interests of foreign money, especially in mining, even at the expense our precious ecosystems.
More than at any time in our history as a people and country, every adult Zambian today has a responsibility to watch carefully, monitor, protest and prevent any actions by the UPND government designed to cheaply pawn off our collective natural wealth. If we cannot do this for ourselves, we at least owe it to future Zambian generations, to secure today, their lives by preventing a wholesale and extremely cheat extraction of our natural wealth, for export, by foreign money.
It is infinitely, now, more valuable to Zambia, to halt and stop the large scale mining in the Lower Zambezi, than to allow it to go on. We would also need to examine very carefully the distribution of benefits from tourism and other ecosystem friendly economic activities taking place in the Lower Zambezi. We owe it to future Zambian generations to preserve some of our environments, and to keep our natural resources where they are. We have a duty to fight and stop those who are so greedy, selfish, and careless about our natural wealth they are ready and willing to pawn it all, for a song.
As for Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND government, they are on record opposing mining in the Lower Zambezi when they were in the opposition. Nothing has changed since then, apart from the fact that now in government, they have the power to stop and prevent mining in the Lower Zambezi. They will one day account, for their betrayal, and actions, over the Lower Zambezi.
Email: banda.azwell@gmail.com