HH DOING KADANSA ECONOMICS…no plan to move people from poverty
to wealth creators, says Nawakwi
By Kombe Chimpinde Mataka
FDD leader Edith Nawakwi says President Hakainde Hichilema is practicing nothing but ‘Kadansa economics’.
Nawakwi told The Mast that she had hoped that being young and fresh, President Hichilema would exhibit a proper master plan to get majority citizens out of poverty.
“The economics of Hakainde are upside down. We are just ploughing to start planting, he loads the fuel with another one to K3 on top. People are harvesting wheat, he is moving fuel prices like he is playing chase. A business person has a lifespan of 12 months to plan. You cannot go to the bank every after two days to ask for an overdraft. Look, the whole thing is Kadansa economics. Yaja yoyimilila mu street ushawuta (the kind where you are in the streets shouting)’ . There is nothing. If anyone touches energy, that person is anti-development because energy is to our economy what blood is to our bodies,” Nawakwi, who served as energy and finance minister in the Frederick Chiluba administration, said.
She said it was even worrying what economic situation tourists who were being attracted by waiving visa fees would find.
“You attract a tourist from Benjing, are they going to find food? Is there a waiver on cars for Zambians to ensure there is transport for our tourists? You have given incentives on Safari vehicles, how many people are in Safaris? Chiefs are saying we want concessions, he has taken them away from them. Can I get a hunting concession myself?” Nawakwi asked. “In Zambia there are no businesspeople. There are just hustlers and survivors. Insurance in this country is a nightmare and a scandal of the centuary. Try to bash your vehicle and try to claim insurance, you have to suffer and you want to attract someone from Beijing? When are we going to change the structure of Kalikiliki? What is the plan for kwa Goerge?”
She said the UPND government was entrenched in the colonial mentality which perceived Africans as labourers as opposed to owners of the means of production.
“There is nothing on how we can get a graduate of Mpika College of Agriculture or Monze or Mwekera or ZIAH to be an entrepreneur. This rhythm of ‘job, job’…tied to that is the new Kampompo (bread for miners) in the name Social Cash Transfer. When you get your K500 Social Cash Transfer, you are supposed to buy mealie meal, cabbage and cooking oil. You cannot even buy toilet paper. You cannot even save from it to build yourself a ventilated pit latrine. You are trapped. I don’t even know whether those on this programme qualify for the Farmer Input Support Programme because you are already receiving,” Nawakwi noted. “There is no plan to move people from poverty to wealth creators. I have no problem with us looking after the elderly. The state must look after them but I have great difficulty in putting an able-bodied adult on a hand-out. I would rather teach them how to fish. Most of the young people you see getting social transfer we can turn them in an army of entrepreneur by a stroke of a pen. And Hakainde’s kampompo is social cash transfer. I was thinking that now we have a young person with fresh brains, he will give us creative ways of how to create wealth but he is following the same way of colonising the mind of an African and making poverty the opium of the masses and it is dangerous.”
Nawakwi urged President Hichilema to borrow from Brazil’s Inacio Lula da Silva’s plans for development.
“I invite Hakainde to be a student of Lula who put a deliberate plan that every year, half a million Brazilians should move from poverty to middle income and he achieved that. He put a description that I want each Brazilian to have house, running water. He was getting them out of the sharks. Now here we simply need to say every year, we will get 300 young people from standing on the streets to being entrepreneurs and define how we should do it ,” She said. “They (government) are saying they investing in farming blocks. When you go back to KK we had farm blocks. Where have we gone? What have we achieved? The Mkushi Farm block, the Mukonchi Farm Block, we have had them. They were even better structured. We have the Mulli Coffee Scheme in Nakonde where you have people in one block. They are growing coffee. We have Mbesuma Ranch now. The whole point is you can’t do things a million times and it does not work.”
She said the US $300 million loan government wants to borrow and invest in farm blocks could get half a million Zambians into productive employment.
“…not just in farming but all spheres of our economy. How much are our labourers getting from these so-called investors whether they are Vedanta or what? We have been swindled for far too long. Look at Vedanta. Look at Glencore. How much money are they making and how much are they leaving on the Copperbelt? How do you want to follow the same useless model?” Nawakwi asked.
“This is purely an expansionary, consumption budget. We should have gone full out to push productive sectors. There are projects we can push to the extent that we will not need the useless IMF on our doorstep. There are crops like coffee, macadamia, cashew nuts, beans, honey. Rwanda a country that had come from war is selling macadamia on Alibaba.”
On CDF, Nawakwi said the government was clueless on how to actualise returns on it and that it would end up being a scandal.
“In fact this is going to be the scandal of the century because already the Minister of Local Government [Gary Nkombo] has gone to different constituencies to tell them ‘five per cent is your administrative cost. Come to Lusaka for a conference, take money from your administrative cost and send to Lusaka so that we can book your hotels’. The same minister says ‘we are going to buy you Land Cruisers. We have centralised the procurement’. You mean Nakonde cannot buy their own vehicle? Maybe they want Tuku Tukus,” said Nawakwi. “The mentality of ‘we must eat something’ is still prevalent. They can call their friends corrupt but this smacks of corruption and theft. The reason for corruption in this country is over centralisation. You don’t bloody tell me you are running from corruption, when you are leaking it.”