Hichilema and the UPND government: Zambia’s worst and most costly mistake, ever- Azwell Banda

Hichilema and the UPND government: Zambia’s worst and most costly mistake, ever

By Azwell Banda(The Mast)

With Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND government, Zambia has entered the period in which lies are the truth, unfulfilled promises are nothing, mass hunger, disease epidemics, unemployment and poverty are counted as economic growth, worsening and deepening our debt enslavement is celebrated as victory at “debt restructuring”, mediocrity in government is celebrated as “working hard”, constitutional vandalism and criminality by government win accolades for being “democratic”, millions of Zambians who cannot afford the price of a single meal are advised by government to buy solar panels and so on.

To clown it all, the mouth piece of White supremacist capital in South Africa, Business Day, names Hakainde Hichilema as of course among the “top best performing African leaders”. His Minister of Finance, Situmbeko Musokotwane, has also similarly been honoured, abroad. And yet more than 6,000,000 Zambians face acute hunger because liberalising trade in maize disappeared two years’ worth of maize in our strategic food reserves, via exports. Now Zambia is poised to import back possibly some of its own maize.

It is the almost revolutionary abandonment of our national sovereignty to Western powers, international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, as well as Western donors, using our mountain of debt, that Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND government have excelled, hence all the praise and accolades showered upon them, by the West. Make no mistake about this: a revolution is well under way in Zambia today, to reverse everything Zambia has stood for and achieved in its 60 years of independence, and become truly a fully-fledged neo-colony of the West.

Hakainde Hichilema and his Minister of Finance, and a few very close friends and business associates of theirs, and their White consultants, fully understand and know what they are doing to Zambia: irrevocably lock Zambia into the West, become the main rent, commissions, bribes and “equity partners” of Western and other global financial flows, into Zambia. To achieve this, the route they have chosen to “restructure” our debt is absolutely necessary and essential: the conditionalities include Zambia ceding its economic, financial, social and political sovereignty to the West, through the supervision of the IMF and the World bank, of course.

It does not matter that the “debt restructuring conditionalities” explode the prices of food, diesel, petrol, paraffin, transport, electricity, and many other vital domestic and economic ingredients thereby fatally wounding the main economic sector in Zambia – the informal economy. Hichilema and his friends are in a hurry to secure the full “debt restructuring process” and begin to see new capital flows into Zambia again, from which they are poised to feed ravenously.

It is none of their business the horrible painful suffering on the majority of Zambians their chosen route to restructure our debt has unleashed. To assuage their none existent guilty consciences, they have quickly shifted gear: in opposition, they promised everything to the majority of struggling, hungry, unemployed poor Zambians. Now they are preaching, using the Bible of White Racism against Africans, that Zambians are lazy, have wrong mindsets, drink too much, have too many babies, are incapable of exploiting the vast economic opportunities all around us, are too dependent on free things and government handouts and so on. Meanwhile they themselves are using government to become super rich.

Hakainde Hichilema and most of his educated colleagues in the UPND government know and understand that the global economic system is inherently unequal and exploitative, with wealthy capitalist nations dominating and exploiting poorer countries for their own benefit. Together with the presidents of Kenya and Ghana, Hichilema has published a statement saying exactly just this, in so many words, in The Economist. And yet all three of them are busy burying their countries deeper into the very system they know cannot resolve Africa’s development challenges. Why? These African elites in and out of government mint millions from selling Africa cheaply. Hichilema knows very well that the current global financial architecture compels, nay, actually forces, poor countries to borrow money from wealthy nations and international financial institutions to meet their development needs, in ways which create impossible-to- get-out cycles of debt dependency. Which is exactly the kind of enslaving “debt restructuring” Hichilema and his friends have, without parliamentary oversight, imposed on Zambia.

I maintain, just as other Zambians have done, that with the massive electoral victory – a protest vote by the hungry, unemployed and poor rural Zambians – Hakainde and the UPND got in the 2021 August elections, Hakainde and his friends in the UPND were given a mandate, among other things, to aggressively renegotiate our debt burden in order to reduce the already very high suffering and pain many Zambians were experiencing, and not to unleash upon them more torturous austerity, and sink us into deeper indebtedness.

There were many options for Hichilema and his friends including declaring some of the debt “odious” and, the pandemic was an act of God therefore making it impossible for some of the repayments to happen. More importantly, Hichilema and his friends needed to trust Zambia and Zambians, and route all major efforts to restructure our national debt by also simultaneously aggressively “nationalising” the Zambian economy: Zambian ownership of the major means of producing wealth is the only viable route to get Zambia out of its deep indebtedness and underdevelopment. The departing Patriotic Front government had already laid some foundations for this, in the mining sector.

We all know, no matter how well this is concealed in the fake rhetoric of “home grown” nonsense, the IMF and World Bank loans, like all capitalist and imperialist bank loans, always come with conditions attached, such as implementing neoliberal economic policies. These policies prioritise free market principles, privatisation, and deregulation, which often exacerbate hunger, unemployment, poverty and inequality in borrowing countries. The past two and half years of the UPND only term of office have firmly confirmed these dreadful facts.

All the talk about ramping up copper production and other minerals for export, largely by foreign mining companies are part of the debt restructuring conditionalities to facilitate resource extraction from Zambia by Western and their allied corporations, further enriching the West while exploiting our natural resources. We are witnesses to constitutional vandalism as Zambia loses shares and ownership, in mines, without parliamentary oversight. This is broad day light robbery, to facilitate sustaining us in our indebtedness, especially to the West.

The bulk of our debt, about 70 per cent, is held by Western institutions. I was not surprised that the British High Commissioner to Zambia was quick to congratulate the Zambian government and Hichilema over the announced deal with bondholders. Our debt is a mechanism through which our erstwhile racist former colonial master, Britain, continues to exert control over us, maintaining a ruthless neo-colonial relationship that benefits the West and Britain itself, at our expense.

If we are the acclaimed “democracy” that we have become because the UPND is government, why is our parliament nowhere near discussions on the entire debt restructuring, repayments, including interest payments, new durations for maturity, and so on? Why is parliament, like all of us ordinary citizens, fed only “deals” and “agreements”? Why is our future as a people, as a country, not being debated by our “representatives” in parliament? The IMF itself has said Zambia has not protected its national interests as well as it should have done, during the debt restructuring processes. Since when did the IMF become our “representative” in the debt restructuring processes?

Zambia will soon start paying the debt it has defaulted on. Why is everything so opaque that not a single member of parliament can easily explain what the full implication of all this are, to the entire country? Are we not an “open liberal democracy” in which our government is fully accountable to its people, who are the sovereign authority, through parliament? We cannot burden our future generations with debts we acquire now, default, and balloon the payments. A single person, the President, should never in any country have so much power as our President.

Many Zambians erroneously thought that Hakainde Hichilema’s experience in “business” would mean that he could negotiate a better debt restructuring deal, better deals with foreign money in mining, and so on. We are now schooled differently. Both in the mines and over the debt restructuring processes we have confirmation that Zambia is being sold out very cheaply, just to conclude the deals and enable inflows of new money into Zambia. The IMF itself, China, France and South Africa rejected the first “deal” with bondholders for failing to meet the requirement for “comparability” with official creditors. There is no proof that Zambia has again not been fleeced, this time round. Soon we shall learn the full impact of the “debt restructuring”. What is clear though, is that without full parliament approval and open negotiations, Zambia has been conned once again. There is a tiny minority of Zambians who have the capacity to benefit from the inflows of money which may now start to trickle in. The majority, however, must now brace themselves for even tougher times, as debt payments fall due, and start.

Hakainde Hichilema and his friends in the UPND and foreign advisers are waging open economic warfare on the majority of Zambians, for their own personal benefits. They are the worst and most costly dangerous mistake voters have ever made, in Zambia.

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