HOW BILL 7 RISKS MAKING US BAD ANCESTORS- Dr Mwewa

GUEST ARTICLE: THE MATHEMATICS OF POWER: HOW BILL 7 RISKS MAKING US BAD ANCESTORS

by Dr Mwewa

Bill 7 is often sold as reform, but mathematics is stubborn. Numbers do not clap at rallies; they accumulate quietly and present the bill to our children with.

Each new Member of Parliament costs about K80,000 per month, or K960,000 per year. That is before sitting allowances, gratuity, fuel, security, and travel. Democracy is not cheap, but careless arithmetic is expensive.

Add five staff per MP. Even at a conservative K6,000 per staff member, that is K30,000 monthly, or K360,000 annually per MP. Representation multiplies bureaucracy before it multiplies service.

Office operations—rent, utilities, internet, fuel, stationery—rarely fall below K20,000 per month. That is another K240,000 per year per MP, just to keep the lights on and doors open.

Now add vehicles. At USD 80,000 per MP, one car alone exceeds USD 16 million if 200 MPs are considered. Converted, that is billions of kwacha driven before a single pothole is fixed.

Per MP, excluding cars and gratuity, the conservative annual bill easily crosses K1.5 million. Multiply that by expanded seats, then multiply again by five years. The sum stops being abstract and starts looking like a hospital wing that never got built.

Gratuity waits patiently at the end of the term, like a shadow debt. It does not forgive; it arrives in a lump sum, exactly when the Treasury is weakest and excuses are loudest.

Now place these numbers next to deferred loans, postponed repayments, and renegotiated obligations. Deferral is not forgiveness; it is inheritance. What we delay today, our children will service tomorrow.

African wisdom warns us: a bad ancestor is one who eats the seed and leaves the shell for the unborn. Bill 7 risks turning leadership into consumption and posterity into collateral.

Philosophy asks a harder question: are we governing for efficiency, or engineering comfort for those already seated? Mathematics answers without emotion—this comfort is financed by future restraint.

Theology reminds us that stewardship is judgment-sensitive. Scripture does not condemn power; it condemns waste, pride, and blindness to consequence. الحساب comes even when applause is loud.

History is cruel to leaders who confuse urgency with wisdom. Nations rarely collapse from rebellion; they suffocate under compounded decisions that looked small at inception.

If Bill 7 passes without fiscal honesty, Zambia may gain seats but lose moral standing. We will have spoken loudly today and forced tomorrow to whisper in debt.

One day, our children will audit us. They will not ask how clever our arguments were. They will ask why, knowing the numbers, we still chose to become bad ancestors.