IT IS DARKEST BEFORE DAWN – THE BUILDING OF A BETTER ZAMBIA
By Dr. Martin Mushumba
Good morning fellow citizens of this beautiful republic🙏🏽
We take note of the tough times being experienced in our economy. His Excellency President Hakainde Hichilema did not hide the fact that we were going through difficult times when he mentioned that even him was aware of this situation. He mentioned this publicly as he addressed our citizens in Mandevu Constituency.
The cost of living is a menace to all of us. Suffice to mention that we all buy from the same shops. We all eat the same food. We all share our gains and losses.
However, we are comforted by the fact that there are several recovery strategies in place as outlined by the government. There are strategies on mealie meal price stabilisation and also fuel prices stabilisation. These are lasting solutions that will bring down the prices of mealie-meal and lower the cost of living in the country.
We are all frustrated because some of these good strategies are not achievable in a day. These are not strategies that will just massage the problem and come back to haunt us in a few months’ time. Your government has gone for strategies that represent the long-term solutions to our current problem. We all know that even if it can be relieving for a minute, covering oneself with the palm when one has diarrhoea does not provide a sustainable solution to send one into celebration. Therefore, it is worth enduring the pain as we all await the sustainable benefits of the long term strategies.
Without a doubt, it is clear to all of us that it hasn’t been easy to recover from a collapsed economy and still manage to provide for social programmes such as health, agriculture, free education, and social support schemes such as Social Cash Transfer, in the manner the New Dawn Government has been able to.
Colleagues, notwithstanding the inherited economic challenges such as high inflation, unstable currency exchange rate, and unsustainable debt burden, many other public services have had to be provided to keep the country going.
Colleagues, in the midst of depleted financial resources, your new government still managed to build roads, build bridges, build schools and health centres, pay retirees, pay contractors, buy drugs for hospitals, and also employ thousands of our brothers and sisters in the civil service. Your government still had to electrify the rural areas, invest in power generation to end loadshedding and support families hit by various disasters around the country.
Colleagues, even with depleted coffers, your government had to consistently provide funding to grant aided government institutions and ensure that it pays salaries to public service workers on time. Your government had to still mobilise resources to fight corruption and support the decentralisation policy in order to ensure that you get value for your money.
Besides, even in the face of depleted financial resources, your government still managed to increase CDF and ensure that it was fully disbursed to all constituencies in order to accelerate development across the country.
Colleagues, it doesn’t end there! Your government also has had to service the huge debt burden inherited from the Patriotic Front (PF) regime.
Countrymen and women, it is important to be alive to the fact that the New Dawn Government has proved itself against very difficult times. It has shown its resilience by demonstrating that it can actually rise over and above such a challenging transition. Your government has passed the test as it had successfully assumed responsibilities of revamping the depleted public coffers, meeting public demand for services, and servicing debt obligations created by the PF regime.
Those who have lived long enough are aware that such recovery times are always difficult. Experience will remind all of us that in the attempted recovery phase of the MMD of President Frederick J.T. Chiluba, the citizens were asked to make sacrifices by tightening their belts as the economy was harsh. This period was characterised by job losses and privatisation of the public enterprises in order to downsize the public service as a way of reducing the cost of running government. Citizens had to contend with the new norm of paying for health and education services.
Similarly, the MMD recovery phase of President Levy. P. Mwanawasa that culminated in debt cancellation was equally not an easy one. The citizens had to endure long spells of employment and wage free. The contractors had to suffer as government expenditure constricted. Several taxes were introduced, and many subsidies were abolished to reduce government expenditure.
Colleagues, we are not preachermen to borrow from the Holy Bible in order to remind ourselves how the children of Israel had to endure the difficult times on their historic journey to the promised land.
Dear countrymen and women, we are not in evangelism for us to compare President Hichilema to Moses as he faces the blame from the Zambians during the transition period in which he is leading them out of the economic mess of the PF.
Nonetheless, we shall put it plain and simple: it is darkest before dawn!
Happy Sabbath 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
The author is a Public Policy Analyst