NEVER IN MY LIFE HAVE I EVER HEARD AN INDIVIDUAL SAY THEY MISLED A PRESIDENT AND REMAIN IN OFFICE, SAYS KALABA
He states:
I would like to thank you for taking the time to attend our Press Briefing on this 13th Day of January, 2023. This briefing follows the commitment I made to the people to set aside some time to discuss the ZESCO fiasco in more detail. As you may be aware, in a quest to look very effective and efficient, the Republican President made a date with the press to blow his own trumpet and made pronouncements about the success he had scored including solving the ZESCO power challenge. He further told the nation that Zambia was now exporting power for the first time.
Today’s briefing is intended to flag some of the falsehoods in His Excellency’s government and indeed the entire UPND that seem to take pride in feeding unsubstantiated stories to the citizens without any consideration to the decorum expected of the position of President.
I must admit that it was a challenge to even attribute a befitting theme to todays briefing, but for context, we shall seek to ask the question;
Is Bally’s Leadership of Dither or Compromise?
The current load shedding has highlighted serious weaknesses in the current administration’s leadership that are now too evident to ignore. This is even more apparent because the Republican President spent most of his years in opposition, and the early part of his Presidency, claiming that a lot of the challenges the country was facing were because of a lack of leadership. The recent admission by the ZESCO Board Chairman that they misled the President has further shown the extent of the problem. Never in my living years have I seen an individual admit that they misled the Head of State and remain in post. Despite his taking on of the blame, we know that the Chairman is far removed from the day-to-day operations of ZESCO, which begs the question, was he too misled by the management of ZESCO?
It is shocking that given the embarrassment that has befallen the President following his numerous comments, first on how he would end load shedding prior to being elected and second that he had ended it within 8 months of being in office, so many of the people who told him it was over remain in office. The list of people who could have misled the President is endless. The Minister of Energy, the Permanent Secretaries at Ministry of Energy, his advisers at State House and the entire ZESCO Senior Management who are ALL still in their positions. When one looks back regarding ZESCO, it seems the President has been misled for a long time. He claimed that Kafue Gorge Lower (KGL) had been abandoned in 2019 and his Government resuscitated it and claimed that the financial problems related to other Independent Power Producers had been resolved and yet this was far from the truth. The President even implied that they had now started exporting power which seemingly had never happened before until he got into office. This is either truly a lack of information or the President is a man who likes to reap where he did not sow. With all the intelligence and resources surrounding the President, where is he getting this information that is tarnishing his Presidency? The export of electricity did not start with his Presidency nor did it start during the PF regime, this is something that has been obtaining from the time Zambia signed the Power Sharing Agreement over 20 years ago.
The current power crisis leaves many questions unanswered. This problem and the possibility of load shedding was known by engineers early in 2022. Hydrology and demand forecasts are things that have been done by ZESCO for years. It would seem that individuals in the current Government were so desperate to claim that load shedding had ended that they ignored all the warning signs. The current water levels of the dam show serious recklessness on the part of those who manage the electrical system. The Kariba Dam was meant in part to provide storage of water to allow for continuous generation of electricity even in years when there was low rainfall. Given what is pertaining today, the Dam has now lost its storage capability as every year, the water that will flow into the dam will be used for generation in the current year and will in the foreseeable future, lead to load shedding annually.
To put this into perspective, in 2015 when ZESCO decided to load ‘manage’ leading to 8 hours of load shedding, the dam was just over 20% full. However, this time round, on January 1st 2023 when ZESCO announced that it would finally commence load shedding, the dam level was 0.83%, rising from a low of 0.77% on December 30th 2022. While the use of the water in the Zambezi River is not solely on ZESCO, this act of allowing it to get to this level without intervention is criminal. As stated earlier, this problem was known before and the assertions by the Board Chairman that he should have been more vigilant with his hydrologists implies that he was unaware and makes for very sad reading. The long 12-hour load shedding could have been averted by 2 to 3-hour periods starting mid-year.
In addition, earlier in the year 2022, the ZESCO Managing Director claimed that Zambia had a surplus of over 1000MW and was defended this week by the Board Chairman that at that time they were ‘sitting pretty’ shows a significant lack of understanding of electricity generation on the part of both senior officers. Energy experts were in shock when the ZESCO MD made such a claim as it was known that there was insufficient water to produce that amount of energy nor was the Kafue Gorge Lower project completed. Many watched the ZESCO MD gloat in front of the President at the meeting of Heads of Parastatals about how he had solved all of ZESCO’s problems and was the shining light at that meeting. Eight months on, it would appear that he lied his way through the gathering. One wonders why the President is failing to censure him. Is he a true embodiment of the extent of the president’s compromise that he seem to fail to take corrective action against him?
ZESCO is financially worse off today than it was a year ago and its staff numbers are significantly higher today than they were before President Hichilema assumed office. While some might argue that this has no direct bearing on generation, the reality is that it does. More money spent on human resource affects what is available in the purse to invest in new generation and reduces your ability to seek tariff increases based on efficiency. In its current form, ZESCO has no capacity to solve Zambia’s power problems as bankability for new projects will be impossible in the short to medium term.
The President has even gone further to constitute a taskforce comprised of the same people who have created this unprecedented level of load shedding. What will that achieve? I think it is basic logic that you can not solve a problem with the same mindset that created that problem. We have seen serious dither and delay in the last 16 months regarding projects that had been started in the previous regime for reasons that are unclear resulting in missed opportunities and ultimate cost escalation.
It is no secret that the President is now making voters wonder about his ability to make big decisions. As we continue to speak about individuals remaining in post, we are reminded that early in the President’s term, a Director General of a key institution was accused of sharing images that were against the law, the images were clear enough to make an easy deduction on who the person in the images was, alas the President has failed to take action and that person remains in post.
If we are to draw a parallel from the former President with his perceived love for fun and social engagement, he was however decisive in making the decision to drop one of his cabinet ministers when images emerged of him in a compromised manner. This President has however failed to take any action.
To add to the indecision, it is no secret that the Farmer Input Support Program (FISP) has been a disaster in the 2022/23 farming season with many areas still not having received inputs as of today. Again, everyone at Ministry of Agriculture and all those involved still remain in post. The Ministry of Health also continues to have its own share of problems with a Minister weakened by a potential corruption scandal and inadequate medication in hospitals and yet all we have seen is business as usual.
As we speak the country is faced with a possible food shortage and we have seen the price of mealie meal increase to a high of K217 to a 25KG of breakfast meal. The country is importing wheat for the first time in over 15 years. The drugs for treatment of Foot and Mouth disease and Contagious Bovine Plural Pneumonia are in short supply putting livestock farming at high risk. These and many more truly begs the question, what will it take for the President to act?
At this point, it is easy to deduce that the President is a very indecisive and compromised leader who cares less about the people of this country. It is apparent from his lack of action that he is all bark and no bite and that the Zambian people are in for a long remaining three years filled with incompetence at the heart of government.
While others have taken time to defend the President and allocate blame on those around him, we in the CFP are cognizant of the fact that the President is an appointing authority and therefore the people surrounding him are a reflection of himself or at the very least represent his aspirations and that will explain why most of them are still in post besides the market flaws in their performance and at worst even embarrassing the President to the point where all the funny memes (meems) today is making a mockery of the President.
President Hakainde must learn from the experience others had who paid the ultimate price for holding on to questionable people and their inability to let them go when the writings were on the wall.
Our Commitment is to the Citizens of Zambia.
Finally, I want to advise that the Citizens First is a progressive Party that does not believe in making empty promises to the Citizens but rather seeks to provide solutions that are transformational in nature. We are alive to the fact that empty rhetoric and baseless promises are what has led this country to be where it is today.
I would like to call upon the citizens of this country to start scrutinizing their leaders including those of us who are seeking to run for public office. If we had interrogated the current leadership enough and sought an explanation to the open statement of; “…he will fix it” we would have avoided the current situation we are faced with today. And if he fails to fix the challenges and keeps lumping the blame on the previous regime we shall certainly fix him through the ballot.
I also want to serve notice on the naysayers that the Citizens First is Not an opposition Party but a shadow government that is working on building and maintaining its state of readiness ahead of 2026. Ours is not to Oppose but to provide alternative solutions and answers to the challenges that the country is faced with.
Thank you and God Bless our Republic
Harry Kalaba
President
Citizens First.