ABOUT PESSIMISTS, OPTIMISTS AND REALISTS: A CASE OF FAILURE EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS
By Sean Tembo – PeP President
1. When Mr Hakainde Hichilema was elected President of the Republic of Zambia, l knew that he would fail to properly govern this nation, but l did not think he would fail so disastrously as he now has. You can call me any names that you wish, but please do not call me a pessimist, because I am not. In fact, l am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. To the contrary, l am a realist. I look at the facts presented before me and l extract what the most likely reality is, regardless of whether such possible reality paints a rosy or gloomy picture. In the case of the then Mr. Hakainde Hichilema, the facts that l was able to extract during my interactions with him while in opposition painted a picture that he was far from being the brilliant President that most Zambians expected him to be. But those facts also did not paint him to be a disastrous President that he has turned out to be.
2. In other words, l had expected Mr. Hakainde Hichilema’s presidency to be just average, nothing spectacular. No industrial revolution that Zambia is so much in need of. No entrepreneurial revolution that the nation is so much in need of. No significant agricultural revolution that would position us to feed the entire Africa. No economic revolution that would allow this nation to convert it’s huge economic potential into actual wealth for the benefit of our people. I did not expect anything spectacular from Mr. Hakainde Hichilema’s presidency. But l expected him to get the basics right, like any average President. I expected him to make sound negotiations with mining entities so that Zambia could get a fair share of value from the mining industry in terms of tax revenue, employment of our citizens in senior positions, giving business to our local suppliers and contractors and paying them on time, remitting gross forex proceeds of mineral sales back to Zambia so that we can prop up the Kwacha exchange rate and not just have a theoretical balance of payments position which shows a surplus and yet the Kwacha exchange rate is in a free fall.
3. I expected President Hakainde Hichilema to get basic things right like ensuring food security by reducing the cost of production of our staple food through investing in Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia so as to increase its capacity to produce all our fertilizer needs as the case was during KK’s time so that we can produce cheap fertilizer since we have all the required raw materials locally, and our farmers can produce cheap maize, so that our millers can produce cheap mealie meal. I expected President Hakainde Hichilema to ensure stability of key economic variables such as the exchange rate, inflation rate, prices of key economic inputs such as fuel etcetera. In my mind, l took it that these are basics that should be expected from an average President.
4. However, in the past two years that Mr. Hakainde Hichilema has been in office as President of the Republic of Zambia, his performance has been far below the expectations of the majority of the Zambian people. The people that put aside tribal and regional considerations and gave him a landslide victory with 2.8 million votes against his closest rival who only had 1.8 million. The people that expected Mr. Hakainde Hichilema to be their Moses, who would take them to the promised land. The land of milk and honey. But President Hakainde Hichilema has not only disappointed the majority of the citizens who had high hopes in him, his performance has fallen shot of those of us who had low expectations. Those of us who did not expect him to deliver spectacular development but did not expect his presidency to be a total disaster either.
5. Before we can talk about any other aspect of national development, the starting point is that our citizens need to eat and eat well. If you have a population that is malnourished, it hinders proper brain development meaning that the caliber of citizens that you will have in future are unlikely to have the necessary brain power to adequately contribute to national development. Therefore, a Government that is failing to adequately nourish it’s citizens with adequate food is laying a solid foundation for future poverty and underdevelopment. President Hakainde Hichilema’s agricultural policies in the past two years have not only been poor, but totally chaotic. I mean, how can a President of sound mind fail to distribute farming inputs for two consecutive farming seasons and is now poised to fair to deliver farming inputs for the third consecutive 2023/2024 farming season? And Mr. Hakainde Hichilema did not end at delivering low crop production despite good rains, he went further by exporting the little maize that had been produced to neighboring countries like D.R.C, on the argument that it is a profitable market. He is talking about profit when the Zambian people are talking about how to survive their hunger with a 25kg bag of mealie meal selling at an average price of K330 in Lusaka and K450 in most border towns.
6. Indeed, it is unlikely that this nation can ever make progress towards economic development when we are still grappling with bread and butter issues. When our economic variables are not stable and the Kwacha keeps swinging like a pendulum and prices of key production inputs such as fuel keep being revised on a monthly basis with no room for businesses to plan. We cannot achieve economic development when we are not collecting the requisite tax revenue from the mines because we have given them tax holidays under the lame argument that such “insentives” will make them increase copper production. We cannot achieve national development when millions of dollars are wasted every year sending senior Government officials and their relatives abroad for medical treatment and yet critical machinery at the Cancer Disease Hospital and other hospitals across the country are not working because Government has failed to remit a few thousand dollars to service providers. We cannot develop this nation when President Hakainde Hichilema is wasting millions of dollars booking private jets and sleeping in 7 star hotels across the globe and yet the majority of our youth are declined student loans so that they can pursue tertiary education. Indeed, President Hakainde Hichilema has exceeded all our expectations, not with his success, but with his failure.
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SET 20.09.2023