THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MULUNGUSHI AND MATERO REFORMS
Comrades, fellow opposition leaders and citizens, and workers of Zambia,
Today, we must look back with clarity and ideological conviction at two of the most decisive moments in our nation’s post-independence history: the Mulungushi Reforms of 1968 and the Matero Reforms of 1969. For decades, neoliberal apologists and agents of foreign capital have sought to distort the legacy of these policies, painting them as economic missteps. As the Socialist Party, we reject that revisionism entirely.
Political independence without economic sovereignty is an empty shell. When Zambia attained flag independence in 1964, the commanding heights of our economy, our copper mines, our banks, our transport networks, and our retail sectors, remained firmly in the grip of foreign monopolies and colonial conglomerates. Our mineral wealth was being extracted to build European capitals while the Zambian worker remained impoverished in his own land.
The Mulungushi and Matero Reforms were bold, necessary, and patriotic interventions designed to correct this historical injustice. By acquiring majority state control in key industries through INDECO and taking a 51 per cent stake in the copper mines through MINDECO and ZIMCO, the leadership of that era rightly recognised that a nation’s natural resources must serve its people, not foreign shareholders.
It was through the direct mobilisation of this reclaimed wealth that Zambia built its foundational social infrastructure. The schools, hospitals, roads, and universities that educated and cared for generations of Zambians were funded because the state took control of our economic destiny. The creation of institutions like the Zambia National Commercial Bank (Zanaco) proved that Zambians could build and manage strategic national assets.
Furthermore, let us not deceive ourselves or allow ourselves to be deceived. We must resist the dishonest intellectual laziness that conflates the Mulungushi and Matero Reforms with the introduction of the One-Party State in 1972. Those economic reforms were enacted during Zambia’s First Republic, under a multiparty political dispensation. We must separate the noble project of economic nationalism from the political governance structures that came years later.
History proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that public ownership is not the exclusive domain of one-party states. Vibrant multiparty democracies across Western Europe, including Britain, France, and the Nordic nations, relied heavily on state-owned enterprises to rebuild their economies and secure public welfare after the Second World War.
Look at the rapid industrial transformation of Asia, which was anchored by strategic, well-managed state enterprises:
• Singapore built a global financial and industrial powerhouse through state-led holding companies like Temasek Holdings and world-class state corporations such as Singapore Airlines and PSA International.
• Malaysia retained sovereign control over its natural resources through Petronas (Petroliam Nasional Berhad) and drove national investment through Khazanah Nasional, turning mineral and energy wealth into modern infrastructure and industrial growth.
• South Korea transformed itself from an agrarian economy into an industrial giant by founding POSCO (Pohang Iron and Steel Company) as a state-owned enterprise and leveraging state-owned development banks like the Korea Development Bank (KDB) to build heavy manufacturing.
Indeed, state-led development is not even exclusive to socialist governments. Right here in our region, Apartheid South Africa built its industrial, energy, and steel infrastructure through massive state-owned corporations like Eskom, Iscor, and Sasol. Strategic state intervention is a universal tool of serious economic development utilised across ideological lines whenever a nation is determined to industrialise and protect its sovereignty.
To those who argue that Zambia’s reforms failed, we say: look at the true causes of the economic downturn of the late 1970s and 1980s. It was not the principle of public ownership that hurt Zambia, but rather external shocks, the collapse of global copper prices, the spike in oil prices, and the immense financial sacrifice Zambia made in supporting the liberation struggles of our brothers and sisters across Southern Africa. Worse still, the wholesale privatisation of the 1990s, dictated by the IMF and World Bank, dismantled our industrial base, destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs, and returned our wealth to foreign hands.
Today, as Zambia faces a severe cost-of-living crisis, high youth unemployment, and mounting debt, the lessons of Mulungushi and Matero are more urgent than ever. A Socialist Party government will not allow Zambia to remain a mere exporter of raw materials while our people wallow in poverty. We believe in strategic state participation within a vibrant democracy, value addition, and putting the wealth of this land back into the hands of the working class and the peasantry.
We salute the vision of economic self-determination that birthed the Mulungushi and Matero Reforms. The struggle for true economic liberation continues.
Aluta Continua!
For Justice, Equity, and Peace!
Fred M’membe
President of the
Socialist Party [Zambia]