By Gautama Nyerere
Ten years ago I was in my office, crestfallen wondering what had just happened. Michael Sata had just been elected President and apart from one other workmate there was wild jubilation all around me.
In fact I watched as Managing Director, my employees give themselves a day off and join the celebrations outdoors. I couldn’t understand it. How could this happen?
We were trading five (5) years of consistent growth trajectory, our economy being lauded as one of the best in Africa, for the unknown, for wild promises?
And the first few years of Presidents presidency did not convince me either.
Sudden declarations of districts, shock announcements of roads construction and airports being built. This was madness. How could we do all this and how could we pay for it? I remained unconvinced and given by the good education I had by Zambian standards and the business I was in, I was a firm believer in the Bretton Woods hard- nosed fiscal policies, libralization and believed that they were the only solution for economic growth.
But, I found myself more and more alone. There was a populace that applauded and seemed to buy into the PFs policy of economic transformation.
I began to have a change of heart round about 2015.
I began taking my daughter to boarding school to Katete. It is then I realized the scale of PFs ambition. Year on Year roads were being expanded and built, urban Katete town changing, clinics replaced with hospitals. Change everyday and change everywhere.
But more importantly I could see the seeds of commerce. A citizenry that seemed to sense the opportunity and set up businesses along the new roads, renovated their places or set up pharmarcies near the new hospitals.
They did not get hand out or grants, they saw the roads and infrastructure and when government got out of the way got on with it.
This spirit of initiative, of grasping the opportunity is what enthused me the most. It brought me back to the day at the office wondering why these DULL Zambians could ignore a history of fiscal prudence and support the unknown.
Now unlike many, I do not see the privatization era as a complete era. I believe for that period of time and how it has transformed our economic foundation, overall it was the right decision. However, privatization had its failures.
One of its key failures was the party in powers over adherence to conditions placed by donors and funders and particularly the naïve assumption that corporate entities that purchased companies would play fair and PAY TAXES.
We all know how that turned out and the friction we had for example with the mines just to extract a meagre 3% owned to us. For further reading on mines practices please read past Action Aids reports on tax avoidance and transfer pricing.
This impeded MMDs government to make meaningful transformations in peoples lives, to build schools, more roads, clinics. AND this is what got them out of power-nothing else.
Whilst we were scoring high marks with the donors in terms of fiscal policy and economic management, the Average Man felt left behind. For 2 decades, the citizenry made the sacrifices demanded of them but had very little to show for it. Same old schools, same distant clinics. They felt betrayed, and voted for PF.
This lesson must have left a very strong impression on Sata. I think from my perspective, a realization was made that economic participation could no longer be for the few but the many. Zambia’s world would no longer revolve around the line of rail, we could not continue to be an import based country and we certainly could not allow our economic destiny to be dictated by out side forces.
We had to make the decision and do what we needed to do. Open up Zambia, NOT FOR THE FEW, BUT FOR THE MANY.
Given the fiscal constraints we had, and the inevitable backlash that would come from the corporate world, donors and importantly the general public- which PF may well still pay for in this election they still went ahead with their plans.
You can accuse PF of many things but thing you cannot accuse them is lacking balls. It takes balls to transform the country in the manner that they have. SO MUCH SO THAT POLITICAL NARRATIVE HAS CHANGED.
There is no manifesto that talks about building roads, they say they will build them cheaper, no manifesto that talks about building hospitals but providing medicine in the hospitals, no manifesto that talks about school, but employing teachers in work in the schools.
What does all this change mean? It means in the short, medium and long term MORE Zambians will have the opportunity to start and run businesses, more students churned out, more university graduates…the list goes on and on.
A young man from Rufunsa who wants to start a restaurant wont migrate to Lusaka to start his business, commerce will spring up around him, civil servants will eat at his restuarant. A parent from Luapula will not have to consider the cost of taking an achieving child to UNZA but will consider Kapasa Makasa University.
An entrepreneur will seek to build a lodge in Serenje because of burgeoning traffic and ease of access for farming and mining that accrues in that region. This WAS NOT possible before and with real and meaningful investment a platform for NATIONAL investment has been made.
For me this is an ideological shift, from a government that follows the Bretton Institute playbook that waits for incremental growth or we follow the example of Developmental Economies like the Asian Tigers where govt plays a visible role in spurring growth countrywide.
And examples abound even in the west where economies have been transformed through government intervention. FDR’S New Deal, and the UKs Clement Attlee’s labour government after WW2.
I could bet on myself and vote for immediate gratification. I choose the future and my children.