UNIVERSITY of Zambia Development Studies lecturer Charity Musamba says Zambia has been building a ‘predatory’ and not a ‘developmental’ state.
In an article entitled Consequences of predatory leadership in Zambia, Dr Musamba said there was very little chance of Zambia attaining any useful level of development without bringing the relevance of a developmental state into consideration.
She said the concept “predatory” leadership had been used to understand those states whose regimes plunder public resources to a level that significantly compromises the well-being of citizens.
She said other analysts had equated such states to a “vampire”, pointing out that regimes in such states were predominantly driven by the interest to drain off society’s productive resources rather than pursue development.
“Historical examples in this regard have included regimes such as Mobuto Seseseko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), majority of the regimes in Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and recently, ZANU PF under Robert Mugabe to mention a few,” she said.
She said the total and extreme opposite of a predatory state was a “developmental” state.
Dr Musamba, who is a development studies lecturer at the University of Zambia, said based on recent global development history, “developmental” states were those countries that had exhibited capacity to pursue and achieve significant economic prosperity and social development simultaneously and that transformative change has been characterised by sustainable wealth redistribution – where the poor have become non-poor.
She said those countries, which were sometimes called the “East Asian Miracle” or “Newly Industrialized Countries” (NICs), or “East Asian Tigers” were classified using different codes.
Dr Musamba said with reference to Africa, that notion had been applied to countries such as Botswana, Mauritius and of recent, Rwanda.
“But how did these countries manage to get there and why has Zambia failed? Clear cut answer – Zambia has been building a ‘predatory’ and not a ‘developmental’ state,” she said.
Dr Musamba said there was an absence of a developmentally-oriented political elite.
She said Zambia lacks the presence of a development oriented leadership predominantly glued together by a powerful economic and political ideology on development.
“The group must be equipped with effective political knowledge and skills. This group is needed for stability, devising of functional state institutions, implementation of coherent development strategies and effective management of various politico-economic, external and domestic development alliances and interests,” Dr Musamba said. “These elites should be motivated to remain consistently developmental in their conduct. But in the case of Zambia, this layer of leadership is plagued by the lack of distinction between the public and private realms with some of our leaders now considering the state treasury as their own pocketbook. They are using the state as the gatekeeper or control point between business, political and social sources of resources. The State and development processes have been turned into mechanisms for dispensing patronage in order to retain power.”
She said there was absence of autonomous and effective bureaucracy.
Dr Musamba said public administration in Zambia lacked sufficient scope to take initiative and act authoritatively in pursuit of desired national development goals.
She said Zambia had failed to develop a bureaucracy that was embedded in society but at the same time autonomous from control of particularistic interests.
“In a developmental state, bureaucracies are characterised by rigorous entry standards, high degree of competence, meritocracy, professionalism, autonomy and insulation from manipulation, high sense of unity and identify as well as long term and stable careers. To the contrary, the public service in Zambia is rife with patronage and collusive relations, declining performance capacities and low levels of professionalism. Overtime, this has affected the level and quality of performance,” she said. “Zambia needs a bureaucracy that can maintain a healthy autonomy from personalistic control while preserving political stability. The bureaucracy condones pressures from populistic interest groups and powerful individuals that crave for state-based or populist payments – corrupt and illicit tendencies.”
Dr Musamba said there was an absence of a production oriented private sector.
She said in a developmental state set-up, these relations were based on a supportive production-investment-profit nexus.
“In fact, the State has the powers to ‘create’, ‘pick’ and ‘reward’ good performers and to ‘punish’ non-performers. But the State has to build strong and effective capacities to play this role. It also has to build long-term institutionalised alliances among powerful developmentally oriented political elites, financial and business capital. These are the conditions required to support and sustain economic productivity and growth,” she said.
She said there was an absence of a Performance- Oriented Governance System.
Dr Musamba said one of the key distinctive features of the developmental state lies in its ability to generate high levels of growth and more importantly ensuring that this growth results in the improvements of the living standards of the people.
She said this type of State does not make “trade-offs” between growth and equity but pursues the two simultaneously – commonly referred to as “growth with equity.”
“As such the transformation process in the developmental states has been characterised by a favorable pattern of income equality, low unemployment and the near elimination of grinding poverty. Zambia has been struggling to achieve these outcomes for decades largely because of its unrelenting pursuit of the infamous and unprofitable economic development approach of ‘seek ye’ first economic growth and other development imperatives such as human development ‘latter’,” said Dr Musamba.
“To make matters worse, ‘governance’ in Zambia has been reduced to elections and multiparty politics with imperatives such as public accountability, answerability, checks and balances, representativeness and participation tossed out of the window! Therefore, we need to accept that there is very little chance of Zambia attaining any useful level of development without bringing the relevance of a developmental state into consideration.”