Socialist Party Zambia

Mr Moise Katumbi’s presidential campaign trail Featured

October 26, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Mr Moise Katumbi’s presidential campaign in Eastern, Central, Northern and Katanga regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Since the assassination of Patrice Lumumba the DRC has not had a leadership with a real vision for the DRC’s future, the competence and ability to execute the vision, and the character needed to ensure the realisation of the vision with sound judgment, integrity, and equity.

There’s urgent need to break from the DRC’s past patterns of poor leadership and governance. A clear and practical vision for the country’s future must be articulated and implemented. But this requires concerted effort from a new and energised leadership. This type of leadership should come from the Congolese people – both those living in the country and those who are part of its far-flung diaspora.

Sixty three (63) years after gaining its independence from Belgium, the DRC remains plagued by continuing governance challenges, corruption, insecurity, and widespread poverty.

State institutions are generally weak, and efforts to bring lasting peace and security have so far produced mixed results. While the western part of the country enjoys relative calm, violent conflict persists in much of the eastern DRC, perpetrated by armed militias, both domestic and foreign sponsored. Much of the instability and insecurity in the DRC is related to the mismanagement and plunder of the country’s natural resources.

That is why the coming DRC parliamentary and presidential elections in December will amount to nothing if they don’t help improve the quality of the country’s leadership.

And it will take concerted commitment from the Congolese, both inside and outside the DRC to implement and help the country choose the best possible leadership among those contesting the elections. The DRC needs a visionary, competent, and virtuous cadre of individuals who can lift up the rest

of the Congolese population through sound economic development policies and practices, adequate social services, and strong state institutions, leading to the establishment of a peaceful, just, secure, lawful, and orderly society.

We hold a very strong belief that among the contestants for DRC presidency, Mr Moise Chapwe Katumbi stands out. With the very limited possibilities that were there Mr Katumbi was able to bring in many areas of human endeavour, order, sanity, growth and development in Katanga when he served as governor.

We believe that armed with this extraordinary record, if Mr Katumbi wins the elections, he will help stabilise the DRC and give its people an opportunity to build a more just, fair, humane and peaceful country. But he will need the support of all DRC citizens of goodwill and our solidarity as neighbours.

We wish Mr Katumbi and Ensemble pour la Republique (Together for the Republic) victory in the December 20, 2023 polls!

Fred M’membe

Hichilema and his govt’s contradictions on maize Featured

October 9, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Listening to what the Minister of Commerce was saying on Diamond TV’s Costa show triggered a thought in my mind. It revealed very serious contradictions about Mr Hakainde Hichilema and his government’s pronouncements on maize.

So the government is saying 95 percent of the maize is produced by peasant farmers, who use either hoe- or ox-driven methods. He also alluded to the high maize price that will motivate farmers to grow more maize.

So one expects that if farmers are going to grow more maize then it follows that they will need more inputs like fertilizer than they did last season. Consequently, one expects that the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP), as an example in terms of fertilizers to be used this coming season, will be more than the previous season.

But we have observed that FISP support to farmers is the same as in the previous farming season. So, there are a number of contradictions here.

If we expect more production, we expect increased consumption of inputs and an increased amount of fertilizer to FISP recipients. But the number of FISP recipients has reduced and the fertilizer supply has remained the same, be it six or eight bags. So where will the additional production come from?

Are we expecting new entrants who will provide their own inputs at their own expense? Are we expecting increased participation by commercial farmers while at the same time the government is saying 95 percent of maize production is by peasant farmers? Or we will end up with same or less production and blame it on El Nino as part of the mingalato?

Only time will tell!

Out of interest, we wish to know how much of our total maize production comes from FISP recipients? How much does FISP cost the government? How many hectares of land do FISP recipients use?

By the government answering these questions we will be able to measure the productive efficiency of FISP.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

Hichilema, state house and defenders of gay rights Featured

October 8, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

We would like to counsel Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s newly installed mouthpiece, Mr Cornelius Mweetwa that State House is deeply anchored with gays and defenders, protectors and promoters of gay rights.

We say this as a reminder to Mr Mweetwa and his desperate UPND league, who think they can use us to spit malice and hate in order to talk their way out of the present social, political and economic mess they find themselves in. We know they are desperate and worried about their loss of popularity countrywide but this should not put them on a senseless path of malice and hate towards political competitors like ourselves.

We also know that they’re lost and in disarray because quite frankly, they don’t have solutions to the numerous problems they are currently faced with. Their lies, deception and crookedness have boomeranged and their credibility and acceptability in the eyes of the general populace is at its lowest.

Mr Hichilema and his corrupt puppet regime have been weighed against their own words and actions, and they have been exposed as a bunch of pretentious, dangerous and greedy coward politicians. And they will not solve anything by being malicious, evil and hateful to anyone, especially if those they’re trying to paint black are not anywhere near what they’re alleging them to be. Their sadistic, evil and malicious intentions will not work.

We therefore, find it unacceptable and unwise for Mr Hichilema through his new spokesperson to make reckless and silly insinuations about the issue of LGBTQI and gay rights.

We have stated before and we shall state again that at no time have I as an individual or we collectively as the Socialist Party Zambia supported LGBTQI, gay practices.

And that remains our individual and collective position. That is the position of the great majority of our people, our religious teachings, our cultural practices and of our national laws. The desperation by Mr Hichilema and his panicking minions like Mr Mweetwa to paint me, us black on these issues and sometimes pushing contrary words in our mouths is malicious, mischievous and won’t do.

If Mr Mweetwa thinks he can launch himself in his new designation by replicating discredited scripts from Mr Hichilema’s rogue guerrilla channels – Zambian Watchdog and Koswe – which are managed by the State House media team to spread hate speech and malice then we feel very sorry for him because he will turn out to be ignorant, dishonest and worse than we anticipated.

Of course, we know he is not the finest of brains to execute his new assignment as Mr Hichilema’s lead attack dog but we also didn’t think he will be this worse off and dull than his predecessor.

Nonetheless, if Mr Mweetwa and the UPND really want to know who is dealing with defenders, protectors and promoters of gay rights, they should start with Mr Hichilema’s State House.

This regime and State House in particular’s association with gays and defenders, protectors and promoters of gay rights are not a secret. No wonder, known gay rights ambassadors like Mr Tony Blair – the former British Prime Minister, are frequenting Zambia today like it’s their backyard.

On September 29, 2021, Mr Hichilema hosted Mr Blair at State House. Mr Hichilema held talks with Mr Blair on the possible collaboration between Zambia and the Tony Blair Institute for global change.

Mr Hichilema said the institute is doing commendable work and hopes it can assist Zambia.

Mr Blair said his institute stands ready to help the new dawn administration.

Mr Blair has been recognised as one of the top gay icons of the past three decades, along with figures such as Boy George, Sir Ian McKellen and Barbra Streisand. In fact, Gay Times said Blair’s status as an ambassador of gay rights was undeniable.

Mr Blair, as British prime minister, introduced laws recognising trans people, civil partnerships, banned employers from sacking employees because of who they love and made homophobia a hate crime. And just last week, Mr Blair was back in Zambia, hosted and celebrated by Mr Hichilema and his team.

Mr Joe Biden, on May 4, 2012 told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ anchor David Gregory: ‘I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. Who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love? And that’s what people are finding out is what all marriages, at their root, are about, whether they’re marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals.’

This is the President of United States today, the current occupant of the White House. And early in his presidency Mr Hichilema was a guest at the White House – something they were very proud of, were boasting about!

On June 23, 2023, Mr Hichilema visited European Union Parliament in Brussels and addressed it. Gay rights in the European Union are protected under the European Union’s (EU) treaties and law. Same-sex sexual activity is legal in all EU states and discrimination in employment has been banned since 2000.

The Treaty on European Union, in its last version as updated by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 and in force as of 2009, makes the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union legally binding for the member state of the European Union and the European Union itself. In turn, Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union includes an anti-discrimination provision that states that ‘any discrimination based on any ground such as […] sexual orientation shall be prohibited.’

Furthermore, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union provides in Articles 10 that the European Union has a positive duty to combat discrimination (among other things) on the grounds of sexual orientation and provides in Article 19 ways for the Council and the European Parliament to actively propose pass legislation to do so. These provisions were enacted by the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999.

In June 2010, the Council of the European Union adopted a non-binding toolkit to promote LGBT people’s human rights. In June 2013, the Council upgraded it to binding LGBTI Guidelines instructing EU diplomats around the world to defend the human rights of LGBTI people.

And for the first time in this country and under Mr Hichilema’s presidency, in May 2022, we saw some EU embassies flying gay pride flags in support and commitment to gay rights on Zambian soil.

Then also the UPND is a member of the African Liberal Network (ALN), which also is a member of the Liberal International (LI). And LI Human Rights Committee Bulletin 4th Edition – LGBTI Rights states:

“In the year since Liberal International launched its Human Rights Bulletin, the final edition of the publication for 2015 – which has attracted contributions from senior ministers, UN diplomats, and prominent activists – has been released, with a focus in this edition on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights.

Contributors from Africa, Asia, and Latin America have written and been interviewed about their experiences in fighting for a cause at the heart of all liberals – equality. In this fourth edition of the Bulletin, politicians, activists, and advisors offered insights and practical advice for overcoming the challenges of standing up for minority groups in countries and across continents.

Writing about the landmark human rights manifesto for Africa, adopted in 2014 by member parties of LI cooperating organisation, Africa Liberal Network (ALN), ALN vice-president Rosemary Machua, of the Kenyan liberals, ODM (LI member), emphasised the importance of having a ‘human rights framework for Africa, by Africans’. The fact that sexual orientation is included in the Declaration is a tremendous achievement for African liberals. It firmly entrenches our view that LGBTI rights are important, recognized, and above all that they are human rights, added Mrs. Machua.

These are views from the organisations to which the UPND belongs.

Further, before going on a rampage spilling senseless malice and hate towards innocent citizens, let Mr Mweetwa ask himself why the Church and other critical voices rose in unison just a few weeks ago to reject the appointment of Mr Jean Mafart, an openly gay man whose male husband is a convicted drug trafficker, as French Ambassador accredited to Zambia.

For the first time in history, a foreign government decided to send an individual to Zambia whose own lifestyle was against our laws, customs and culture. The reason why all this is happening now is simple, Mr Hichilema’s friends and corroborators in Europe and the US know that this regime is receptive and supportive of gay rights and activities.

So before pointing an accusing finger at innocent citizens, Mr Mweetwa must know that this regime is regarded to be not sincere enough to protect our Christian values and traditions as a country. The Zambian people are aware of the UPND’s hidden agenda, identity and ideological beliefs. And they will not look any better or become believable by scandalizing us.

Let Mr Hichilema and Mr Mweetwa address his government’s proven links with LGBTQI networks and people like Mr Blair and Mr Biden before being malicious and dishonest in their failed attempts to defend this corrupt, divisive and untrustworthy government.

We reiterate that if Mr Mweetwa wants to know who is dealing with gays and defenders, protectors and promoters of gay rights, State House will be a good starting point because they’re there and working with them.

This is the problem with malice, it boomerangs. And whoever digs a pit of inequity, will definitely fall in it.

And when it comes to allegations of being involved in gay activities, at least two names constantly come up from State House. Again, we emphasize that if the UPND really want to know who is involved with gay activities and issues in this country they should start with themselves as a party and State House.

On that basis, we throw back the challenge to Mr Mweetwa that if there is a party that needs to come out clean over its dealings with gays and defenders, protectors and promotors of gay rights, it’s the UPND and State House, not us.

In fact, if they are denying this fact, I offer myself for a public debate on national television with Mr Hichilema and Mr Mweetwa combined together. Let them come and I will expose their links and dark dealings on gay issues.

So that we can put to rest this disgraceful propaganda emanating from a discredited and highly corrupt regime.

I will be waiting for their favourable response so that we take this discourse to its highest and final level and rest it there.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

Response to minister of information and government spokesperson’s media briefing of Friday 6th October 2023 Featured

October 8, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

We are disappointed with Minister of Information and Government Spokesman Cornelius Mweetwa’s response to the Opposition Political Parties Open Letter to the Republican President.

We expected that the open letter, raising some very serious national issues of concern, would receive an equally sober response.

Instead, we see the Minister of Information veer off into ranting and attacking the persons of individual Opposition Party Presidents.

The response by the Honourable Minister falls far short of the decorum expected of his office. The matters raised by the Opposition leaders are not partisan, but rather, are national in nature and hence deserve to be treated with sobriety. When we engage the Republican President as we have done, we are not speaking for ourselves, but rather, speaking on behalf of the many Zambians that we represent.

We ought to be understood that no machinations at trying to divide us shall work. We stand together as Opposition Political Parties, not as an alliance nor a consortium as the minister has put it, but as individual Political Parties who the Zambians are reaching out to with their grievances.

Having said that, there are some points to note:

1. Our letter, as Opposition Political Parties, was calling for a National Indaba and not a meeting to be held between the Republican President and the Opposition. However, should the Republican President prefer to meet with us, as opposed to the National Indaba, then kindly indicate so.

2. Contrary to the assertion by the Minister of Information, the President has not made any prior effort to meet with us as Opposition Political Parties. We do understand the UPND’s penchant of being economic with the truth.

3. We have previously formally written to the Republican President on matters relating to the nation, as individual Political Parties. None of us have ever received a response to those letters – not even acknowledgments of receipt of the same. We are therefore requesting for a formal and befitting response from the office that our letter was addressed to.

On behalf of many Zambians, we await the formal response from the Republican President.

We remain in service to the Zambian people.

All People’s Congress Party (APC)

CITIZENS FIRST (CF)

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)

Economic Front (EF)

Golden Party Zambia (GPZ)

National Democratic Congress (NDC)

New Heritage Party (NHP)

Patriots for Economic Progress (PEP)

Patriotic Front (PF)

Socialist Party (SP)

Zambia Must Prosper (ZMP)

Hichilema’s govt and the gay rights agenda Featured

October 8, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

While we wait for Mr Hakainde Hichilema to respond to our challenge for a public debate on national television regarding the UPND administration and State House’s involvement with gays and defenders, protectors and promoters of gay rights, we would like to ask the following questions:

(1) What role is the National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council (NAC) playing in promoting the LGBTQ agenda?

(2) Didn’t NAC launch an LGBTQ programme and workshops for peer educators held with some facilitators being gay persons?

(3) Didn’t the NAC in collaboration with selected government hospitals and clinics, dealing with those in charge of clinics and hired counselors conduct workshops, which were aimed at sending crews to identify members of the LGBTQ community?

(4) Were they not using the term Key Population in place of LGBTQ in the programme?

(5) Is it not true that this administration has established a position of Technical Director in charge of Key and Vulnerable Populations and the position is funded by USAID/PEPFAR Fund?

(6) Is this the reason why for the first time in this country and under Mr Hichilema’s presidency, in May 2022, EU embassies hoisted gay pride flags in support and commitment to gay rights on Zambian soil?

(7) Could this also be reason why the French government sent a Mr Jean Mafart, an openly gay man whose male husband is a convicted drug trafficker, as French Ambassador accredited to Zambia?

( What is Mr Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister and renowned gay rights Ambassador frequenting Zambia for?

For those of our people who may not know, Key Populations include populations that live in poverty and squalor without access to necessities such as safe housing, water, sanitation and nutrition.

As indicated above the term also include persons such as sex workers, gay men and other men who have sex with men, transgender people, people who inject drugs, and people in prisons and other enclosed settings.

In the meantime, we wait for Mr Hichilema and his newly installed mouthpiece, vuvuzela Mr Cornelius Mweetwa to answer the questions raised above.

We desire to take this discourse to its highest and final level and rest it there to curb the senseless path of malice and hate.

So a favourable response to our challenge to a public debate on national television with Mr Hichilema and Mr Mweetwa combined together will be a great opportunity for all of us to deal with these issues openly, truthfully and without innuendo.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

CDF has not worked – JCTR Featured

October 7, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Increasing CDF allocations not an end in itself

Allocation to the Constituency Development Fund has continued to increase in the consecutive National Budgets in 2022 and 2023.

In the 2024 National Budget the government proposes to increase further the allocation to K30,600 million per constituency.

The idea of allocating resources to the

communities is beyond reproach. The enhanced CDF (in both amounts and scope) has a potential of bringing about a huge economic transformation at the community level. However, in order for the enhanced CDF to achieve its intended objectives, the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) would like to bring to the nation’s attention a number of challenges that must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

The implementation of the enhanced CDF continues to face a number of challenges

including the following:

1. Lack of transparency in the implementation of Zambia where community participation in

public bid opening for contractors has been extremely low.

2. Low accountability in the implementation of CDF in Zambia as there has been low information sharing, especially monitoring reports.

3. Low community participation in CDF, where many do not participate in selecting community

projects.

4. Low burn rates of CDF among constituencies, where these resources are still in the accounts of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (as of 2023, we are at 7 million disbursement of CDF 2023 allocations per constituency).

5. Weak CDF architecture to ensure CDF reaches the intended beneficiaries.

6. Numerous executive directives on the utilization of CDF resources, thereby, compromising community participation in CDF.

7. Weak mechanisms to monitor the database of the beneficiaries double dipping from CDF by belonging to multiple cooperatives and applying to numerous constituencies.

8. Political influence in the implementation of CDF, where CDF has been used as a campaign tool for politicians.

9. Capacity concerns at the Local Authority level (Limited number of staffs).

10. Poor management of cooperatives after receiving grants (cooperatives disbanding after receiving resources).

11. Lack of comprehensive audit to establish the value for money on all CDF resources.

The JCTR is seriously concerned with increasing the CDF allocation without first addressing the above highlighted challenges which evidently are impeding transparency, accountability and community participation in the implementation of CDF.

Without addressing these challenges, CDF will continueto be hijacked by politicians. This will derail CDF from achieving the intended goal of alleviating poverty and improving the living standards and conditions of people in Zambia.

The JCTR, therefore, recommends that for the enhanced CDF to meet its desired goal, the following must be considered:

1. Relocate the management and implementation of skills development and bursaries scope from the Local Authority to the Ministry of Education at the district levels. This is because the ministry has more capacities to implement this scope than the Local Authorities.

2. Relocate the management and implementation of empowerment (loans and grants) from the Local Authorities to the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises Development at the district levels.

This is because the ministry has more capacities to manage loans and grants as witnessed with other initiatives like the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission loans.

3. Leave the Local Authorities to manage the community project scope. This is because they have more capacities and knowledge on the Integrated District Plans (IDPs). This will boost implementation of CDF in contributing to the 8th NDP.

4. Invest in the development of an integrated monitoring and evaluation system that captures data of all the CDF related projects across all the constituencies in the country.

5. Set up a platform that encourages inter-constituency collaboration in the implementation of some projects such as purchasing and servicing of road construction equipment as well as encouraging cross-learning of good practices amongst the constituencies.

6. Undertake a comprehensive audit to establish value for money on all CDF resources allocated

thus far.

We are not bitter: We fully understand the dangerous consequences of bitterness Featured

September 18, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

We can’t afford to be bitter because we fully understand the dangerous consequences of bitterness. Bitterness is tantamount to self-destruction. And because of this we fear bitterness and run away from it. Nothing we say or do is propelled or fueled by bitterness.

The book of Hebrews warns us about allowing bitterness to take root. “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.” (Hebrews 12:15)

We can be bitter while claiming, “I’m not bitter! How could you say that?” We can tell ourselves we have forgiven someone while still allowing resentment to fester and build. Allowing bitterness to remain in your life will plunge you further and further away from the liberty and freedom of Christ. It will harden, break, and destroy the good in your life. Bitterness erodes optimism, shatters joy, and kills our ability to love others well. A bitter person goes through life with a heart that does not fully function. They live in a land of spiritual poverty while those around them drown.

It’s not good to be bitter. No one has to be bitter! Jesus Christ offers the power to stop bitterness before it starts and heal wounded hearts no matter how great the offence. Forgiveness is the key. Part of Jesus’s coming into the world was to “destroy the works of the devil”, (see 1 John 3:8b). Bitterness is a work of our flesh that the devil loves to exploit. Jesus came so that we could be truly free.

And bitterness has very serious physical consequences. It adversely alters the chemical balance in our bodies; ulcerative colitis, toxic goiters, and high blood pressure, are only a few of the scores of diseases caused by bitterness. Our resentments call forth certain hormones from the pituitary, adrenal, thyroid, and other glands. Excesses of these hormones can cause diseases in any part of the body.

Bitterness can also adversely affect our facial features. Refusing to forgive, results in physical fatigue and loss of sleep. We may try to hide our resentments, but soon they will also be etched into our eyes and facial muscles as permanent reflections of our inward feelings.

Bitterness is known to affect bone health; the life of the flesh is in the blood, (Leviticus 17:11). But the “factory” for the blood is the marrow of our bones. The health of our bones, therefore, determines the health of our body. Bitterness has a direct and devastating effect upon our bones. (Psalm 32:3; Proverbs 15:30; Proverbs 17:22; Proverbs 14:30; Proverbs 12:4; Ezekiel 32:27)

An inability to love God is the immediate result of hating another person. “If a man says, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.” (I John 4:20, 21)

Doubts regarding our relationship with God commonly accompany bitterness. This is quite natural since most of us have prayed the Lord’s Prayer in which we pray, “And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12)

Hence, if we refuse to forgive other people, we are actually asking God not to forgive us. The significance of this point is emphasised by Jesus Christ, “For if you will forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offences. But if you will not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your offences.” (Matthew 6:14, 15)

Major hindrances to the spiritual development of others may result when we refuse to forgive, especially if we claim to be in a right fellowship with God. Our attitudes of bitterness will repel them from whatever it is that we are trying to convince them of. If we are to allow Christ to live in us we must allow Him to forgive through us.

And depression is one of the most significant consequences of refusing to forgive the people who wrong us. It requires a lot of emotional energy to maintain a grudge. Just as we become weary when our physical energy is exhausted, so we become depressed when our emotional energy is exhausted.

Bitterness and resentment create an “emotional focus” toward the person who offended us. This focus is the chief cause of becoming just like the one we resent. The more we focus on his or her actions toward us, the more we resemble the basic attitudes that prompted their actions.

The moment you start hating someone, you become his or her slave. You can’t enjoy your work any more because he or she controls your thoughts. Your resentments produce too many stress hormones in your body, and you become fatigued after only a few hours of work. The work you formerly enjoyed is now drudgery. You can’t escape his or her tyrannical grasp on your mind. It is for this reason that Solomon wrote, “It is better to be invited to herbs with love, than to a fatted calf with hatred.” (Proverbs 15:17)

Bitterness is all too easily passed on from one generation to another, thus affecting hundreds of descendants. The sins of the parents are visited to the third and fourth generations of those who hold hatred in their heart. (Deuteronomy 5:9)

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

Hichilema and his paranoid clique Featured

September 18, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The video circulating online showing Mr Mtolo Phiri, the Minister of Agriculture, issuing reckless threats over the FISP programme is most unfortunate and dangerous.

In the video, Mr Phiri is seen urging people to report anyone heard talking about the FISP programme in unfavourable terms to the police so that such people could get arrested.

But why must people be threatened with arrests by the government when they have a right to protest or complain against the authorities over the many issues causing them untold suffering and hardship? Why should government accuse citizens of attempting to “bring war” as Mr Phiri puts it, for merely debating or discussing an agricultural programme?

Why is it that threats of arrests, detention, treason, sedition and so on and so forth, has become the best defence for Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s government whenever it’s challenged or called to be accountable for its policies and actions?

Clearly, this corrupt puppet regime, which is headed by Mr Hichilema, does not want to be held accountable for its failures, crimes and abuses in the way they’re running the country. They want to have a free reign to do what they want and to have their own interests safeguarded without any distractions. They’re allergic to health political discourse and contestation of ideas for the benefit of our country and it’s people.

Going by their record so far, Mr Hichilema and his league have no intention whatsoever to change their minds about the wrong policies and notions they hold about the country, it’s people and it’s future. It’s evident that these are not true liberal democrats. They’re just quacks and ignorant democrats who wrongly believe that they have a moral responsibility to do what is necessary and best for themselves in order to perpetuate their greedy political agenda, even if it means going against the law and the Constitution. Theirs is an agenda to satisfy themselves first and foremost, and then the people and the country later through a little bit of trickle down approaches. They’re pretentious gluttons who are not even fully aware of the extent and consequences of the problems they’re creating, the unnecessary difficulties they are our people, especially the poor, through.

However, we are glad that the pretense or claim of being liberal democrats to the core is rapidly peeling away off. As evidenced by the constant threats of interrogation, arrest and detention by the police, they keep making each time their ideas or policies are challenged.

This regime has shown that whenever Mr Hichilema and his league are roasted for their own lies, deceit and lack of delivery; the police and prison cells are the best response they are able to provide. They have created a culture of hiding their inefficiencies in the abuse of the police. It’s obvious that they’re not people who fully grasp political debate or are willing to exchange ideas and later on find solutions to problems currently facing the country.

And we are getting more and more convinced each day that if they’re not careful, this regime will soon become a killing machine. What is even more dangerous about them is their reckless disregard for the law and the haste to make clowns of themselves through the unprecedented and predictable abuse of law enforcement, especially the police. They have weaponised the police in order to silence critical voices. They have literally criminalised dissent so that they’re not scrutinised or challenged.

They have anchored their political survival and influence on the abuse of the police and other law enforcement agencies. No wonder they’re not ashamed to use the police in prescribing the most unreasonable and ridiculous charges against the critics they don’t like. Their goal is to silence the critics through brutality, vindictiveness and pettiness.

But it will backfire badly in the end, especially if they don’t grasp the reality that power has limits too. Mr Hichilema and his league must realise that there has never been a regime in history that remained afloat through heavy reliance on the abuse of the police and the criminal justice system. People have always resisted these kinds of abuses in the long run and have always voted against such leadership.

It’s important for Mr Hichilema to know that as long as we don’t know where the country is heading and our people’s livelihood continue to deteriorate owing to their puppet and pro imperialist policies, we shall not keep quiet about the situation.

We understand the panic and fear in them. We also understand the pressure and confusion that is raging in this regime as it continues to push its disastrous policies but we urge them to be careful in the manner they are taking advantage of state systems and institutions.

Otherwise, they may go down in history as the worst government to have ruled this country. This is a possibility they are faced with today. The decision is theirs to take and we are not afraid of them. And we remind them: the exercise of power must be a constant practice of self limitation and modesty.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

They have openly declared us their enemies Featured

September 18, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Minister of Justice Mulambo Haimbe has openly declared the Socialist Party and the PF as their enemies.

What does this mean? What does being their enemy entail? Why are we their enemies?

We thought we were simply competitors in what is supposed to be a competition to serve our people and the country, and not enemies who should be crushed, annihilated or utterly destroyed.

But Mr Haimbe’s declaration explains why we are treated the way we are being treated. It explains why lately, immigration officers at KKIA have had to seek permission from higher authorities to clear me to proceed to board the aircraft and fly out each time I’m traveling. Indeed, only enemies can be treated this way.

If any one had doubts, Mr Haimbe has plainly and truthfully explained why we are being given the treatment that is only fit for enemies – because we are enemies.

In fact, as we get closer to their departure from office in 2026, we expect worse treatment from them than we are currently receiving.

They’re stuck. They’re confused. They’re desperate. And anybody who calls them out on their lies, deceit and failures is considered an enemy deserving all manner of intimidation and threats that they are capable of silencing or locking up anyone that does not comply or agree with them.

Clearly, they don’t like us; they hate us and are ready to harm us. What type of democrats are these? What type of Christians are these? Because Jesus doesn’t allow us to be that way. In fact, He said we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Mt 5:44).

For us, we shall continue our struggle against poverty, injustice and inequality with love, compassion, respect and patriotism.

Mr Hichilema, Mr Haimbe and the UPND will never be our enemies. They shall remain our competitors until they’re defeated because we have a conscience and we look at things differently from the way they do. Zambia is bigger than all of us and there is absolutely no reason for political contestation to turn into enmity.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

Only Socialism can help us eradicate extreme poverty Featured

September 12, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Mr Hakainde Hichilema is leading a huge delegation to China. Let them see and understand what socialism with Chinese characteristics has achieved in all areas of human endeavour for the Chinese people and all humanity.

Today in most of our poor countries poverty looks intractable – impossible to end.

In our time it is only China that has truly managed to eradicate extreme poverty. And it is important to try to understand how and why China managed to achieve it.

As Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research aptly put it,

China’s achievement “is neither a miracle nor a coincidence, but rather a testament to its socialist commitment”.

It is a result of the socialist work that has gone on in the country since 1949. It is a product of the work of the Communist Party of China’s targeted poverty alleviation campaign that took place under President Xi Jinping, which included the participation of 800,000 cadres in surveys carried out in 2014, the dispatching of three million cadres who went to live in poor villages for at least two years, and the 1,800 cadres who died during the fight against poverty.

This enormous transformation, led by the CPC, re-established the party’s moral authority and brought the issue of socialism and social justice to the centre of Chinese poverty eradication discussions. It drew from the campaign-style governance of the Mao Zedong era.

The programme created a new rural infrastructure to eradicate extreme poverty that included raising to a very high level the participation of villagers in public affairs through their village committees.

Clearly, it is the principle of socialism and the socialist infrastructure – especially the CPC – that enabled China to eradicate extreme poverty. It will therefore be very difficult for the Chinese path to extreme poverty eradication to be seen as a model to be adopted by other countries unless these countries also ground their programmes on a socialist footing.

Extreme poverty in China was not eradicated by cash transfer schemes, it was eradicated by a socialist commitment to take ideas, such as dignity, and realise them in the world. It is socialism and only socialism that can help us eradicate extreme poverty.

We therefore urge Mr Hichilema to take advantage of this state visit and learn more about socialism so that he can understand us better and what our cause is all about.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

The DPP is shielding the careless, rabble-rousing Inspector General of Police from prosecution Featured

September 12, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

As we have repeatedly pointed out, it is a well-known fact that throughout history, those who administer or control the criminal justice system hold the power with the potential for abuse and tyranny.

Since all criminal prosecutions can only be carried out by them or with their consent, they choose who to prosecute or to exempt from prosecution. Their cadres, supporters, and all members of their league get away with many crimes.

Therefore, the exercise of power must be a constant practice of self-limitation and modesty.

Director of Public Prosecutions’ Mr Gilbert Phiri’s decision to reject our application to conduct prosecution in the matter involving the Inspector General of Police Mr Graphel Musamba is most unfortunate and an abuse of the judicial process.

Yesterday, September 11, the DPP wrote to us citing public interest considerations as the reason to deny our request to prosecute Mr Musamba.

This decision by Mr Phiri exposes inherent bias, not only of the DPP, but that of the Attorney General as well and their allegiance towards the UPND government and those it subsequently appoints to serve in public offices, like Mr Musamba.

The closeness of the DPP and the Attorney General to the UPND is not in dispute.

Public interest considerations are a product of a request by the Attorney General to the DPP.

In broader terms, what they are seeking is to protect both Mr Musamba and the Commander- in- Chief, Mr Hakainde Hichilema, who is the DPP’s former client by the way, from potential embarrassment after the Inspector General of Police’s misconduct.

Without a doubt, this decision is a calculated attempt meant to act as a “political shield” against the potentially embarrassing circumstances that Mr Musamba has found himself in.

We note that Mr Phiri’s reasoning is carefully couched in broad and undefined terms like “public interest”, which when carefully looked at may amount to nothing but serving political interests.

They are not saying that we have no good complaint against Mr Musamba. They are simply saying that in the “public interest” it will not be good for Mr Musamba to be prosecuted. But is it really in the “public interest” for Mr Musamba to criminally defame citizens with impunity? Isn’t this placing themselves above the reach of the law?

At the same time, the DPP is, without reservations or public interest considerations, prosecuting all those who are believed to have defamed members of their league.

We are being prosecuted for defaming Deputy Inspector General of Police In-Charge of Operations Mr Milner Muyambango, but we cannot be allowed to prosecute the IG for defaming us? Is there fairness, justice in this?

Ms Saboi Imboela is being prosecuted by the DPP for defaming a State House assistant, Mr Clayson Hamasaka. Mr Munir Zulu is being prosecuted by the DPP for defaming some ministers.

This is how they are abusing their administration of the criminal justice system.

What are our options?

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

Hichilema must address the cost ot living before it’s too late Featured

September 11, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

We welcome the bold, confident and honest observation from the Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ) on the cries of the general public regarding the continued increase in the cost of living in the country.

Last week, CCZ General Secretary Fr Joseph Chikoya issued a statement in which he said, among other things, that the 15 percent price increase of fuel will adversely affect the most vulnerable, especially low-income citizens, who are already grappling with the high cost of essential commodities, such as mealie meal, cooking oil and increased transport costs.

Fr Chikoya called for urgent interventions to be made to help cushion the lives of the most vulnerable Zambians by providing policy directions that will see a more manageable cost of living. He further noted that the cries of the general public were genuine and deserved the government’s urgent attention.

We agree with the Council of Churches in Zambia’s reflections on the prevailing hardship in the country, and we are deeply concerned about the impact of the cost of living, particularly on families and communities. The rapidly increasing price of essential commodities and services is causing severe challenges for our people.

They are already poorly paid and this, coupled with the unstable and ever escalating price of essential commodities and services, is melting their incomes at a very fast rate. In essence, the poor and vulnerable, who are the majority of our population, are suffering a double punishment from Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s corrupt puppet regime’s directionless and anti-poor policies.

Many of our people today are struggling to meet the rising cost of literally everything, especially mealie meal. There is no doubt that the increase in the cost of living is also having a huge impact on consumption patterns. And this situation is negatively affecting most families. It is making once decent families resort to formulating desperate coping strategies to make ends meet that in the long run ends up destroying them irretrievably.

The social crisis that many families in Zambia face today owing to the rapidly increasing and unbearable cost of living is; firstly, taking away their dignity and self-respect. And secondly, the unbearable cost of living and inability to provide is affecting the mental wellbeing of most family providers, which in extreme cases can lead to depression or death. It is becoming clearer each day that many families in our communities are unable to handle or deal with the continuing economic shock.

What is even more saddening, is that the interventions or efforts to address this desperate situation from Mr Hichilema and his corrupt puppet regime are highly disproportionate.

Instead of being desperate and in panic mode by holding staged public meetings in the urban constituencies of Lusaka, we advise Mr Hichilema to come up with workable interventions that will immediately assist the vulnerable to keep pace with the rapidly increasing cost of living. Additional rhetoric, lies, and promises of an egg, a potato, and so on – like he did at one of the public meetings last week – will not sort out the hunger and anger prevailing in most homes countrywide.

Let Mr Hichilema know that these low-level, pickpocket tricks he is attempting to fool our people with will not only backfire but will also fail to close the yawning gap of poverty and squalor that is increasing on a daily basis.

We therefore call for urgent action to help the suffering majority of this country before things get out of hand.

One bad term doesn’t deserve another, aleya!

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

State House and corrupt fertilizer tenders Featured

September 11, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

There are very serious issues being raised about the fertiliser supply tenders that Mr Hichilema needs to explain.

And these concerns are not baseless. There’s what may be described as corruption as well as a serious lack of transparency and fairness in the awarding of these tenders:

Best Med (Copperbelt Province) price US$11,873,548.68

Agrizam (Eastern Province) price US$24,191,422.05

Alpha (Luapula Province) price US$8,324,998.80

ETG (Muchinga Province) price US$8,570,290.77

Growmax (North Western Province) price US$8,510,253.58

Growmax (Western Province) price US$4,662,547.12

Greenfield (Northern Province) price US$12,328,701.00

Kovenant (Southern Province) price US$22,197,543.75

Direct bidding will cost the Treasury about US$7,790,616.27 more than was offered in the two cancelled tenders. This is money that could have been used to buy medicines for hospitals, pay local government workers, and so on.

How does Mr Hichilema justify this? How does he explain it? What label should be given to it if not corruption?

Ever since UPND took office, the procurement of fertiliser has been scandalously expensive and has become increasingly difficult to conclude in a fair and transparent manner.

The process has been carried out in a way that favours some of Mr Hichilema’s friends and close associates in the industry while discriminating against other players in the sector.

In fact, these dirty and unethical schemes in the procurement of fertiliser are being carried out on the direct orders of certain identifiable advisors in the presidential advisory team at State House. We are aware of these practices and the corrupt links between some presidential advisors and the entities that are being awarded the tenders. It is clear that this is a State House dirty job.

Things can’t continue this way. Let Mr Hichilema come clean on this matter and stop blaming those before him for the same corrupt practices he is tolerating in his own government.

This regime should be ashamed and embarrassed by the corrupt manner in which it has handled the fertiliser procurement process since it took over power.

Fred M’membe

How Hichilema has given away Zambia’s crown in mining for nothing Featured

September 6, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Yesterday, Mr Hakainde Hichilema officially gave KCM back to Vedanta, a company whose owner mocked all of us Zambians for selling him our crown jewel of the Zambian mines for nothing.

His actions were particularly painful given that KCM retrenched thousands of workers, withdrew ZCCM social benefits for workers, introduced precarious subcontracting, refused to pay taxes and irresponsibly polluted the rivers on which the poor people of Chingola depend for drinking water and agriculture.

Vedanta’s human rights and environmental record is also a matter of great concern and a subject of global protests. This is the company that Mr Hichilema has given the company back to.

We agree that the liquidation process by the PF was flawed. However, it was justified given the behaviour of the company. Vedanta had a legal right to the company, but lost the social licence. The government should have leveraged this advantage to negotiate for more shares in KCM and the departure of Vedanta. This has not happened and will not happen.

However, this is unsurprising. On August 7 at Parklands Secondary School in Kitwe, Edgar Lungu accused Mr Hichilema of receiving bribes from Vedanta to support his campaigns, and of promising to give KCM back to Vedanta. Soon after forming the government, Mr Hichilema withdrew the matter from the courts and made endless promises about how and when they would announce the way forward.

Aware of the resistance from the public, opposition leaders and experts in mining studies, Mr Hichilema delayed the handover ceremony in the name of protracted negotiations. In reality, I would argue, there were no protracted negotiations but a strategic delay, as some experts have argued, to create enough hopelessness, anxiety, and uncertainty while presenting Vedanta as the only alternative.

Realising the arrogance of Mr Hichilema, the unions that forcefully supported KCM liquidation under the PF, gave in to Vedanta’s promises and began campaigning for Vedanta’s return. The question was no longer about the bad things that KCM under Vedanta did, but when the government would hand over the company to Vedanta. Some churches and youths amplified these calls on various radio platforms, including organised protests that were warmly welcomed by Mr Hichilema and the state-owned media at the expense of the anti-Vedanta protestors.

All this culminated in what we witnessed yesterday, the handover of KCM to Vedanta. This is a reckless and highly irresponsible decision. We cannot handle a company that in 2000 had estimated reserves of 280 million MT at Konkola, with an estimated productive lifespan of over 50 years, and in excess of over 53.9 million MT reserves at Nchanga Mine. With these kinds of resources, we do not need to postpone our debt to the future generation through debt restructuring.

Today, Vedanta is promising: US$1 billion investment in KCM development, US$250 million payment to all local creditors, US$20 million investment into the local community (CSR) every year through a special purpose vehicle¬ – a community trust, 20 percent increase in salaries for employees, and a one-off K2,500 payment to all employees.

Why now, after Vedanta failed to fulfil its commitment to inject US$397 million into KCM as FDI, but instead went on to use all the funds it generated within KCM towards capital projects, depriving the company of the necessary funds for operations and maintenance? This is the same company that bragged about making an easy profit of US$500 million each year from KCM, the mine purchased for a mere US$25 million while declaring losses every year, and refusing to pay taxes.

This is the same company that concentrated on the surface plant concentrator to process seven million tons of ore per annum it did not produce but purchased from other countries, effectively changing the philosophy of the business entirely from “mining” into a “treatment facility”. This is the same company that changed the design of the mine by positioning the shaft in the wrong place.

But that’s not all. This is the same company that led KCM into high indebtedness and the threat of insolvency. The total liability of the company as of 30 September 2013, stood at US$1.567 billion, exceeding its current assets by US$123 million. It was also under the threat of receivership from Standard Bank for defaulting on its US$700 million loan. Unconcerned, in September 2011, Vedanta prematurely recalled the US$500 million loan it had given to KCM earlier, which was supposed to have been repaid in 2012.

This is the same company that frustrated the government’s Business Improvement Plan (BIP) to increase production from 132,318 tonnes of finished copper in 2013, to 178,994 tonnes by 2017, resulting in a further decline in production to 86,585 tonnes.

Today, this is the company that Mr Hichilema has given back the crown jewel of our mines to amidst an escalating high cost of living. This has happened at a time when the promised price reduction of mealie-meal from ZMK150 to ZMK50 has culminated in more than ZMK300 per 25 kg bag; fertiliser, fuel, and so on.

We are saddened by this reckless decision and we want Zambians to ask Mr Hichilema the following simple questions:

• Whose interests are you serving?

• To what extent can you argue that Mr Lungu was wrong?

• Why have the so-called negotiations been silent when you promised transparency?

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

Hichilema’s reckless and desperate ‘coup plot’ talk Featured

September 5, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The talk of a “coup plot” by Mr Hakainde Hichilema and some of his hungry surrogates is nothing but wild, irresponsible and reckless rhetoric.

Before we delve deeper into the details of this cheap plan, here is the context of the scheme.

So upon returning from Harare, Zimbabwe, with a bloodied nose and shame on his head, Mr Nevers Mumba was on national television to defend his disastrous SADC Election Observation Mission report, but also as part of the scheme he made some outrageous and illogical claim that politicians who were labelling Mr Hichilema as a Western puppet were instigating a military coup in Zambia.

What a dishonest, manipulative and reckless statement from a person who is supposed to espouse true Christian beliefs and values. What cheap sophistry, hypocrisy and ignorance of global affairs is this?

Soon, after this highly reckless and inflammatory talk by Mr Mumba, yesterday Mr Hichilema echoed these sentiments.

Mr Hichilema said and I quote, “However, to colleagues that think we are timid by being kind and that they can break the laws and entertain thoughts of illegal take-over of government, including undemocratic coup d’état, our only word is that we are coming for you and we will not allow you to make Zambians start running around as is the case in some places.”

From the above scenario, we can see the connivance and deliberate plot to do evil and get rid of dissent by punishing opposition leaders on trumped-up charges. The pattern is clear for anybody to follow. But they’re not clever enough to understand or later conceal their evil intent. Simply put, they’re reckless schemers who are extremely high on power.

It’s evident that they are unaware and appreciative of the limitations of power and influence. They think they can do what they want and to anyone without consequences for their actions. They’re just lost and confused about the situation in the country.

Lest we forget, Zambia is a country that has witnessed and experienced such senseless tactics before and how they fell flat on their face. And we don’t think we have seen the end of this.

As President, Mr Frederick Chiluba locked up Kenneth Kaunda on similar outrageous allegations of plotting a military coup. Again, the same Mr Chiluba locked up the late Dean Mung’omba for the same reasons as he did with KK. Mr Edgar Lungu also locked up Mr Hichilema for alleged treason. And none of these people cited here was prosecuted. KK was never prosecuted, Mr Mung’omba was never prosecuted, and Mr Hichilema was never prosecuted. So clearly, when leaders are desperate and their hold on power is threatened, they start processes that they never complete.

Meanwhile, as they play such dangerous games, innocent lives and families are being destroyed. This is what Mr Hichilema, an erstwhile detainee himself, is trying to do to those he doesn’t like. Those he feels are a threat to his hold on power. What shame! What a waste of time and effort! What an incorrigible person!

What is even more remarkable about this is that in opposition, Mr Hichilema spoke freely about presidents of this country. For instance, Mr Hichilema is on record describing President Michael Chilufya Sata, as “chimbwi no plan”, loosely translated as a mindless hyena. Mr Hichilema made these remarks about Mr Sata during the time Mr Sata was president and nothing happened to him.

Nobody was spared, and Mr Hichilema made more demeaning and insulting remarks about leaders of this country, including Mr Lungu. So what has changed now? It is acceptable for Mr Hichilema as an opposition leader to describe presidents of this country in terms he deemed fit but it is apparently highly offensive and treasonous for current opposition leaders to do the same to him now that he is the President.

It is now treason to describe Mr Hichilema for what he truly is – a puppet of Western imperialism and transnational corporations. Why should this be so? What type of self-importance, arrogance and tyranny is this? What makes Mr Hichilema think he is so different and more special than the rest of the presidents this country has had? What makes him think the opposition must conduct themselves in a manner that comforts and pleases him?

We urge Mr Hichilema and his hungry surrogates to take caution before they engage in very dangerous activities in order to stay in power. If not, they risk presiding over a killing machine.

We also want to put him on notice that some of us are not prepared to be cowed into submission by the spreading of misinformation, threats and illogical conspiracies, which are nothing but a figment of Mr Hichilema and his surrogates’ imaginations. We wish to remind him that while they were only spectators, some of us were direct participants in the fight for multiparty democracy in this country.

We were at the forefront of the struggle against the one-party state and we will not allow him to turn Zambia into a sham democracy.

Further, let Mr Hichilema be comfortable with our political ideology, discourse and mobilisation strategies, because we mean well and have always been for democratic transitions of power. Never will we support any undemocratic changes of government.

That said, we call upon Mr Hichilema to exhibit maturity and leadership and abandon the highly inflammatory, sensational and intemperate outbursts that he is now making.

We know that he is under pressure. We know that the lies, manipulation and deceit have backfired. We know that he stands exposed in the eyes of Zambians as a liar and a fraud who has no intention whatsoever to do as he promised during his campaign for the presidency. We know he is ashamed of himself. We know the rallies in Lusaka haven’t yielded anything. We know he is extremely unpopular and frustrated with his performance.

But that must not make Zambians – any of us – suffer pantu alelaya eka, tatwaliko tulibakayele!

One bad term doesn’t deserve another, aleya!

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

VEDANTA/KCM saga: The lies, greed and arrogance Featured

September 5, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

We said it, and Mr Hichilema and his corrupt puppet regime ridiculed and violently opposed our perspective on the issues that were surrounding the situation at KCM. But here we are again in the same situation they ridiculed and violently disputed when we raised the alarm.

It is now evident that they were merely trying to silence the voices of truth on this issue so they could be heard and seen as the only ones who can do what is best for the people of the Copperbelt, in particular the people of Chingola and Chililabombwe.

We repeat what we have said before; that the return of Vedanta at KCM after its Indian owner Anil Agarwal parted with US$200 million, endorses the betrayal and disrespect Mr Hakainde Hichilema has for the people on the Copperbelt.

This particular move has a revealing effect on what type of a leader Mr Hichilema is and how he views and treats the people on the Copperbelt – with low value.

By this decision alone, Mr Hichilema has spat in the face of the people of the Copperbelt, especially the miners, who braved the meandering queues to cast their votes and put him into office.

Below are the articles we published on this issue in July this year.

VEDANTA’S AGARWAL TO GET BACK KCM AFTER PARTING WITH US$200M

After parting with US$200 million, Vedanta Resources plc’s 69-year-old Indian owner, Anil Agarwal, is assured of getting back KCM, which he lost control of in a Zambian government initiated liquidation order in 2020.

Agarwal acquired KCM in 2004 in a transaction that had an aggregate value of approximately US$270 million, comprised of a cash consideration of US$48.2 million for the 51 per cent stake, a commitment on the part of Vedanta to fund cash flows in KCM to an aggregate limit of US$220 million, and an agreement on the part of Vedanta to contribute US$1 million towards the cost of a feasibility study of substantial deeper level resources associated with the Konkola mine (containing estimated resources of around 250 million tonnes at 3.8 percent copper), to be undertaken by December 31, 2006.

In August 2021, while addressing miners in Kitwe, the then President of the Republic of Zambia, Mr Edgar Lungu, claimed that he had received a report that Mr Hakainde Hichilema was soliciting US$300,000 from Vedanta, promising to give them back KCM once elected. An accusation, which Mr Hichilema vehemently denied.

On April 25, 2022, during a media briefing at State House, Mr Hichilema dismissed media reports suggesting that the government planned to give back KCM to Vedanta as falsehoods.

But on May 9, 2022, Mr Hichilema U-turned stating, “Vedanta and ourselves have agreed that we suspend litigation,”

Going by the sequence of events and inconsistencies in the statements, especially on the part of Mr Hichilema, we demand that he comes clean on the Vedanta issue. What is going on? The Zambian people deserve to know the truth and how decisions have been arrived at in this matter.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

In the same month of July, we again guided as follows:

HICHILEMA HAS BETRAYED THE COPPERBELT ON VEDANTA

The return of Vedanta at KCM after its Indian owner Anil Agarwal parted with US$200 million, endorses the betrayal and disrespect Mr Hakainde Hichilema has for the people on the Copperbelt.

This particular move has a revealing effect on what type of a leader Mr Hichilema is and how he views and treats the people on the Copperbelt – with low value. By this decision alone, Mr Hichilema has spat in the face of the people of the Copperbelt, especially the miners, who braved the meandering queues to cast their votes and put him into office.

As usual, Mr Hichilema has made known to the Zambian people that the poor masses of this country are nowhere near the equation, and as such deserve no place, value, or respect from his government. Like we have always said, Mr Hichilema is here to protect mining transnational capital and not the working masses. And we shall validate our standpoint stated above by highlighting the facts that led the Zambian government to initiate a liquidation order in 2020, so that citizens can see and judge for themselves.

Under Vedanta, KCM faced various operational difficulties, which included:

1) the mine failed to meet its financial obligations to the workers thereby subjecting them to poor working conditions,

2) the mine failed to honour its debts with contractors and suppliers,

3) the mine was highly indebted and threatened with insolvency, to the extent that as of September 30, 2013, KCM’s total liability stood overwhelmingly at US$1.5 billion, surpassing its asset base by US$123 million. This situation definitely made it unfeasible for the mine to meet its financial obligations. For this reason, KCM defaulted on its US$700 million loan signed with Standard Bank. By the way, this particular loan was secured on the KCM assets,

4) Vedanta failed to live up to its pledge to inject a sum of US$397 million foreign direct investment in the mine but resorted to diverting funds it was generating locally to other ventures thereby choking the mine and leaving it with no resources to inject in its operations,

5) Vedanta lamentably failed to operationalise the Konkola Deep Mining Project despite making numerous pledges and commitments over the same, and,

6) Vedanta never invested in its own equipment. It was merely sub-contracting its works. This made it extremely expensive to run the mine.

Above are just some of the many reasons the Zambia government repossessed the mine and opted to find another investor. Now, with all that we have stated above, we ask a question: which principled and decent leader would surrender back such a key national asset to a dishonest investor like Vedanta?

Clearly, Mr Hichilema is a selfish and showboating politician. But all this won’t end well. It will soon catch up with him because Zambians are not fools. Already the atmosphere is one of exhaustion. People are fatigued of his lies, inconsistency, and self-serving attitude.

Let him know that this country is way bigger than him and so he must stop playing with people’s livelihoods and the country’s future by dishing out key national assets willy-nilly like sweets in a market parlour.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

The ongoing debate about whether to abolish or keep FISP Featured

August 31, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

It is very important to understand what we want to achieve with FISP. This requires looking at two critical components of the intended purpose and assessing whether they achieve it or not.

Before proceeding with the initial intended objectives, we need to pose this question: is FISP aimed at increasing crop production or is it a poverty alleviation programme, such as social cash transfer, to support vulnerable peasant farmers and their families to ensure food security?

The FISP guidelines, which also mention that farmers should graduate after three years of being on the programme to medium-scale farmers, indicate that the programme was intended to enhance crop production and facilitate the progression of farmers from peasantry to small-scale, then medium-scale, and finally to commercial farming.

Let’s assess the practicality of its intended objective. If a farmer receives six bags of fertiliser per year at K1,000 per bag, then the assistance at a monthly average is K500 per month. With this level of support for direct input only – ignoring all other production costs and personal responsibilities – is it practical that such support can graduate a farmer from peasantry to commercial farming? Unless a miracle happens the farmer will permanently remain in the peasantry category. This explains why farmers have remained on the programme for prolonged periods beyond three years. If FISP was intended to grow crop production then it was ill structured and should be canned.

However, a positive unintended consequence of FISP is that it provides government support to peasant farmers who comprise the biggest segment of our maize production, but cannot afford fertiliser due to its high cost. Effectively, peasant farmers plant crops for their own consumption and sell the excess production to commercial players in order to generate income to sustain their livelihoods, including paying school fees and medical bills and meeting family needs. These farmers don’t qualify for commercial loans because they aren’t creditworthy. So, in a nutshell, with unintended consequences FISP is actually a social protection programme and not a crop production growth strategy. It should be classified in the same category as social cash transfer.

So before we say scrap or keep FISP, we need to understand these dynamics. And most importantly, before farmers are removed for being on the programme for more than three years, we need to understand that given the meagre support of six bags a year, it is impractical for peasant farmers to graduate to higher categories, including commercial levels, because the support received is insignificant. If anything, this is a segment which has a low crop yield per acre because at its best it is an ox driven, rain fed method of agriculture, and at its worst a hoe and rain fed method of crop production. If the support is removed it will just increase poverty levels in rural areas.

In conclusion, FISP should be maintained as a social protection programme. If scrapped, food security for our vulnerable peasant farmers will be compromised. What the government should do is clean up the FISP database and ensure the correct, vulnerable people are kept on the programme.

With regard to enhancing food production, it is necessary to come up with a totally new strategy driven by enabling policies. Most importantly, credit support should be readily available at affordable interest rates. Technical support and access to mechanised farming should be at the centre of this initiative, including irrigation rather than rain-fed methods.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

Hichilema is dividing SADC Featured

August 29, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The SADC Troika consists of Zambia (the chairperson), Tanzania (the deputy chairperson, and Namibia (the immediate past chairperson).

The leaders of Tanzania and Namibia have both congratulated President Mnangagwa on his re-election. President Cyril Ramaphosa has done the same. But Mr Hakainde Hichilema is yet to do so because the candidate he reportedly supported lost the election.

The man he unilaterally chose, Mr Nevers Mumba, to represent him in Zimbabwe’s election released a discredited and biased preliminary report that is likely to be thrown out at the next SADC meeting because both Mr Hichilema and Mr Mumba could not declare interest.

Why did Mr Hichilema, in his capacity as incoming chair of the Troika, appoint Mr Nevers Mumba to head the SADC Electoral Observer Mission (SEOM), given his known and close ties to both Mr Nelson Chamisa, one of the presidential candidates in the just ended Zimbabwean election, and to Hichilema, who himself is very close to the CCC leader?

I use the term “incoming” deliberately because Mr Hichilema, at the time he announced the appointment of Mr Mumba on 14 August 2023, was not yet chairperson of the SADC Troika on Politics, Defence and Security. The President of Namibia was still the chairperson at the time. https://twitter.com/HHichilema/status/1691184702235836416?s=20 Mr Hichilema only formally assumed the leadership of the Organ three days later, on 17 August 2023, at the 43rd Ordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government in Luanda, Angola. https://www.sadc.int/latest-news/sadc-hold-43rd-summit-luanda-republic-angola-17-august-2023

Although the ultra-urgency that Mr Hichilema demonstrated when appointing Mr Mumba is in itself curious, what is most striking and raises questions about his judgement was the choice of a person whose impartiality was always going to be questioned to lead the Mission. Why not appoint someone who won’t give ZANU-PF reason to discredit the Mission’s findings – however legitimate they may be?

What criteria was used to appoint Mr Mumba? If it was because of his role as former vice-president of Zambia, what disqualified the several other ex-veeps of Zambia who are still alive? If it was because of his role as opposition MMD president, what disqualified the several other leaders of opposition parties in Zambia?

Why did Mr Hichilema choose Mr Nevers Mumba to lead the SEOM to Zimbabwe? What particular individual qualities did Mr Mumba have that other former vice-presidents and opposition leaders in Zambia lacked? Was Mr Mumba really the best candidate for such a sensitive role that requires utmost levels of impartiality and maturity? Had Mr Hichilema exercised caution in his choice of the person he appointed to lead the Mission and understood that the credibility of its report rests on the credibility of its membership, the apparent or emerging divisions within the Troika – and potentially within the SADC itself – may have have been avoided.

But that is how betrayal is; hypocrisy, treachery and ignorance can be a very big a problem but they all have limits to their power and influence. What Mr Hichilema forgot was that he could only masquerade or present his fake image to the region and the world for a short period before shame visited him.

Clearly, hiding his true identity as an imperialist puppet has lamentably failed. We hope he has learnt something from this mistake.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party [Zambia]

One bad term doesn’t deserve another, Hichilema aleya! Featured

August 23, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

We were back at the police yesterday because Mr Hakainde Hichilema and his far-right corrupt, puppet regime is being haunted by our exponential growth, support, and solidarity among the poor masses of this country.

Mr Hichilema is unsettled by the fact that more and more of our people, including his own supporters, agree with our message and vision for a more equal, fair, just and united Zambia.

Our people have read through this one-term puppet regime’s corrupt and divisive rhetoric and have resolved to correct the mistake they made in the last general election.

Even Mr Hichilema and the masters who control him know that we not only support our people, but that more and more of our people, especially the poor masses, heavily support us too.

This is why Mr Hichilema and his league are desperate and willing to practise autocracy while preaching democracy. But we fully understand what is happening to them and how this unstoppable mass movement of the people affects them.

We know this, and global history has shown that the more corrupt a regime becomes, the more intolerant and repressive it is towards opposition political parties and critical voices. And what we are facing today is the standard outcome that unfolds whenever a regime’s corrupt, incompetent, and authoritarian path is unmasked.

But we have a message for Mr Hichilema and his league, and that is: “The struggle to liberate our people from poverty and squalor will never die. This is one struggle we are willing to sacrifice and pay a heavy price for”.

So, let them know they’re in for a tough fight with us as we pursue justice, equity, and peace.

We will not be deterred by scared, evil puppets and their equally evil masters, who are willing to strangle our people with poverty while they greedily share our minerals and natural resources.

Time is ticking and time will tell. The damage being done to our country will be accounted for someday soon by those inflicting severe losses, suffering, and destruction on innocent people.

Our people have suffered indignity and injustice from imperialists and their puppet regimes, such as the one governing our country today, for far too long.

One bad term doesn’t deserve another, aleya!

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

Hichilema and his evil advisors at state house Featured

August 14, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The evil, disgraceful and morally objectionable activities being peddled by certain identifiable individuals within the presidential advisory team at State House confirms Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s heartless and spiteful personality, which is regrettable.

Evidently, Mr Hichilema has given consent to and has embraced this evil, conspiring, and morally bankrupt behaviour to manage his presidency, which he obviously thinks can function better when anchored on persecution, vindictiveness, pettiness and malicious attacks on the dignity of political opponents and their families.

But this will not work, and has never worked anywhere, as it only succeeds in blinding the leadership to the real and honest picture obtaining on the ground. In fact, the worst thing that can happen to any political cause is when the propagandists start believing their own propaganda and hate speech.

This is the situation Mr Hichilema and his evil counsellors at State House find themselves in today. Mr Hichilema and his evil conspirators have started believing their own lies and hate speech, and are hooked on the swirl of cruelty, corruption, and indecent behaviour around the presidency.

Clearly, these are petty individuals who are in disarray about leadership, governance, success, and victories. They have over inflated their intellects and influence to the extent that they feel untouchable and invincible. But they will live to regret this some day soon. Most Zambians have lived long enough and been through several governments since independence and they cannot fail to predict the ending of such overzealous and evil individuals.

As a matter of fact, through our highly placed and impeccable contacts within Mr Hichilema’s regime, we have become acutely aware of the identities and actions of some of Mr Hichilema’s advisors in State House. We fear for this country and its citizens when we look at the evil plotting – politically, business wise, financially and socially – against citizens, and the disgraceful and morally objectionable activities currently taking place within State House.

Certainly, the undue influence and behind- the-scenes wicked counselling and scheming currently taking place in Mr Hichilema’s presidential advisory team is a catalyst for a barbaric failed state with no traces of decency, integrity, love or compassion in it.

We know all the little evil advisors whispering wicked counsel straight into Mr Hichilema’s ear and how, in extreme instances, these same individuals have abused law enforcement and deliberately caused pain and anguish for the families of innocent citizens they have locked up in police cells, prisons; the many civil servants and parastatal employees they have denied a living through unfair job dismissals; the corrupt fertiliser tenders and other deals they are cutting; as well as how they are instigating law enforcement agencies against selected citizens in order to cripple them emotionally and financially thereby shutting the critical voice and silencing the truth-tellers.

The continued detention of former State House Special Assistant for Politics, Dr Chris Zumani Zimba and his co-accused, and the arrest and torture of PF presidential hopeful Mr Emmanuel Mwamba, and PF member and blogger Mr Rizwani Patel are among the many instances with visible footprints leading to the evil plotting happening in State House.

Arising from the above, it is vividly clear that the malfunctioning and subsequent downfall of Mr Hichilema and his corrupt, far-right UPND puppet regime is being accelerated by the crimes of a few evil advisors in his presidential advisory team at State House.

We know and understand that Mr Hichilema can only work with those he is comfortable and shares the past with, those he has done both good and bad with, those with traits similar to his. And so, we can only advise since our role as an opposition political party is to scrutinise his rule and offer solutions.

For that reason, we urge Mr Hichilema to think through the wicked and low-priced behaviour he is allowing, and pay a closer look into these dishonourable and unjustifiable notorious flaws, and evil plotting currently obtaining in the presidential advisory team at State House.

Let him take a keen interest in the happenings of literally every department at State House; legal, national security advisory, media, political, and so on. This must be done as a matter of urgency to escape the looming shame on himself and the presidency. There is just way too much scum or filth in this particular presidential advisory team at State House!

Proverbs 25:5 guides: “Remove wicked officials from the King’s presence, and his throne will be established through righteousness.”

As for the evil advisors at State House, we advise you to introspect and constantly remember that presidential immunity is not transferrable; it is Mr Hichilema with the immunity and not you, but even for Mr Hichilema, the immunity is not permanent. It can be removed when need arises. So, tame your zeal and evil plotting because power is brief, transitory and never permanent.

The country is watching! Zambians are alert!

Fred M’membe

Hichilema had no plan to fix Zambia, it was all rhetoric Featured

August 10, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

What’s the problem with KCM and Mopani? What’s troubling Mr Hichilema’s government?

We would like to remind them that the delayed capitalisation of the two mining operations has been and is too painful for Zambia, especially for the residents of the Copperbelt Province. Statements to the effect that the delay is “because the government wants to safeguard the interests of Zambians” are hollow and deceitful because it is clear that Mr Hichilema and the UPND had no plan to “fix” any challenges Zambia was facing before they were elected, and now the problems have grown bigger.

On KCM, the trouble is that Vedanta has spent money and promised to be given back the mine based on agreed terms, including some Key Performance Indicators that Mr Hichilema’s government has included in the draft agreement.

The Key Performance Indicators include the following:

An investment of more than $1 billion to develop KDMP;
Salary and wage increments for KCM staff;
Assume and pay-off debts owing to suppliers and contractors to KCM. These will be mainly debts incurred by the Provisional Liquidator and may be upwards of $300 million, excluding the electricity bill.

Should the Key Performance Indicators not be met, Vedanta will be compelled to offer its shares in KCM to ZCCM IH at a price. It would appear it is the asking price from Vedanta that might now be delaying the conclusion of the deal.

Vedanta is asking for upwards of $2.75 billion should the government invoke the Article to takeover the mines if Vedanta fails to attain certain Key Performance Indicators. It is incomprehensible that such an Article would even be considered because one wonders what safeguard measures have been put in place to safeguard GRZ/ZCCM IH/ and the people of Zambia, who are the ultimate beneficial shareholders in ZCCM IH, from Vedanta should Vedanta deliberately underperform so that ZCCM IH triggers the Articles for the Vedanta shares to be sold to ZCCM IH in the name of not meeting KPIs for Vedanta to automatically be owed $2.75 billion by ZCCM IH.

Should this information we have be true, then this imminent deal between Mr Hichilema’s government will surpass the Lungu government’s $1.5 billion deal with Glencore over Mopani.

Noticeably, there is something fishy about this deal and it can only be because Vedanta may have parted with some money to allow for such a bad deal against Zambians to be tabled for finalisation.

It cannot be wrong to assume that this deal might have an upside for some government officials pulling strings to make it happen. Your guess is as good as mine as to what level such deals are given the go-ahead.

As for Mopany Copper Mine, it appears that after almost concluding with a Chinese group, the government has reopened the bid process by allowing a possible last-minute entry to be considered for its acquisition.

Whatever the reasons, it is now two years since Mr Hichilema was elected into office to manage Zambia with the promise that “Bally will fix it”.

It appears Mr Hichilema either underestimated the challenges Zambia is and has been facing, or that may be “Bally” had no plan even after being given 16 years to prepare for the job.

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party

Siandenge will be Hichilema’s downfall Featured

August 10, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

After the events of the past two days, our thoughtful and honest conclusion is that the Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of State House, Mr Fanwell Siandenge, is a danger to Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s presidency and the country.

We say this without any grain of malice or ill intention. What we are saying is based on an exhaustive assessment of activities and events that have taken place in the country regarding my arrest and subsequent detention, all of which were totally unnecessary and ill advised.

It requires very little effort for anybody to notice that there is chaos in the Zambia Police high command and by extension, the Presidency, or State House in particular. And the main culprit in all this is Mr Siandenge himself.

It is evident that Mr Siandenge has been handed a blank cheque by Mr Hichilema to do exactly what he wants, which is most unfortunate, and this is what resulted in the unprecedented blunders, recklessness, and administrative chaos we witnessed in the police high command in the last two days.

So, without regard for hierarchy, Mr Siandenge has been pulling strings and literally playing his superior, the Inspector General of Police, Mr Graphel Musamba, like a string puppet. For instance, we are fully aware of what transpired for Mr Musamba to shamelessly parade himself before cameras to read that disgraceful and outrageous speech word-for-word.

Mr Siandenge is abusing the proximity and personal relationship he shares with Mr Hichilema. That is why, today, Mr Siandenge is like a god within the police and other state institutions, and nobody dares to question him on anything, including erroneous and senseless orders.

Mr Siandenge, who is renowned within the system for watching over Mr Hichilema like a hawk and projecting himself as a true loyalist of greater strength, ability, and intelligence than everybody else around the President, has shrewdly brought Mr Hichilema and the entire presidency under his control without them even noticing. That is why he is able to get away with literally anything.

But this is dangerous both for Mr Hichilema and the country. And the earlier Mr Hichilema realises this, the better for his administration and his legacy. Letting Mr Siandenge operate in an unrestrained manner like he has been doing lately will cost Mr Hichilema heavily and he will regret it someday soon.

Being the Deputy Inspector General of Police in the Zambia Police Service is not just a fancy title; it’s a responsibility that requires a special set of skills and immense effort. It’s not a job for everybody. It’s a job for seasoned patriots with demonstrable maturity, objectivity, impact, and real vision – and not party zealots with limited knowledge and understanding of what they are supposed to do, like Mr Siandenge.

The honest truth is, Mr Siandenge is not Deputy Inspector General of Police material. Yes, he may be relevant and effective in his personal dealings with Mr Hichilema but as DIG, the man is not fit or capable of holding that office or any other at that level.

And Mr Siandenge’s continued existence in that role will just entrench the mediocrity we are experiencing in the police today and degrade the presidency even further.

Let Mr Hichilema provide a career path alternative for Mr Siandenge and save the country from his tactless, primitive, and ignorant policing. Policing and law enforcement has become so sophisticated and difficult to navigate that dunderheads like Mr Siandenge will be forever lost at sea.

Remove Mr Siandenge and save yourself from shame!

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party

Is police high command the new government mouthpiece? Featured

August 9, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

So under Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s “new dawn” administration, the police high command is now designated an official government mouthpiece.

We say so because we are constantly seeing the police high command defending or deflecting criticism from the public and opposition political parties, as well as expressing or interpreting highly politically charged views, which is only common to active politicians. What manner of incompetence and administrative chaos is this?

And the appointing authority, together with the crowd of so-called advisors, sees nothing wrong with this. They cannot see the unprecedented destruction they are causing to the Zambia Police Service as a whole, and how they are reducing this country to the status of a banana republic.

Anyway, that’s the price you pay when you thoughtlessly elevate semi-literates or people of limited knowledge and understanding of what they are supposed to do to the top echelons of institutional power.

It is very clear that this particular police high command, which heavily relies on the Deputy Inspector General of Police in-charge of State House, Mr Fanwell Siandenge, lacks the wisdom, and the theoretical and practical skills to handle a complex state institution like the police.

This police leadership, together with the appointing authority tolerating it, is a joke!

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

I’ll defend the dismissed cops Featured

August 9, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Today, I write to you from the dark, tiny, and cold concrete floorings of Lusaka’s Woodlands Police Station jail cells.

As expected, it has been an extremely cold and long night on the floor, but by God’s grace we have made it and seen the sun rising again. A privilege and blessing from above we can never take for granted except to thank our creator for his divine protection and sustenance.

It’s a brand new day and we look forward to witnessing what will unfold. On that score, please allow me to begin the day by addressing Mr Hakainde Hichilema and his far-right, corrupt UPND puppet regime.

I want to be candid with Mr Hichilema and his most trusted lieutenant, the Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of State House, Mr Fanwell Siandenge, that theirs is an exercise in futility because at this stage, no matter what they do, they are already on the bad side of our country’s history – the losing side.

And this is so because they are not with the people. They have quickly lost the touch and connection with the suffering masses of this country. Mr Hichilema and his far-right corrupt puppet regime is so neck deep in inequity. Such irresponsible, clueless, and cowardly leadership is not one that can scare us let alone frustrate our cause. There is no doubt that this is a failed project, and Mr Hichilema’s exit from office has just begun. The writing on the wall is clear.

And my message to Mr Hichilema and his Gestapo venerating Zambia Police Service high command led by Mr Siandenge, is that, if it is a crime to defend the interests and rights of the 35 police officers who were dismissed from the Zambia Police Service irregularly without any disciplinary hearings whatsoever, for which I should be arrested, detained, prosecuted and sent to prison, then let it be so.

I will stand by these police officers and many others this sadistic regime is ill-treating and intend to ill-treat in the future, because these police officers deserve our compassion, support and solidarity. Even if some of the officers mistreated me when they were in service, they all deserve my compassion, support and solidarity, and not retribution.

Let Mr Hichilema and his league know that this type of primitive injustice and emotional torture, actually kills – it pushes some of the victims into severe depression and eventual death. Mr Hichilema should know that leadership without compassion is an old-fashioned mentality and nothing but complete savagery.

The Zambian people must be made aware that today, we have a heartless, corrupt, and cruel tribalist in national leadership. And what we are witnessing currently, is exactly what happens in a country when such people rule. This is a cruel leadership that gets a kick from inflicting pain and suffering on its own citizens. But we are putting them on notice that we are ready for them and their excesses.

I urge Mr Hichilema and his league not to treat police officers like common labourers or general workers – they are very important officers of the state who deserve much better treatment and respect.

In fact, if there are two individuals in this country who are supposed to be more humane and compassionate to others, it’s Mr Hichilema and Mr Siandenge themselves, who suffered pain at some point in their lives. Clearly, the duo haven’t healed, they are still bitter people and bad students of history who cannot learn even from their own experiences, which is most unfortunate, as innocent Zambians will be made to pay for crimes they didn’t commit.

But it also shows that the two are not opposed to what they saw as autocratic methods when they were in pain and suffering themselves.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

KCM/Mopani deals: A case of untimely inaction being worse than untimely action Featured

August 2, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s government promised to sort out the issues of Mopani and KCM by the end of July. Today the dates have been changed to “we don’t know when”.

Clearly, after several months of illusions and posturing over Mopani and KCM, reality has dawned on Mr Hichilema and his far-right UPND government and they are now running back and forth. Even the lies have dried up as the truth steadily seeps in through the cracks on these two transactions. They are lost and stuck, and literally dangling from the ceiling like bats in broad daylight.

What’s the problem? What’s troubling them?

The Key Performance Indicators include the following:

An investment of more than $1 billion to develop KDMP;
Salary and wage increments for KCM staff;
Assume and pay-off debts owing to suppliers and contractors to KCM. These will be mainly debts incurred by the Provisional Liquidator and may be upwards of $300 million, excluding the electricity bill.

Should this information we have be true, then this imminent deal between Mr Hichilema’s government will surpass the Lungu government’s $1.5 billion deal with Glencore over Mopani.

Noticeably, there is something fishy about this deal and it can only be because Vedanta may have parted with some money to allow for such a bad deal against Zambians to be tabled for finalisation.

As for MCM, it appears that after almost concluding with a Chinese group, the government has reopened the bid process by allowing a possible last-minute entry to be considered for its acquisition.

Whatever the reasons, it is now two years since Mr Hichilema was elected into office to manage Zambia with the promise that “Bally will fix it”. It appears Mr Hichilema either underestimated the challenges Zambia is and has been facing, or that may be “Bally” had no plan even after being given 16 years to prepare for the job.

The delayed capitalisation of the two mining operations has been and is too painful for Zambia, especially for the residents of the Copperbelt Province. Statements to the effect that the delay is “because the government wants to safeguard the interests of Zambians” are hollow and deceitful because it is clear that Mr Hichilema and the UPND had no plan to “fix” any challenges Zambia was facing before they were elected, and now the problems have grown bigger.

But armed with the painful history of the privatisation exercise and the activities of some negotiators/consultants who were implicated, we can only hope and pray that these seemingly continuous delays are not coordinated to enable a handful of business friends and partners to carve up the two mines, which have been the engines of the Copperbelt.

That is why, as responsible citizens, we strongly feel that we have a duty to demand total transparency in these two transactions to ensure that we prevent a situation where the same individuals with a checkered past or those connected to them, gain the right to take over the running of these prime ventures for a song or a mere fraction of their true value.

A repeat of thoughtless agreements, such as happened with the mine in Luanshya and how Grant Thornton – a firm where Mr Hichilema was at the helm of the consulting wing – got involved and was rewarded millions of dollars for the mine whose sale remains one of the enduring sources of tragedies in Luanshya and beyond, must never be allowed to happen again.

We must remain vigilant and not allow the swindlers of our mines during the sham privatisation exercise to return as messiahs of the Copperbelt. The architects of the existing poverty and squalor on the Copperbelt must not be given another opportunity to hoodwink our people into thinking that they have a solution to the issues surrounding Mopani/KCM. Let us not allow them to use public office for private gain.

Further, it is now inescapable for Bally to now explain whether he meant to “fix” the people of Zambia and not the problems they were facing, because clearly his delay in fixing the economy is fixing the poor people of Zambia. And the delay to “fix” the mines is indeed fixing the people of the Copperbelt. Its like the people of the Copperbelt are being punished for trusting Mr Hichilema and his campaign promises, which they have later learnt were built on total deception, lies and manipulation.

What is even worse, is Mr Hichilema’s lack of a sense of urgency in dealing with the prevailing desperate situation on the Copperbelt. He is taking his time as if he is not dealing with fellow citizens, his voters. But what more can one expect from an insensitive, greedy and plundering leadership? Our people must know that this leadership is about self-interest and the illicit amassing of wealth – they want to the first Zambian billionaires!

The suffering masses are not and will never be a priority. But we urge our people to remain resilient as we defend and protect our mineral resources and national wealth. And for Mr Hichilema and his league, to you we say, you have no justifiable reason to prolong the resolution of issues at Mopani/KCM. Look beyond your interests and rescue the masses. They have suffered enough. Have a heart; you don’t treat your fellow citizens this way.

As Lenin aptly put it, “Untimely inaction is worse than untimely action”.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

Hichilema has ordered my arrest Featured

August 1, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

…stop the dangerous Koswe games; you’re President now

A few weeks ago, I guided Mr Hakainde Hichilema through an article headlined: “Confusion Reigns At The Defence Forces”. And below is the article:

Secretary to the Cabinet Mr Patrick Kangwa has appointed Mr Friday Nyambe, the Director General Office of the President Special Division, as chairman of the Central Joint Operations Committee (CJOC) with immediate effect.

The Duties of the President and Commander-in-Chief are never shared or delegated, not even to the Vice-President. It is only the President who has authority over matters of deployment of the Defence Forces and their officers. CJOC was a creation of the Zambia Army and Zambia Police. Never in the history of Zambia, or any other defence force in world, has this happened.

The CJOC in Zambia consists of the Chairman, the Vice-Chairman, the Secretary, and members from other government agencies with work related to fields of border protection and inland security.

The collective body of the CJOC is headed by the Chairman (or Vice-Chairman in the Chairman’s absence), who sets the agenda and presides over meetings.

Responsibilities for members of the CJOC are to take precedence over tasks of national security as a team. The Chairman of the CJOC is the Army Commander, the principal military adviser to the President, Ministry of Defence, and the Defence Council. However, all CJOC members are by law military advisers, and they may respond to a request or voluntarily submit, through the Chairman, advice or opinions to the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces.

The executive authority of the CJOC in Zambia has never changed. It is as designed the world over. In World War II, the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff acted as executive agents dealing with area commanders, but the original National Security Act of 1947 saw the Joint Chiefs of Staff as planners and advisers, not as commanders of combatant commands. In spite of this, the 1948 Key West Agreement allowed members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to serve as executive agents for unified commands, a responsibility that allowed the executive agent to originate direct communication with the combatant command. Congress abolished this authority in a 1953 amendment to the National Security Act.

Today, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have no executive authority to command combatant forces. The issue of executive authority was clearly resolved by the Goldwater-Nichols DOD Reorganisation Act of 1986: “The Secretaries of the Military Departments shall assign all forces under their jurisdiction to unified and specified combatant commands to perform missions assigned to those commands.” The chain of command runs through the President to the commander of the combatant command.

In Zambia, the security system has a solid foundation dating as far back as the first and second Republics. Dr Kenneth Kaunda laid a very strong foundation, which has proved extremely effective in the absence of a unified command.

It is important to mention here, or educate Mr Hakainde Hichilema and his team, that powers vested in the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces are for the President only. Mr Hakainde Hichilema should learn to consult from the elders before attempting to change traditions that have kept the Zambian nation together. National security instruments of power are never shared anywhere in the world. The Minister of Defence, the Minister of Home Affairs, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence and Secretary to the Cabinet, have no power to issue orders or instructions to the Defence Forces. When this happens, it marks the beginning of a downfall and break down of systems.

Disorganising the Zambia Defence Forces is a very serious weakness on the part of the Presidency. We advise Mr Hichilema to put his house in order and not to allow any person to abuse or take over his responsibility as Commander-in- Chief.

On July 26, 2023, Defence Minister Ambrose Lufuma said government had shifted the Chairmanship of the Central Joint Operations Committee which was headed by the Army Commander to another security wing. Mr Lufuma said the change in Chairmanship was because the country is faced with mild security challenges, which are mainly internal and can be best discharged by another security wing.
He said this is until the security dynamics change.

Mr Lufuma said the government had appointed Director General Special Division Friday Nyambe as Chairperson of the Central Joint Operations Committee and Lieutenant General Sitali Alibuzwi as Vice Chairperson for administrative convenience. And Mr LUFUMA said it is unfortunate that there was a leakage of the letter which was written to all concerned by the Secretary to the Cabinet. He however said those found behind the leakage of the letter will be dealt with by the law, as it violates the law of communication of certain information and protection of classified information. https://www.znbc.co.zm/news/changes-made-to-the-cjoc-chairmanship/

On July 28, 2023, former defence minister, Davies Chama joined the discourse saying that the change in chairmanship for the defence Central Joint Operations Committee (CJOC) is unnecessary and only raises suspicion. https://diggers.news/local/2023/07/28/change-of-chairmanship-for-cjoc-suspicious-chama/

On July 29, 2023, PF presidential aspirant, Mr Emmanuel Mwamba chipped in with an article headlined: “President Hichilema and the Rogue Media at State House”. Find below Mr. Mwamba’s article in full:

Koswe, a known rogue media run by State House media team, has run dangerous and defamatory articles against the Zambia Army Commander, Lieutenant General Dennis Sitali Alibuzwi and Socialist Party President, Dr Fred M’membe, literally accusing them of treason and conspiracy.

Later, the Army Commander has been relegated to the position of Vice Chairperson of the Central Joint Operations Committee (CJOC), a highly irregular move.

Minister of Defence, Ambrose Lufuma said the Chairmanship of the CJOC has since been taken by Director General of the Zambia Security and Intelligence Services, Mr Friday Nyambe.

It is irrefutable that Koswe is run by State House and this has been publicly asserted by many, including those close to the team. The question is why does President Hakainde Hichilema allow this?

The rogue media defames, insults, abuses, and destroys lives of his own officials, relentlessly engaging in character assassination of members of the Opposition and citizens, and this is done without remedial or recourse to the law.

Koswe instigates dismissals, prevents employment of successful candidates, incites arrests and encourages hate speech against Citizens.

Reporting Koswe to authorities is useless as both Police or ZICTA can never act against a State House entity.

No one has been spared from the character assasinations, lies and defamatory attacks including President Hichilema’s own Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and especially members of the Opposition.

When the online paper attacked and ran defamatory and dangerous allegations against State House Permanent Secretary Oliver Kalabo in December 2021, it had to take his own spouse and long-time senior member of the UPND media team, Jacqueline Saidi Chishimba to go to her Facebook page and call out and name the Koswe editors for them to stop the rot on her husband.

A few weeks ago, the rogue paper ran articles against Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary, Chembo Mbula and it didn’t take long, he was quickly transferred!
That has been the case of many silent victims.

It is now clear that President Hichilema allows and feeds Koswe, using it and unleashing it as an attack and rabid dog against harpless Citizens.

President Hichilema is now the Republican President and he cannot allow the abuse of the law, and the abuse of citizens. It could have been excusable when he was in Opposition to run guerrilla journalism but he is now President, sworn to defend the Constitution and sworn to defend the rights of all citizens.

Mr President, Koswe, a monster you have been feeding, is now NOT even afraid to toy with Zambia’s national peace and security. How do you allow the attacks on your own Army Commander and the subsequent changes you have since made? https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=emmanuel%20mwamba

Above is the sequence of events of who said what and when. But throughout this period, Koswe, the discredited UPND guerilla channel, which is housed at State House, had been on the offensive splashing all manner of defamatory, seditious and inciting articles against persons like myself, including Mr Hichilema’s own appointed Army Commander, Lieutenant General Dennis Sitali Alibuzwi without remedial or recourse to the law.

However today, after all the lawlessness and highly seditious activities committed by the State House media team via the discredited Koswe, I have been reliably informed that Mr Hichilema has directed that I should be arrested and charged with serious charges under the State Security Act. The plan is to abuse law enforcement agencies and prescribe false charges against me so that I can be grounded politically for merely exercising my right to freedom of speech like everybody else who spoke on this matter.

But this won’t work, this country has got laws that are decent enough to shield us from jungle and tyrannical tendencies Mr Hichilema and his far- right UPND government are shamelessly exhibiting. If people are sensible, responsible and objective, they will realise that I have not committed any offence. In fact, if there is anyone deserving to be charged and arrested for various serious offenses, its Mr Hichilema’s media team at State House because they carelessly turned a noble discourse of public interest into a state security matter.

Clearly, the indiscipline and unrestrained manner Mr Hichilema’s media team are going about in spreading hate speech, character assassination, lies and seditious attacks on the leaders and citizens of this country is most unfortunate and very dangerous. And one day, both Mr Hichilema and his attack dogs will regret ever taking such a highly polarising and dangerous path. They may abuse ZICTA, the police and other law enforcement agencies today but they should not forget that power is transitory and the Zambian people are not stupid, they know what is happening, and who is behind all this. And at the right time, decisions will be made based on the knowledge they kept close to their chests all this while because this is not the way to govern a country.

Mr Hichilema must show leadership and stop the highly reckless and dangerous Koswe and dog games. If it worked in opposition, it can no longer work anymore because that project has passed its shelf life – its discredited and its discrediting his presidency too. But we are ready for them, we didn’t sign up to fail in our quest to protect our country’s mineral resources and national wealth from the jaws of transnational corporations and imperialist puppets. Let them know that whatever we do, we do it for our people and we are ready to pay the price!

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

UPND’S two years in office have been a disaster – Fred M’membe Featured

July 29, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Socialist Party President Fred M’membe says the UPND administration, which clocks two years in office next month, has been disastrous.

Dr M’membe said the UPND government would be remembered for gagging divergent views by arresting opponents, and that even though tribalism was prevalent in previous administrations, the UPND had hit a record high.

He said the UPND administration had proven to be a puppet of Western governments by allowing an AFRICOM “office” in Lusaka, which posed a threat to neighbouring countries.

In addition, the government had failed to address the cost of living over the past couple of years with large increases in the prices of mealie meal, fuel and electricity.

The UPND administration had backtracked on other promises as well, such as its policy on street vendors and a pledge not to allow Vedanta to return to run Konkola Copper Mines – KCM.

Dr M’membe said there had also been selective justice in the fight against corruption with only political opponents being targeted, ignoring deep-rooted corruption in the UPND government.

Wounds left by Vedanta are still felt on the Copperbelt – Kelvin Kaunda Featured

July 29, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Kelvin Kaunda says the decision to allow Vedanta back to run Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) is not in the best interests of the people on the Copperbelt.

Kaunda, who is Socialist Party National Youth Chairperson and is on the Copperbelt for a three-day working visit, said people must be protected from companies that are not interested in the welfare of their employees.

He told the residents of Mufulira at a meeting that Zambians must start claiming what is theirs and benefit from the country’s resources.

“Both suppliers and the workers were mistreated. Employees went for months without getting their dues and contractors went for years without pay under Vedanta,” he said.

“Businesses died and families were destroyed. The wounds are still fresh. The company was abusive in its relationship with both workers and suppliers – and today we should go back?”

Kaunda criticised the UPND for its continued failure to fulfil what it promised.

“What Zambia needs is to see the prices of goods and services being reduced. This is no laughing matter. Just because balelya bwino bena, they think the economy is OK for the majority,” he said.

“They must face reality, get on the ground and see how people are suffering, people who genuinely need help. The price of mealie meal is now way beyond what was promised, and unemployment levels are still high.”

Kaunda said he was impressed with the rate at which the Socialist Party was gaining numbers countrywide, adding that people were attracted to the leadership of party President Fred M’membe.

“We are grateful for the support we have been receiving as a party. The Socialist Party has shown that it is the party of choice. It is a party for all classes and not the elites and privileged few,” he said.

The parallel between Mobutu and Hichilema Featured

July 29, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

We take note of Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s response through the Minister of Information and Media, Ms Chushi Kasanda, who also doubles as the Chief Government spokesperson, to our concerns regarding the current terrible state of Zambia’s foreign relations under Mr Hichilema’s far-right UPND government.

We have carefully studied Mr Hichilema’s reaction and realised that they are aliens to the discourse they are attempting to engage us in. To put it simply, they are at sea. They do not grasp the geopolitical standpoints informing the deep foreign relation matters we have been consistently raising.

A puppet regime or puppet government is a state that is de jure independent but de facto completely dependent upon an outside power and subject to its dictates, orders or desires. Puppet states have nominal sovereignty, except that a foreign power effectively exercises control through economic or military support. By leaving a local government in existence, the outside power evades all responsibility, while at the same time successfully paralysing the local government they tolerate.

Puppet states differ from allies, who choose their actions of their own initiative or in accordance with treaties they have voluntarily entered into. Puppet states are forced into legally endorsing actions already taken by a foreign power.

And so, this government is merely pretending to be saying something even when it is vividly clear that it does not comprehend, let alone subscribe to, our detailed and patriotic stance on these matters. But since they are liars and hypocrites, they are busy issuing statements whose contents they do not fathom and in response to matters which are totally beyond their grasp, just to save face. With due respect, Mr Hichilema’s reaction today, through Ms Kasanda, is actually nothing but mere words on paper – not to be taken literally.

That said, we want to make it categorically clear once more that Mr Hichilema is leading a far-right Western puppet regime and is delivering on his key commitments to the West and NOT to the Zambian people. He is a Western project. A front for the West to dominate us and loot our minerals and national wealth in the 21st Century.

Isn’t it odd that while Western countries are very happy with Mr Hichilema, who has created an enabling environment for foreign capital and individual accumulation of wealth for those who loot Africa’s minerals and national resources, the Zambian people are waking up to the higher prices of commodities everyday? And Mr Hichilema seems not to care about the poor living conditions of our people at all.

But our people must know that this is not a new thing in Africa, because we have had leaders like Mr Hichilema before, who mortgaged their countries for personal gain and glory. Our neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire, for instance, was once led by Mobutu Sese Seko, a leader installed by the United States and the Belgians to serve Western interests in exchange for personal power, glory and other benefits.

Today, Mr Hichilema appears very clearly to be inspired by Mobutu in his zeal to please the West while dividing the country and choking the poor masses with his neo-colonialist puppet agenda. But the sad part of it all is that the losers will be the people of Zambia, much the same way as the people of the DRC were the losers under Mobutu. Mr Hichilema must know that the Mobutu approach to foreign relations and irresponsible handling of national wealth and state power has always ended with disastrous consequences and hugely negated development in countries that attempted to entrench this repulsive style of governance.

Few will forget Mr Hichilema’s excitement when he was summoned to the White House upon assuming office to meet, not Mr Joe Biden, but Kamala Harris, and in his excitement, he was not ashamed to tell the world how happy he was to be “the first to be invited to the White House” (even though this was not true as Mobutu and other puppets had been there before him). We do not know how many times Africa’s founding fathers turned in their graves to see a reincarnation of Mobutu in an era when leaders should know better than being a puppet of the West.

Mr Hichilema must know that owing to his puppeteering and foreign policy inconsistencies, Zambia is currently standing out on the continent as a bastion of diplomatic treachery, transnational corporations and Western interests, a situation which is getting the country increasingly isolated both in the sub-region and across the African continent. If nobody has told him this, let him hear it from us that Zambia no longer commands the respect and admiration it once had on the continent and globally. We stand discredited and unnoticed due to this government’s treachery and prostitution on key foreign policy matters. We have shamelessly abandoned our non-aligned position on global affairs, a policy that gained Zambia global recognition, support and respect – and we expect our traditional allies to look at us the same way?

Even back at home, the situation is the same. Mr Hichilema’s commitment to serve the West and transnational corporations has distanced him from the masses who elected him, but who are left to scavenge for a living while he assists his Western masters to sustain their hegemony.

If indeed, Mr Hichilema and his far-right UPND government prioritises transparency and sovereignty throughout its decision-making process, as claimed by Ms Kasanda, we challenge them to make the AFRICOM office agreement public. If not, let them stop lying to our people and violating our territorial integrity and sovereignty through reckless decisions like allowing the US to be hovering and patrolling our country like a chosen race of prefects via AFRICOM.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

Hichilema must review police salaries Featured

July 28, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Mr Hakainde Hichilema and his far- right UPND government must urgently review the remuneration and conditions of service for Zambia Police Service officers and staff.

We have made this demand in response to the frequent appeals and complaints our party leadership and structures countrywide have been receiving regarding this matter, which we strongly feel is long overdue.

And going by the appeals and complaints, we have received so far, it is very clear that this matter is yet another unfulfilled campaign promise because the expectation was that after Mr Hichilema’s 2021 elections victory, there would be some kind of gradual progression towards prioritising and attending to the numerous hardships facing our police officers and staff.

But this has not been the case and this is not right. That is why we are demanding that Mr Hichilema and his government to immediately initiate a comprehensive review in the manner the police officers and staff are remunerated. And this review of remuneration and conditions of service must be aligned with the challenges and demands of modern policing.

Police officers and staff are an integral part of our national defence and security apparatus. For this reason, it is necessary that this far- right UPND government urgently looks into their plight by providing and caring for them. Our police deserve to be adequately and fairly remunerated in order for them to account for their performance and general conduct satisfactorily.

Further, policing has become a highly sophisticated career, which requires extensive knowledge and skills in the discharge of duties. That is why we urge Mr Hichilema and his league to invest in capacity building programmes, skills training and career development for the police to guarantee a higher level of competence that will be fit for purpose in the 21st century.

Our assurance to the gallant police officers and staff is that if this government does not respond favourably to the issues raised above, we shall implement these plans upon assuming office because our main goal is to modernise the police service by bridging the existing remuneration as well as training and career development gaps.

This is so much of a priority to us because we want to ensure that the nation is assisted by a highly motivated and flexible police service that is determined and strong enough to reach its full potential. So let our police officers and staff know that tuli bantu babo and we are resolved to reward their tireless effort and sacrifice for the motherland to enable them provide a better service for all Zambians.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

UPND government is highly corrupt, unstable and directionless Featured

July 28, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s government is highly corrupt, unstable and directionless and our people must manage their expectations because nothing epic will arise out of this double-dealing far- right UPND regime.

We can say it without any hesitation that Mr Hichilema is leading the most corrupt, divisive and neo-colonialist puppet regime in the history of our nation. Simply put, Mr Hichilema and his league are agents of mining transnational corporations and the Brenthurst Foundation with the primary focus of keeping the indigenous suffering majority of our people to the extreme margins of economic structures and activities as they regain control of our mineral resources and national wealth.

Without a doubt, these are people who are unpatriotic to the nation and with no empathy whatsoever for the poor people on whose behalf they claim to govern. No wonder they can decide without reluctance to apply colonial administration methods of keeping the suffering indigenous people at the peripheries of the Central Business District of Lusaka without offering proper alternatives. They have no heart for the poor because Mr Hichilema and his league view the poor people of this nation as a nuisance.

Let us not forget that Mr Hichilema told our people so many lies and typical of his kind, instead of apologising for his deceit and manipulation, he has elected to pass the blame on the poor people, whose trust and confidence he has abused unsympathetically.

Going forward, our honest counsel to the Zambian people is to understand Mr Hichilema in the context that he is a brutally stubborn liar and manipulator with no clue on how to govern the country fairly, efficiently, effectively and in an orderly manner yet reluctant to follow advice. Zambians must know that the lies Mr Hichilema told before being elected into office; the lies he is telling today and the lies he will tell tomorrow are all done consciously and intentionally.

These lies are neither misstatements of fact nor regrettable errors. They are all part of Mr Hichilema’s grand scheme to “fabricate his own reality” and run with it as if there is nothing wrong or indecent about what he is doing. In Mr Hichilema’s mind, he owes nobody an honest discourse and promise later alone an apology once caught lying.

It’s a shameless and unethical undertaking, which unfortunately, Mr Hichilema seems to have perfected and adopted as part of his persona over time but it will no longer work because Zambians are wide-awake to his deception and are resolute to put a stop to this corrupt, dishonest and manipulative regime. And Mr Hichilema and his far-right UPND government must know that we have launched a selfless struggle for the poor people of this nation and nothing will stand in our way. Pantu ubufi bwachila!

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

UPND government is highly corrupt, unstable and directionless Featured

July 27, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

Vedanta’s Agarwal to get back KCM after parting with $200m Featured

July 16, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

After parting with US $200 million Vedanta Resources Plc’s 69 year-old Indian owner, Anil Agarwal, is assured of getting back KCM which he lost control of in a Zambian government initiated liquidation order in 2020.

Agarwal acquired KCM in 2004 in a transaction which had an aggregate value of approximately US$270 million, comprised of cash consideration of US$48.2 million for the 51 per cent stake, a commitment on the part of Vedanta to fund cash flows in KCM to an aggregate limit of US$220 million, and an agreement on the part of Vedanta to contribute US$1 million towards the cost of a feasibility study of substantial deeper level resources associated with the Konkola mine (containing estimated resources of around 250 million tonnes at 3.8 per cent copper), to be undertaken by December 31, 2006.

In August 2021, whilst addressing miners in Kitwe, Mr Edgar Lungu (President of the Republic of Zambia then) then claimed that he had received a report that Mr Hakainde Hichilema was soliciting US$300,000 from Vedanta, promising to give them back KCM once elected. An accusation, which Mr Hichilema vehemently denied.

On April 25, 2022, during a media briefing at State House, Mr Hichilema dismissed media reports suggesting that government planned to give back KCM to Vedanta as falsehoods.

But on May 9, 2022, Mr Hichilema U-turned stating that “Vedanta and ourselves have agreed that we suspend litigation.”

Going by the sequence of events and inconsistencies in the statements, especially on the part of Mr Hichilema, we demand that he comes out clean on the Vedanta issue. What is going on? The Zambian people deserve to know the truth and how decisions have been arrived at in this matter.

Fred M’membe

Finally, Hichilema is going to China Featured

July 15, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

After a lot of illusions and arrogance accompanied by ignorance, finally, Mr Hakainde Hichilema has conceded to guidance on the need to respect and uphold the traditional friendship between Zambia and China, and will embark on a state visit to the country next month (August).

We are glad that eventually, commonsense has prevailed over Mr Hichilema’s big-headedness and diplomatic ignorance on this matter of major interest to our country and its people.

Sino-Zambia relations are a traditional friendship established by the founding leaders of a senior generation of the two countries, Chairman Mao Zedong and Dr Kenneth Kaunda. And these relations have withstood the test of time because they have always been anchored in mutual trust, respect, and cooperation.

And so, as Mr Hichilema heads to China next month, he should take into account a few critical issues to enable him to represent our people and country well and prevent possible embarrassments to the country and himself as a leader:

• Let Mr Hichilema firmly and uncompromisingly stick to and reaffirm our country’s support for the one-China policy and unequivocally state that the government of the People’s Republic of China, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, is the sole legal representative of the Chinese people, and denounce US interference in the internal affairs of China over Taiwan.

• Mr Hichilema must appreciate that strengthening Sino-Zambia ties and China-Africa friendship and cooperation in general has always been a vital cornerstone of China’s foreign policy. And the Chinese have always been willing to work with Africa with mutual respect and equality in order to open up and advance new prospects of cooperation with practicality on a win-win basis.

• Mr Hichilema should realise that prostitution is for brothels and not for foreign relations. There is a need to stick to our traditional non-aligned policy and not allow our country to become an agent of US imperialism and its hegemonic agenda, and not allow AFRICOM to establish itself in our country.

• Mr Hichilema must exchange in-depth, genuine and unswerving views on Sino-Zambia ties with President Xi Jinping in order to deepen mutual trust, confidence, and cooperation between our two countries. There is no need for Mr Hichilema to start prostituting around clear matters of foreign policy, because the Chinese have always been consistent, sincere, and have helped Zambia in the cause of national development since the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1964. The Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA) line is one of the many historical testimonies to their genuineness and dedication.

• Mr Hichilema must realise that in order for Zambia to carry forward and sustain this inherited, traditional friendship between the two countries, frequent visits and exchanges are the surest way of cementing friendships closer and tighter. There was no need to wait this long to take this important trip, particularly when one considers the longstanding relationship Zambia shares with China.

• Mr Hichilema must value the relevant cooperation plans from China and seek to expand them in areas such as technology, agriculture, commerce and trade, infrastructure, and so on, to enable Zambia to realise economic stability and self-development.

• Mr Hichilema must also guarantee the legal rights of Chinese enterprises operating in Zambia and not harass them at the instigation of his friends – the US – and other imperialist governments he is fraternising with.

As we have always said, this particular state visit is crucial to resolving Zambia’s current economic glitches, and Mr Hichilema must attach importance and honesty to this engagement. Let him not go to China with the usual diplomatic illiteracy he parades – egocentricity and his habitual lies – because the people he is going to meet are not fools. They are well ahead of him and very refined. They have already studied his personality, inclinations, intellect, emotions, behaviours, and so on.

They will give him the full honours, ceremonies and pomp, which he seems to be enjoying so much lately, but if he proves to them that he is not a man of his word, they will never respect him as a decent human being, and that will be a great shame in the diplomatic history of our country, because China has been “a good friend, partner and brother” to Zambia and the Chinese have always held successive leaders of this country in high esteem and trust since the establishment of Sino-Zambia relations.

The die is cast. Zambia is watching!

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party

Why is the British envoy all over our affairs like a rat? Featured

July 7, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

We have noted with great concern the stance adopted by the British High Commissioner to Zambia, Mr Nicholas Woolley, regarding Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s government’s corrupt fight against corruption and the rising incidences of torture and brutality by the police.

High Commissioner Woolley is quoted by Radio Phoenix as having said that investigations by law enforcement agencies should not be taken as harassment but restoration of order and that Zambia’s civic space had not shrunk because citizens had continued to enjoy renewed democracy through progressive laws under Mr Hichilema’s administration.

We are not surprised with High Commissioner Woolley’s assessment of the situation in Zambia today owing to the personal relationship he has cultivated with Mr Hichilema. And it’s this close connection, which makes him a blind and biased assessor and renders his opinions unreasonable and useless.

We have no problem with his close relationship with Mr Hichilema but he should not try to project that relationship on our national affairs because if he continues, we will treat him as an extension of Mr Hichilema’s government and go for him. What doesn’t concern him, he should leave it alone.

High Commissioner Woolley is increasingly playing as if he is an active player in Zambian politics. He is not a Zambian politician. He is a British diplomat. If he continues playing as if he was a Zambian politician, that diplomatic respect we have for him will be lifted. He is all over Zambian political affairs like a rat!

Let him know that he is not the Governor of Northern Rhodesia but a British diplomat in Zambia. The last Governor of Northern Rhodesia, Sir Evelyn Hone, left in 1964 and we will not allow a new one to emerge – we are nolonger a British colony or possession.

We are faced with an excessively brutal and corrupt regime, which is abducting and torturing citizens for merely voicing dissert and he has the nerve to play down such atrocities as restoration of order. Can such happen in the UK and it’s accepted? Can the UK Prime Minister refuse to declare his assets and business interests, and its accepted? The British removed prime ministers even for the smallest of things – having a small party, some little entertainment – during the COVID-19 lock down – yet he wants to approach the very serious matters facing the Zambian people today with a superior and contemptuous attitude. We demand respect and that High Commissioner Woolley begins to consider our national affairs with befitting gravitas.

We know that Woolley was a clone trooper who served in the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars with the 212th Attack Battalion, but this is a very different place and time. He is dealing with a very different people, in very different place and very different time in a very wrong way.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

A response to Hichilema’s corrupt corruption fight response Featured

July 7, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Mr Hakainde Hichilema appears agitated by our insistence that his UPND government is a looting machine and is rotten with corruption to the core.

Yesterday, Minister of Information and Media and Chief Government Spokesperson, Ms Chushi Kasanda accused us of making false narratives and unsubstantiated claims about Mr Hichilema’s fight against corruption, which we still insist is driven by hypocrisy and vengeance.

Ms Kasanda further said our observations were without merit and lacked any substantive evidence claiming that this government’s commitment to fighting corruption was not mere rhetoric.

We have taken note of Mr Hichilema’s response through Ms Kasanda and we would want to make it clear to him that we are neither concocting any intrigues nor maliciously attacking anyone but merely stating facts as they are. It requires little intelligence – if a little is all one has – to figure out what is going on. That is why we are fully aware of what is happening in this government and can confidently state that under Mr.Hichilema’s leadership, corruption in Zambia has not gone away, it has simply migrated to new players.

In fact, we can categorically state that this is a government full of shifty and money- grabbing individuals whose primary aim is plundering or immoral accumulation of wealth. These are shameless liars who are busy misleading our people that they are restructuring the economy yet all they are doing is to reconfigure business and our politics to suit their crude thieving methods.

The truth is there is no genuine fight against corruption under Mr Hichilema and all that is happening is just deception. But what they don’t know is that to fight corruption or indeed any other vices in government, it requires a great sense of values, integrity and a genuine desire and patriotism for a more humane, fair, just and stable nation. And Mr Hichilema’s government does not represent any of this.

For Mr Hichilema, the purported fight against corruption is but another drop of incense on the altar of political expedience. It seems to be a fight that is more structured to puncture holes in the political fortunes of those he doesn’t like. It is an idea driven by blatant hypocrisy and excessive vengeance. Zambians must know that if this crusade was genuine, it would have been pursued with a strict adherence to the rule of law and the fundamental rights of those accused and not this poorly choreographed performance we are witnessing.

Further, a genuine crusade against corruption has nothing to do with fixing those you want to politically obliterate. It ought to be anchored on a solid abhorrence for the vice and its attendant consequences. What we see is a smoke screen! And since we have been challenged to base our criticism on facts we shall argue our case with specifics.

On corruption in Zambia, the recent US Report stated as follows:

There were numerous reports of government corruption.
The law also provides for declaration of assets by members of parliament and ministers when entering and leaving public office, but there is no subsidiary legislation providing for sanctions for breach or for failure to declare assets. There is no verification system, and asset data were not available to the public.
Other senior public officials, including permanent secretaries, heads of state-owned enterprises, and officials involved in public procurement are not required to declare. Although some institutions have institutionalised mechanisms for asset declaration, no one has ever been sanctioned for failure to declare, TIZ reported.
Although the government collaborated with the international community and civil society organisations to improve capacity to investigate and prevent corruption, anticorruption NGOs observed the enforcement rate was low among senior government officials and civil service, and there was concern that the corruption fight was focused primarily on corrupt practices of the previous administration.
There were also reports of corruption in the sitting administration. For example, there were allegations of corruption in fertilizer procurement by the Ministry of Agriculture, the procurement of 75 motor bikes by the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services at a total cost of 9,885,010 New Kwacha ($588,000), and the issuance of mining licenses by the Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development involving the sitting administration, TIZ reported.
In July President Hichilema fired the Ministry of Health’s Permanent Secretary George Magwende, ostensibly over a corrupt tender involving the construction of seven prefabricated COVID-19 isolation hospitals in Lusaka worth nearly $100 million, which was signed by the previous administration in 2020 but never executed. According to media, officials of the Attorney General’s Office and the Treasury had signed off on the legality and financial feasibility of the tender.

The dismissal of Luapula Province minister Derricky Chilundika and his subsequent arrest is but an insignificant scapegoat because there are other key leaders of this government – big dealers- involved in the illicit mineral dealings, especially gold. They are doing it with impunity. Why is Mr Hichilema silent on illegal gold dealings in the country?
We have real corruption in fertilizer procurement. A company styled as Alpha Commodities is increasingly stamping its authority as the ‘alpha and omega’ of fertilizer procurement in this country. Not so long ago, questions were raised about how this company bullied its way to a contract to supply fertilizer at highly inflated prices – single sourced and authorised by Mr Hichilema himself. This is the company under the control and ownership of the husband to Ms Kasanda, the Minister of Information and Media, who is also the Mr Hichilema’s close associate. Again nothing will happen.
An audit report that discloses the grand corruption that attended the fertilizer procurement in the recent past has been frustrated and swept under the carpet. Is this how you fight corruption?
Despite public demands from the chairman of the Anti Corruption Commission, Mr Hichilema has refused to publicly make declaration of his assets and liabilities. Why? What is he hiding? Is this the attitude of people who are determined to uphold the highest ethical standards as Ms Kasanda claims? Mr Hichilema’s snub to declare his assets as provided by the law and demanded by decency and transparency, justifies the concerns raised in the report by their friends in the US Department of State – on the mischief surrounding asset declaration and how some leaders in this government, including Mr Hichilema, who is the principal culprit are getting away with trying to evade the corruption radar.
There is serious uncertainty and turbulence in the petroleum sector owing to what is currently obtaining at the Tazama – Ndola Fuel Terminal. Can this government tell the nation how the deal to clean the TAZAMA Pipeline was awarded to Agro Fuel Limited? Also, can this government tell the nation how Agro Fuel Limited was extended another deal to manage the TAZAMA – Ndola Fuel Terminal? Can this government tell the nation who owns Agro Fuel Limited and whom they are closely associated with in this government, if any?

There are loads and loads of suspicious and dirty deals currently taking place in Mr Hichilema’s government but for now, we shall stick to the issues raised above and wait for the government’s response before taking the corruption discourse to the next level. Like we said, we are not afraid to call out this government’s dirty and corrupt schemes because we speak from our vast experience in investigating, detecting and exposing corruption. And it’s this same experience that has sharpened our ability to articulate these issues and to collect and collate as well as corroborate evidence of complex plunder matrixes.

Again, we repeat our message to the Zambian people that they should not be under any illusion that they have a decent leadership in place. The people they elected as leaders are nothing but vengeful hypocrites who operate under a system of rule that is anchored in the ‘It’s Our Turn to Eat’ principle. Accountability, transparency and human rights does not matter to Mr Hichilema and his government. But as the Yoruba proverb goes “everyday is for the thief, one day is for the owner”. Zambians are not fools, they can see through it all and they are waiting to see where this corrupt corruption fight of Mr Hichilema is heading.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

Day of Unity Featured

July 4, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

DAY OF UNITY

Yesterday it was our HEROES DAY, today it is our day of UNITY.

Today we are seeing many things – tribalism, religion and politics – being used to try and divide our people, our country.

Abraham Lincoln gracefully said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
There are 19.6 million people within our homeland, each with uniqueness and opposing view on fundamental aspects of life. Normally, dissimilarities create division and occasional conflict. However, we tend to forget that we all have one common goal – the betterment of our country and its people. This is what brings forth unity.

Opposing views are okay, it is quite easy to agree with others but it takes real strength and courage to respectfully disagree. We truly gain more from unity among opposing views as there as twice as many opinions, three times as many skills, four times as much information, five times as many opportunities and so one.

We learn about extended experiences, values and traditions. This means that the most uniting forces are not laws, constitutions, organisations, roads or buildings but people and their willingness to unify.

One Zambia, One Nation, means that Zambia is an independent nation but we are not independent of each other. It takes unity despite opposing views to run your household, to make your businesses function, to create programmes to teach in schools so why would you expect any less from a country and its people? Successful entities hire people with different specialities, different backgrounds, different kinds and levels of education and with all that diversity, it thrives. It builds tolerance towards the different and even the difficult.

Without unity, there is no growth, integrity, freedom and definitely no patriotism.

No team has ever won a game without team spirit with a united front. We want our football teams to excel yet we don’t independently practice what it takes for a country to win.

Unity equals good guidance, proper growth and true development. It provides a constant source of positive motivation and greater accomplishment.

While many factors contribute to the overall development of a country, national unity is the most vital. “Unity is Strength” and “United we stand, divided we fall”, are common phrases and are true to their every word. Can you really love a nation without loving all its citizens?

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

One Love!

Fred M’membe

Hard work alone doesn’t guarantee you a good life Featured

July 4, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The other day Mr Hakainde Hichilema was urging Zambians to work hard if they want to live well and be comfortable.

Listening to him I was wondering what my relatives in Eastern Province, who work seven days a week with no rest, would make of his words. The more they work the poorer they become.

They work hard every day growing cotton, tobacco, soybeans, groundnuts and maize, but their lives are not improving. The transnational corporations that deal in cotton and tobacco – and others – are the ones becoming richer and richer from their sweat and hard work.

The lives of these relatives of mine will never improve, no matter how hard they work, unless we deal with the way they are being robbed – and only a socialist revolution can truly end this exploitation.

We have politicians in the ruling party becoming richer and richer without much hard work – all from corruption, crooked fertiliser, oil, and other deals and contracts.

Clearly, when it comes to living a successful life, one of the most common thoughts that most people have is that they need to be extremely hard working. But the truth is that hard work alone is not enough.

There is no point working hard on something that gives you only small rewards. You can spend your entire life working hard on something but have nothing to show for it at the end of the day.

Now, the reason I’m writing this is NOT to tell you not to work hard, but rather, to share with you why hard work alone is insufficient if you want to be successful.

And more importantly, if you are working hard right now but not seeing much by way of results, and have been doing this for some time, you should perhaps spend some time thinking about your work.

Is the effort you have poured into it giving you the best results?

WHEN GREAT EFFORTS COMBINE WITH THE WRONG STRATEGY

While I’m not denying that hard work is important, it is only important when you are working hard at the right thing.

For instance, if you have been jogging and running for years, does that mean you are a good marathon runner and are able to compete at an Olympic level? No. But why is that?

You can work hard and run a marathon three times a week for the next ten years, but that does not make you an Olympian. Why?

The reason is that hard work alone is not enough. You need to follow a blueprint or the right strategy to get you where you want to go. If you keep running to the west, there is no way you can catch up with the sunrise, no matter how fast or how hard you run.

We were conditioned to work hard at whatever job we get and to believe that things will work out. This is false. Working hard at the wrong thing will not produce much for you.

In fact, working hard itself alone will exhaust you and shorten your life. Ronald Reagan has a famous quote: “It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but, I figure, why take the chance?”

Look at the picture above this article: a guy pushing a big boulder. As you can see, no matter how hard he tries, there is no way the guy can move the boulder unless he has a lever.

If you want to earn a million dollars a year, merely working and earning $5,000 a month will not make you reach your target. You need to do something else. You need something extra.

By saying that you need to do something extra, I’m not referring to working harder or spending more time doing it. Even if you are hard working and you work an additional five hours a day, and your boss doubles your salary to $10,000 a month, there is still no way you can reach the million-dollar mark.

Unless you leverage a system, you can never hit that goal, no matter how hard you work. This is why you need to learn how to leverage other financial vehicles, such as real estate, compound interest, business, and so on.

HOW DO YOU DEFINE HARD WORK?

The problem with working hard is that most people define “hard work” in the wrong way. They think that working long hours equals hard work which, I believe, is only partially true.

If you are working hard in the construction industry under the hot sun, then yes, you are working hard. However, if your work is all about sitting in a comfortable chair and typing and reading website after website, that is not really hard work in the same way, right?

You see, it all depends on how you define it. To me, there are two parts to the definition of hard work.

The first is what most of us already know, which is to work hard on a goal, diligently. But the second part is one that most people miss out on. It involves improving your strategy to make sure you are getting the right results.

In “hard work”, the first word “hard” is what we commonly know as working longer hours and putting in more effort. The second word, “work”, is all about something that WORKS. Yes, you need to be hard working, and work on something that works.

If you are at work right now, take a few minutes to think about the investment of time and energy you are making. Is your energy and effort well spent? Are you doing something that will pay off handsomely or will all your efforts go down the drain?

Things will become clearer if you think about working in a fixed-salary job. You will never see much economic benefit from pouring your energy into that job. Yes, you can be promoted and receive a pay raise, but you are sacrificing your life (time) with money.

Your boss may be grateful for all the hard work you have poured in, but it is impossible for him or her to give you a pay raise every month just because you work more.

Fred M’membe

State house’s silence on rising incidences of police brutality and torture shocking Featured

July 3, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

STATE HOUSE is silent on the rising incidences of torture and brutality by the police! Why? Is it because it is complicit?

Recently, the US State Department released a detailed report dubbed ‘USA 2022 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Zambia’ which brought to light a number of human rights abuses committed by Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s administration.

The Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) also condemned the increased incidents of police brutality against members of the opposition and cited the recent arrests of PF presidential hopeful Mr Emmanuel Mwamba, PF member and blogger Mr Rizwan Patel as well as Mr Given Phiri, a co- accused person with former State House Special Assistant for Politics, Dr Christopher Zumani Zimba as among the incidents where police brutality was in evidence.

LAZ further condemned the Inspector General of Police, Graphael Musamba, over his stance on police brutality, stating that there is no law which gives the police service power to brutalise citizens in the name of ‘minimum force’ during arrests. It also stated that it was not the function of the police to control the ‘toning down of citizens’, who have the right to freely express their views in line with their constitutionally protected freedoms. Earlier, Mr Musamba was reported as ‘urging the opposition to tone down and cooperate with the officers or else the police will use minimum force’.

Amidst all these problems between the police and the public in general, State House has remained conveniently silent about what is going on. But we are not surprised because we have stated over and again that the gestapo style of policing that is currently taking place is under the orders and supervision of Mr Hichilema’s most trusted agent, Mr Fanwell Siandenge, the Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of State House, who is working with a hit squad of well-known UPND cadres drafted into the State House security system.

It is also well known that in fact, Mr Siandenge is the de facto Inspector General of Police and all key decisions are taken by him while Mr Musamba remains a powerless Inspector General of Police. We say this with utmost sincerity and sympathy for Mr Musamba because no human being should be forced into such a situation. But we understand because that is Mr Hichilema’s style of leadership, in which he keeps some people merely to save face or for convenience while he continues to pursue increased political clout.

Furthermore, the recent justifications and empty denials on this matter from Minister of Home Affairs, Mr Jack Mwiimbu, justice minister Mr Mulambo Haimbe and acting
information minister Mr Makozo Chikote, only confirms one thing, the gross human rights violations by police are all part of the grand scheme to silence dissent hence the silence from Mr Hichilema, who should ideally be the one to address such very serious concerns.

The partisan policing and torture the country is currently witnessing is fully sanctioned by the top UPND government leadership.

It is now clear that those who don’t agree with Mr Hichilema or choose to align themselves with the opposition will be dealt with viciously. And the chilling incidents of brutality and torture by the police are calculated to intimidate the masses. This is meant to set the stage upon which the 2026 presidential and general elections will be held – unlawful use of force by police – but it won’t work because the police are not the law unto themselves.

We also want to remind Mr Hichilema and his hit squad in the police that they are not big enough to stop the revolution that is being waged against poverty, corruption and imperialist puppet leadership. The struggle for justice, equity and peace will go on and the hope for a better socialist Zambia will not die. The Zambian people are resolved and cannot be cheated anymore.

To the international community, in particular, the European Union (EU), who have chosen to pay a blind eye to these violations, we say, pretending that all is well in Zambia today is being complicit in the crimes committed. It is barbaric, inhuman and disrespectful to the Zambian people to endorse this regime, given the trend of brutality and torture against the innocent citizens we are seeing today.

The rapidly shrinking political space and decline in freedoms of expression, movement and association under Mr Hichilema’s leadership is a travesty and adds to the increasing crackdown on peaceful dissent in the country. This is not the Zambia we all want and definitely, this is not how peaceful nations are built. Mr Hichilema’s heavy handed approach must be stopped forthwith.

We demand that investigations into these gross violations be opened and the perpetrators together with their superiors issuing orders be brought to justice.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

The real fight against corruption should start with Hichilema and his league Featured

June 28, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

As the US Department of State 2022 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Zambia correctly observes, there are very, very serious issues of corruption and lack of transparency in this UPND government of Mr Hakainde Hichilema.

And it will not be possible for Mr Hichilema to achieve, or aspire for, high levels of transparency in his government’s dealings because of his many undisclosed or undeclared business interests. This is a recipe for grand corruption.

We saw how Mr Hichilema failed to come out clear and clean on the obviously questionable Alpha Commodities fertiliser deal in which Zambians lost almost US$16 million in super profits due to over pricing in a single-sourced contract authorised by Mr Hichilema.

Today, there are legitimate questions being asked about who the supplier of materials is for making fertilisers to Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia, a state-owned enterprise. Again, due to a lack of transparency and disclosure or declaration of his business interests and those of his associates, fingers are pointing in his direction.

A very high degree of disclosure of business interests and transparency is required from Mr Hichilema and his associates. Combining such very high levels political power with a huge appetite to become the richest Zambian will lead to a series of very serious corruption problems for Mr Hichilema.

While Mr Hichilema’s control of Zambia’s fiscal policy is without limit, his business interests also seem to be without limit. And herein lies the conflict of interest. This conflict is a recipe for corruption.

And with Mr Hichilema so conflicted there cannot be a meaningful fight against corruption in this country under his leadership. What we are seeing is not a genuine fight against corruption but vengeance and an attempt to financially cripple his political opponents and those who in the past have tormented him.

A serious fight against corruption should start with Mr Hichilema himself and his league. What we are witnessing is nothing but a mock engagement, a deception.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

Hichilima’s curtailing of freedom of expression is not the way to combat tribalism, hate speech Featured

June 27, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Zambia has struggled to eliminate tribal and racial discrimination throughout its post-independence history. And we are certainly not at the end of the road toward equal justice and the elimination of tribal and racial discrimination.

Today, we have a government that is more tribally inclined than we have seen or experienced before in our post-independence history. Today, whichever public institution, ministry, department, agency, commission or parastatal organisation you look at, the tribal composition of the key positions is difficult to conceal or ignore.

But those who try to question, challenge or criticise Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s tribally inclined appointments are accused of promoting tribal hatred or hate speech. They are trying to defend their tribalism by curtailing free speech and restricting freedom of expression.

In light of this, we have long made clear our concerns over resorting to restrictions on freedom of expression, association, and assembly, in order to defend what cannot be defended or tolerated.

Curtailing and punishing such speech is neither an effective approach to defending what cannot be defended nor an appropriate way for Mr Hichilema’s government to stop Zambians from questioning his appointments and other decisions and actions.

Suppressing ideas and criticism never succeeds in making them go away. In fact, to do so can be counterproductive and even raise the profile of such ideas and criticism. We believe the best antidote to all this is constructive dialogue that counters and responds to such speech by refuting it through principled arguments, causing the criticism to fall under its own weight.

Our history has taught us that curtailing freedom of expression and speech is both a misguided and dangerous enterprise. The better course is to ensure that avenues of expression remain open in order to expose, contradict, and drown out tribal and hateful speech in the marketplace of ideas.

As Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, wrote, “[W]e have nothing to fear from the demoralising reasonings of some, if others are left free to demonstrate their errors and especially when the law stands ready to punish the first criminal acts produced by the false reasonings.” False and hate speech, in other words, will wither in the face of public scrutiny.

Today, so many opposition leaders are being arrested and detained for allegedly publishing, “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the government of Mr Hichilema with the intent to “excite against them … the hatred” of the people. This is being used as a very potent political tool in the hands of Mr Hichilema to prosecute Zambians for speaking out against the tribalism and other misdeeds of his government.

Mr Hichilema’s actions are increasingly becoming unpopular because many Zambians are recognising that our young multiparty democracy needs dissent, not dictates, in order to survive.

Mr Hichilema is effectively making it illegal to criticise his tribalism and other misdeeds. Those who speak out against his tribalism in public or in writing are punished as criminals, often severely.

It will only be through the efforts of those who are today courageously spreading their message at the risk of being arrested, detained, and tortured, that we will end these injustices of Mr Hichilema.

In so doing, we are reaffirming our commitment to freedom of expression and the right to speak out against injustice. Clearly, competition in ideas is a more appropriate way to address these issues than is government action to restrict expression.

Moreover, liberal democrats believe that, “however pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas”.

We defend freedom of expression not only because it is enshrined in our Constitution as the law of the land, but also because our multiparty democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas and the ability to dissent. And we protect freedom of expression because the cost of stripping away individual rights is far greater than the cost of tolerating hateful words. We also have grave concerns about empowering governments to ban offensive speech and about how such power could easily be misused to undermine democratic principles.

We believe that robust implementation of obligations to combat these evils, while simultaneously protecting freedom of expression, is essential.

Our observations are well corroborated or supported by the recently released US Department of State – US 2022 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Zambia.

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party

Hichilema and human rights Featured

June 24, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Mr Hakainde Hichilema seems disturbed by the revelations made by his friends – the United States government – on the deplorable state of human rights practices in Zambia under his leadership.

Recently, the US State Department released a detailed report – USA 2022 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Zambia – which brought to light the following human rights abuses committed by Mr Hichilema’s administration:

unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings
torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government
serious restrictions on freedom on freedom of expression and media, including violence and threats against journalists, censorship, or enforcement of threat to enforce criminal libel laws to limit expression
substantial interference with the rights of freedom of assembly and association; serious government corruption
impunity for excessive use of force by law enforcement agencies, particularly the police who have remained a problem and that;
although the government took steps to identify, prosecute, and punish officials for corruption, impunity remained widespread.

The violations listed above are just a few among the numerous abuses highlighted by the US government. However, in a typical clumsy UPND government style, Mr Hichilema through the acting Minister of Information Mr Makozo Chikote has jumped to the defence of their illegal acts with a plethora of bare denials.

Mr Hichilema should know that this report done by their friends embodies hard facts on what is obtaining in the country today and pedestrian statements will not be sufficient to save his government from this exposure. Let it sink in that the report from the US State Department mirrors the status of our governance under Mr Hichilema’s stewardship and it is worth reiterating as follows:

This UPND government, through Mr Hichilema, has always projected itself as a strong adherent to the rule of law. Unless this concept means something different to them because currently there is no rule of law to talk about under this government. For instance, we have witnessed an increase in the tendency to detain suspects without charge and arraignment before the courts of law. In most cases, this is targeted at individuals that have peddled a contrary view or have been overly critical of this government. Mr Hichilema’s critics are now being abducted and assaulted.
A perusal of the affidavit in support of an application for bail pending trial in the case of Dr Chris Zumani Zimba, the former political advisor to Mr Edgar Lungu discloses very disturbing things. It is revealed that some of the co-accused were taken to some locations and endured excruciating torture. Most of it was inflicted on their private parts. This represents some of the findings made in the US government’s 2022 human rights practices report on Zambia. So what is Mr Hichilema through Mr Chikote denying?
While Mr Hichilema beats his chest about the progressive repeal of Section 69 of the Penal Code on defamation of the President, his government has found an alternative to that repealed law. Mr Hichilema’s government now seeks solace in the repressive law housed in the Cyber Security and Crimes Act. This has become a tool of repression in the hands of this government for purposes of curtailing free speech and expression. Just in the last few weeks the country has witnessed arrests and abductions of bloggers who are critical of Mr Hichilema. Surely, this is not what promotion and adherence to human rights looks like.
The case of the Kabushi and Kwacha by-elections remains fresh in our minds. We all saw the arm-twisting of the Election Commission of Zambia (ECZ) until Mr Bowman Lusambo and Mr Joe Malanji were handed a knock-out. The deprivation of one’s political and civil rights does not resonate with the ideals of the rule of law.
Mrs Josephine Mumbi Phiri endured the humiliation of a murder charge for 376 days in jail only to see the entry of a nolle prosequi on judgement day. Total irrationality! This rampant abuse of the criminal justice system for political ends has nothing to do with adherence to the rule of law.
Now Rizwani Patel of Petauke says he was tortured and beaten like a dog. In a video of yesterday (Friday, June 23, 2023) Patel said: “I was beaten, put on a Kampelwa, and in the night, I was taken into a bush and threatened that I will be shot dead if I didn’t confess to the charges. Bullets were fired over my head.”

What’s very sad is the hypocrisy and double standards of these people. They themselves are running Koswe, Watchdog and a horde of lawless fake accounts playing dirty with absolute impunity. They want to be the only ones playing dirty while everyone else is being forced to play clean. It won’t work. Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.

It is very clear that Mr Hichilema has not only weaponised selected laws of the land which he is shamelessly selectively applying but also decided to handle law enforcement in a gestapo style to obliterate political rivals. Mr Hichilema, together with his hitmen, led by Deputy Inspector General of Police in-Charge of State House, Mr Fanwell Siandenge, who is working in cohorts with known UPND cadres drafted into State House security are determined to violate the law by handling law enforcement matters arbitrarily and without regard for human rights and dignity.

My advice to Zambians as we head towards 2026 is that, be prepared for the worst repression ever seen in the political history of this country because it is more than clear that we are dealing with a petty, highly vindictive, cruel and desperate regime.

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party

Hichilema and human rights Featured

June 24, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Mr Hakainde Hichilema seems disturbed by the revelations made by his friends – the United States government – on the deplorable state of human rights practices in Zambia under his leadership.

unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings
torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government
serious restrictions on freedom on freedom of expression and media, including violence and threats against journalists, censorship, or enforcement of threat to enforce criminal libel laws to limit expression
substantial interference with the rights of freedom of assembly and association; serious government corruption
impunity for excessive use of force by law enforcement agencies, particularly the police who have remained a problem and that;
although the government took steps to identify, prosecute, and punish officials for corruption, impunity remained widespread.

This UPND government, through Mr Hichilema, has always projected itself as a strong adherent to the rule of law. Unless this concept means something different to them because currently there is no rule of law to talk about under this government. For instance, we have witnessed an increase in the tendency to detain suspects without charge and arraignment before the courts of law. In most cases, this is targeted at individuals that have peddled a contrary view or have been overly critical of this government. Mr Hichilema’s critics are now being abducted and assaulted.
A perusal of the affidavit in support of an application for bail pending trial in the case of Dr Chris Zumani Zimba, the former political advisor to Mr Edgar Lungu discloses very disturbing things. It is revealed that some of the co-accused were taken to some locations and endured excruciating torture. Most of it was inflicted on their private parts. This represents some of the findings made in the US government’s 2022 human rights practices report on Zambia. So what is Mr Hichilema through Mr Chikote denying?
While Mr Hichilema beats his chest about the progressive repeal of Section 69 of the Penal Code on defamation of the President, his government has found an alternative to that repealed law. Mr Hichilema’s government now seeks solace in the repressive law housed in the Cyber Security and Crimes Act. This has become a tool of repression in the hands of this government for purposes of curtailing free speech and expression. Just in the last few weeks the country has witnessed arrests and abductions of bloggers who are critical of Mr Hichilema. Surely, this is not what promotion and adherence to human rights looks like.
The case of the Kabushi and Kwacha by-elections remains fresh in our minds. We all saw the arm-twisting of the Election Commission of Zambia (ECZ) until Mr Bowman Lusambo and Mr Joe Malanji were handed a knock-out. The deprivation of one’s political and civil rights does not resonate with the ideals of the rule of law.
Mrs Josephine Mumbi Phiri endured the humiliation of a murder charge for 376 days in jail only to see the entry of a nolle prosequi on judgement day. Total irrationality! This rampant abuse of the criminal justice system for political ends has nothing to do with adherence to the rule of law.
Now Rizwani Patel of Petauke says he was tortured and beaten like a dog. In a video of yesterday (Friday, June 23, 2023) Patel said: “I was beaten, put on a Kampelwa, and in the night, I was taken into a bush and threatened that I will be shot dead if I didn’t confess to the charges. Bullets were fired over my head.”

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party

Zambia’s debt restructuring deal. Featured

June 23, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

It is very good that finally we have a debt restructuring deal.

With a debt restructuring deal in hand, now we will see things for what they are – the real economy – without hiding behind delayed debt restructuring.

But the excitement coming with this announcement may be misplaced. It’s been celebrated like Zambia is receiving $6 billion.

The details of the restructuring may not offer us paradise. And we shouldn’t confuse debt restructuring with debt write off.

If you’re drowning in a sea of debt, you need debt restructuring to get your head back above water. Under debt restructuring, creditors change the terms of your loan agreements so that you can better manage the payments. This may include a longer loan term, a lower interest rate or even a reduction in the amount owed.

In a word, debt restructuring is the process of reworking an existing debt agreement to better fit your current financial situation.

From the way we are reading it, the creditors have agreed to restructure Zambia’s debt and now the creditors and the country have to agree on the details after which agreements will be signed.

In summary, from the Ministry of Finance press release what we are picking up is the 3 year’s moratorium on principal repayment and extension of debt repayment tenure to over 20 years. There’s no mention of reduction in interest rate nor partial write off or haircut. The $6.8 billion private debt negotiations are yet to be concluded and this is the difficult part.

At this point the agreement is non binding so we maybe celebrating too soon but we hope for favourable terms.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

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Reality on Zambia’s total debt Featured

June 2, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

As at December 2022, Zambia’s public debt stood at $31.5 billion, excluding interest arrears on external debt and $32.8 billion including interest arrears of $1.3 billion since we have not been servicing the debt for close to 2 years.

Of the $32.8 billion total public debt, $14.23 billion represents local currency domestic debt broken down as follows:

Treasury Bills $2.21 billion
Government Bonds $9.40 billion
Domestic Arrears $2.45 billion
Others $0.8 billion
(Source Ministry of Finance)

Government funds its day to day operations mostly from Treasury Bills and Government Bonds auctions which are now unfortunately failing as demonstrated in the last two Government Bond auctions.

It’s very important also to note that domestic arrears mostly relate to local contractors who have not been paid. This partly answers the issue of lack of liquidity in the market as local contractors are not being paid.

Our concern is that no one seems to be paying any attention to the the domestic debt issue. The risk on domestic debt default which will be catastrophic should it happen is not being addressed.

How would such an event arise?
If government fails to pay Treasury Bills and Government Bonds upon maturity a default can arise. Government uses part of the Treasury Bills and Government Bond auction proceeds to service the maturities. In the event that auction proceeds are not sufficient the treasury has to source funds elsewhere to service the maturities. Given the recent bond auction failures, treasury must be under stress to service these obligations and if the trend continues, then a domestic debt default could materialise.

We should mention that on the unsecured $2.45 billion Domestic Arrears, a default has already happened as contractors are not being paid.

We request the Ministry of Finance to provide us with a future outlook on how domestic debt is being managed. We need domestic debt reduction as much as we need external debt reduction, but this is being overlooked.

Least be reminded that when debt restructuring is concluded the interest arrears of $1.3 billion will need to be paid. Even if a haircut is achieved, a substantial sum still needs to be paid together with principal arrears.

The only way out of this dilemma is to increase domestic revenue mobilisation by abolishing mining tax exemptions, growing the domestic tax base, new industries coming on board, job creation, value addition and so on and so forth.

Again, the call for a comprehensive economic plan which addresses issues raised above is urgently needed to address these serious concerns. Instead we are embroiled in a not so helpful graphs and Catholics debate and overlooking real issues.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

The Napsa dilemma Featured

June 1, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Recent reports indicate that NAPSA, which traditionally has been a key participant in Government Bonds, has not participated in the last 2 or 3 Bank of Zambia Government Bond auctions. And NAPSA’s has greatly contributed to the recently heavily under subscribed auction.

How long is a piece of string? NAPSA, according to recent reports, has paid out K5.8 billion as part of Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s policy of partial pension withdrawals – of approximately $300 million using daily average exchange rates since this programme started.

We are also told that NAPSA expected a total partial pension payout totaling K11 billion to cover all potential partial pension draw downs. In effect, another K5.2 billion remains to be paid which is approximately $290 million. This translates to a cumulative payout of $590 million.

We are also told that NAPSA will provide debt financing to the tune of $300 million for the Lusaka/Ndola dual carriage.

In summary, NAPSA cash outflow on these two events in 2023 alone will be $890 million. This is a very huge amount! And we hope it will not create future funding constraints for NAPSA’s future operations.

As well meaning citizens, we strongly urge the Pensions and Insurance Authority to take keen interest in NAPSA’s future cash flow profiles for any potential risk of failure. We are not saying there will be a failure but just prudently ensuring that NAPSA can sustain these huge commitments.

Zambia defaulted on its Eurobond payments whose investors are mostly pensioners. And in our debt restructuring quest we are appealing for a haircut on the Eurobond. Meaning the pensioners, whose hard earned money was invested in these Eurobonds will lose out. The same can happen to our pensioners who are contributing to NAPSA on a monthly basis should things go wrong. So NAPSA needs to be extremely cautious on its investment profiling to safeguard the interest of our workers at a point of retiring.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

Worrying ethnic and regional composition of ACC Featured

June 1, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The ethnic or regional composition of the officers of the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) would’t make one under its investigation and prosecution comfortable if they hail from the so-called non Zambezi ethnicities or regions.

Currently the officers of the ACC are:

Board Chairperson – Musa Mwenye SC (Soli)
Director General – Tom Trevor Shamakamba (Lenje)
Deputy Director General – Vacant
Secretary to the Commission (Controlling Officer) Ivor Mukwanka (Ila and cousin to Tom Trevor Shamakamba through the mother)

And the officers heading the four core departments of ACC are:

Director for Community Education – Mutinta Cheelo (Tonga)
Director for Corruption Prevention – Glenda Mungalaba (Tonga)
Director for Investigations – Raymond Chiboola (Tonga)

And under Investigations there’s the Special Intelligence Unit headed by
Desmond Chiboola, the young brother to Raymond Chiboola (Tonga)

Director for Legal and Prosecutions – Stella Mulenga (Married to Mr. Mulenga who is Bemba).
Finance – headed by Josphat Maiba (Tonga)
HR headed by Rachel Chisanga Mtengo in acting capacity (Bisa)

Again, we turn to the more often quoted aphorism – the dictum laid down by Lord Hewart, the then Lord Chief Justice of England in the case of Rex v. Sussex Justices, [1924] 1 KB 256: “Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done.”

This is certainly not a recipe for governing well or for justice and fairness. It undermines the very important work of the ACC and unnecessarily brings into question the fairness of its decisions and actions.

Fred M’membe

There’s need for a permanent solution to our debt crisis Featured

May 15, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The fifty-four sovereign African states are vastly different from each other, with distinct languages, histories, social and economic challenges, and possibilities. However, they are united by a political project that has been institutionalised through the African Union and its legal and organisational frameworks and by a neocolonial sovereign debt crisis.

Many countries across the Global South, particularly those in Africa, are currently in the throes of fiscal crises – largely the result of a perfect storm of global events. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global economic recession, which in turn impacted national economies. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has disrupted vital global supply chains for food, fertilisers, and energy, thereby increasing many countries’ import bills and straining their budgets. The fiscal crisis is fundamentally a result of an unsustainable build-up of sovereign debt in the last decade, fuelled by cheap credit from Western economies and encouraged by international financial institutions, including the IMF. The COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine made what was already a tenuous situation worse.

Many poor countries are turning to the IMF as a credible source for finance in the present moment, largely egged on by claims that the IMF has reformed from its bad old ways and no longer demands crashing austerity as a conditionality. (‘Factsheet: IMF Conditionality’, International Monetary Fund, 22 February 2021, https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Sheets/2016/08/02/21/28/IMF-Conditionality.)
Back in 2016, IMF economists published a mea culpa in which they (sort of) confessed the sins of the past and promised that they had turned over a new leaf. (Ostry, Loungani, and Furceri, ‘Neoliberalism: Oversold?’; Grieve Chelwa, ‘Is it Too Late Now to Say Sorry?’ Africa Is a Country, 29 May 2016, https://africasacountry.com/2016/05/is-it-too-late-to-say-sorry-imf-edition.). The evidence, however, suggests anything but a reformed IMF. A study from the International Labour Organisation that carefully tracked IMF conditionality in 2020, when many countries were grappling with health and financial burdens related to the COVID-19 pandemic, found that in most of the 148 countries examined, the IMF still required austerity as a condition for granting assistance. (Shahra Razavi et al., ‘Social Policy Advice to Countries from the International Monetary Fund during the COVID-19 Crisis: Continuity and Change’ (ILO Working Paper 42, International Labour Organisation, Geneva, 10 December 2021), https://www.ilo.org/global/publications/working-papers/WCMS_831490/lang–en/index.htm.).

The government of Zambia, the first country to default on its debt as a result of the pandemic, recently concluded a financing deal with the IMF with the signature condition of ‘a large, front-loaded, and sustained fiscal consolidation’, as the IMF put it –
in other words, austerity in black and white. (International Monetary Fund, ‘Zambia: Request for an Arrangement Under the Extended Credit Facility-Press Release; Staff Report; Staff Supplement; Staff Statement; and Statement by the Executive Director for Zambia’, IMF Country Report, no. 22/292 (September 2022), https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2022/09/06/Zambia-Request-for-an-Arrangement-Under-the-Extended-Credit-Facility-Press-Release-Staff-523196, 10.). The IMF wants the Zambian government to reduce its expenditure by billions of dollars over the next three years, which will be most acutely felt by the poor majority.(Grieve Chelwa, ‘IMF Deal: Cry, My Beloved Zambia’, Grieve Chelwa (blog), 7 September 2022). The government of
Sri Lanka, a country whose debt-fuelled boom came to a spectacular halt earlier this year, is also seeking IMF assistance, with early indications showing that the conditions attached to the deal will be as indefensible as the Zambian deal. (Peter Doyle, ‘The IMF’s Zambian and Sri Lankan Programs are Indefensible’, Peter Doyle (blog), 14 September 2022). The Ghanaian government too is desperately seeking another IMF deal, this after the last one was celebrated as the deal that would ‘restore the lustre to a rising star in Africa’. (‘Ghana to Conclude IMF Deal in March – Akufo-Addo Hopes’, Africanews, 7 February 2023, https://www.africanews.com/2023/02/07/ghana-to-conclude-imf-deal-in-march-akufo-addo-hopes/; ‘Ghana: IMF Program Helps Restore Luster to a Rising Star in Africa’, International Monetary Fund, May 2019, https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/GHA/ghana-lending-case-study.).

All this goes to show that the IMF cannot be the answer to the poorer nations’ economic challenges. Alongside its sister institutions, the IMF has provided ‘assistance’ to poor countries ever since its establishment in 1944, and yet many of these countries have remained poor in spite of this. The reason is that IMF assistance has never confronted the structural factors that have continued to consign many countries to the ranks of the poor. As diagnosed many years ago by scholars such as Walter Rodney and Andre Gunder Frank, development in the North is sustained by underdevelopment in the South. (Andre Gunder Frank, ‘The Development of Underdevelopment’, Monthly Review, 18 April 1966, https://monthlyreviewarchives.org/index.php/mr/article/view/MR-018-04-1966-08_3; Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (New York: Verso Books, 2018).). Seen this way, the IMF, as the archetypical Northern institution, is duty bound to maintain and entrench this status quo. How else does one explain the IMF’s solution to Zambia’s financial woes, for example? The IMF prescription ignores the fact that the country’s foreign-owned copper mines continue to generate billions for their overseas shareholders yet pay so little in taxes in a country where the estimated annual income taxes for one mining project alone could have amounted to nearly half the 2020 national water supply and sanitary budget.(Daniel Mulé and Mukupa Nsenduluka, ‘Potential Corporate Tax Avoidance in Zambia’s Mining Sector? Estimating Tax Revenue Gains from Addressing Profit Shifting or Revising Profit Allocation Rules. A Case Study of Glencore Mopani Copper Mines’, Oxfam Research Backgrounder Series, December 2021, https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/potential-corporate-tax-avoidance-in-zambias-mining-sector/.).

A new kind of institutional apparatus that fosters cooperation, rather than competition, is required for Africa’s economic liberation and that of the Third World more generally. This would mean, for example, establishing currency arrangements that bypass the US dollar, which is a strong lever of IMF conditionality and a weapon of US foreign policy. These kinds of long overdue proposals are already underway in parts of the world, such as in Latin America, where Brazil’s President Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) and Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández have proposed the establishment of a regional currency, the sur, that could be used to settle cross-border claims and store reserves.(Alberto Fernández and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ‘Escriben Lula y Alberto Fernandez: Relanzamiento de la alianza estratégica entre Argentina y Brasil’ [Lula and Alberto Fernandez Write: Relaunching the Strategic Alliance Between Argentina and Brazil], Perfil, 21 January 2023, https://www.perfil.com/noticias/opinion/relanzamiento-de-la-alianza-estrategica-entre-argentina-y-brasil-por-alberto-fernandez-y-luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva.phtml.).

The hard work of figuring out the technical details related to the implementation of such regional currencies must begin in earnest.(Zinya Salfiti,
‘Nobel Economist Paul Krugman Slams Brazil and Argentina’s Joint Currency Plan, Saying “It’s a Terrible Idea”’,
Markets Insider, 30 January 2023,
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/paul-krugman-brazil-argentina-south-american-euro-terrible-idea-2023-1.).
Africa, for example, needs a continental bank that is wholly owned by the people and will serve as a genuine tool to bolster sovereign industrial policies. The highly influential African Development Bank, with its significant Western shareholding, is not fit for purpose. (‘United States of America’, African Development Bank, accessed 13 February 2023, https://www.afdb.org/en/countries/non-regional-member-countries/united-states-of-america.).

Furthermore, there is an urgent need to restore and reinvigorate the capacity and autonomy of the African state to deliver on its development agenda. State capacity and state autonomy depend on the ability to adequately mobilise tax revenues, an area in which the African state has continued to underperform. The tax-to-GDP ratio, a measure of resource mobilisation, has remained incredibly low in Africa largely as a result of illicit financial flows that continue to spirit away billions of dollars from the continent every year.(African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), African Union Commission (AUC), and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Revenue Statistics in Africa 2022 (Paris: OECD Publishing, Npvember 2022), https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/brochure-revenue-statistics-africa.pdf, 3; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Economic Development in Africa Report 2020. Tackling Illicit Financial Flows for Sustainable Development in Africa (Geneva: United Nations, 2022)).

As a consequence, the adequate delivery of the kind of social services that underpin people’s dignity (social security, health, education, etc.) continue to be hamstrung. (Isabel Ortiz et al., Fiscal Space for Social Protection. A Handbook for Assessing Financing Options (Geneva: International Labour Organisation, November 2019), https://www.ilo.org/secsoc/information-resources/publications-and-tools/books-and-reports/WCMS_727261/lang–en/index.htm.).

Further, the low tax-take in the poorer nations forces many governments to seek the easy way out by borrowing on the international capital markets, setting into motion dangerous debt dynamics that ultimately lead governments back into the unloving arms of the IMF. Notably, IMF conditionality rarely confronts the fact that state capacity and autonomy have been eroded in Africa largely as a result of the tax dodging practices of transnational corporations.

Just as problematic is the leading role that the IMF and its allied institutions have taken in the fight to save the planet from climate change. The IMF’s answer to climate change, which is influential given its inordinate role in the world, points to the private capitalist sector as the solution to the planet’s problems.( ‘COP27: IMF Calls for Climate-Smart Investment in Africa’, Africanews, 8 November 2022, https://www.africanews.com/2022/11/08/cop27-imf-calls-for-climate-smart-investment-in-africa/.).

All this is ironic given that the private capitalist sector’s insatiable appetite for profits at all costs has been responsible for the climate crisis.

The Third World must re-imagine a path out of our current crisis that doesn’t depend on the IMF, its allied institutions, and Western capital. The last seventy years or so have demonstrated that a reliance on these institutions only serves to trap the Third World in a perpetual state of underdevelopment. We need an emancipatory set of institutions and frameworks that will lead to the total independence of the Third World.

This is a task that our political leaders have to take on in a serious way with a very strong commitment to the economic, and thus total, emancipation of the African continent and the Third World more broadly.

We need to rebuild a present, and future, that centres the needs and aspirations of the majority.

Over the course of the past two decades, the stranglehold of Western-based bondholders and Western-controlled IFIs has weakened as other countries – mainly China – have emerged as the largest trading partners with African states and as the largest lenders to these states. Importantly, China’s public and private debt forgiveness during the pandemic has put pressure on IFIs to rethink the harshness of their debt repayment-austerity governance model.

The opening provided by Chinese funding is not an opportunity merely to borrow more: it is an opportunity for African states to construct genuine, and sovereign, development projects in this climate. These projects must seize multiple opportunities to raise funds, and the fragility of IMF power must also be utilised to advance fiscal and monetary policies that are built on an agenda committed to solving the problems of the African people, not facilitating the demands of wealthy bondholders and the Western states that back them. A number of mechanisms must be put on the table to avoid the IMF-driven debt-austerity trap.
There’s need to invalidate historical debts and rescue stolen assets:

Renegotiate all odious external debts of the poorer nations. An ‘odious debt’ is a debt incurred by a country without the assent of its people, such as during the phase of a military dictatorship.
Seize assets held in illicit tax havens, which as of 2010 total at least $32 trillion.(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Economic Development in Africa Report 2020. Tackling Illicit Financial Flows for Sustainable Development in Africa, 88.).

Build progressive tax codes:
Build the capacity of tax departments in each country, including digital tax infrastructure.
Implement taxes on wealth and inheritance.
Implement higher rates of taxation on income, such as capital gains, that is made through financial speculation by all non-bank corporate entities.
Discourage the base erosion and profit-shifting activities of multinational corporations and adopt a unitary approach to tax the share of global profits generated by subsidiaries of multinational corporations.
Reform domestic banking infrastructure:

Democratise the banking system by expanding the role and size of public banking and by implementing more regulations of and transparency for private banking.
Enforce ceilings as a percentage of liabilities on speculative banking activity by commercial banks.
Regulate the interest rates that banks charge for specific goods, such as housing loans.
Implement tight regulations for pension funds so that the savings of the people are not used recklessly for financial speculation and encourage the creation of public sector pension funds.
Build alternative funding sources to the IMF’s debt-austerity traps:

Set capital controls to prevent both foreign and domestic capital flight, policies that even the IMF argues are important.(International Monetary Fund, ‘Review of The Institutional View on The Liberalization and Management of Capital Flows’, IMF Policy Paper, 30 March 2022).
As highlighted earlier, capital flight is not only deleterious for local financial markets: it also robs the continent of the resources needed to drive an autonomous developmental agenda. With capital controls, governments will be able to devise effective monetary policies in an environment that would not be buffeted by shocks and unexpected fragilities. Capital controls must be implemented alongside a robust wealth tax collection system, pro-labour distribution policies, and the prevention of dollarisation.
Attract investment from institutions that do not enforce structural adjustment conditions, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the BRICS’s New Development Bank. The absence of SAPs-like conditions on these emerging and alternative sources of capital explains their growing popularity in the South and Africa in particular.
Take advantage of local currency central bank swap arrangements (such as those offered by the People’s Bank of China).
Adopt ceilings on the interest rates that commercial and multilateral lenders charge developing countries.
Enhance regionalism:
Encourage the creation of regional trade and reconciliation mechanisms.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

Our sovereign debt crisis Featured

May 15, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

In 2009, the Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo published the instant bestseller Dead Aid. (Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009)). Moyo’s main argument in the book was that there was little to show for the hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid that had been given ĺto the African continent since 1970. Rather than spurring development, she said, aid had financed grand-scale corruption and civil wars, which in turn thwarted economic growth on the continent. Moyo’s case against aid was not a new one. Her book’s arguments were inspired by the Hungarian-born British conservative economist Peter Bauer, in whose memory Moyo dedicated her book. Bauer made a career singling out foreign aid – not colonialism or neocolonialism – as the chief architect of Africa’s underdevelopment.(Peter Bauer, ‘The Case Against Foreign Aid, Intereconomics’, Verlag Weltarchiv 8, no. 5 (1973) 154–157).

What was new about Dead Aid was Moyo’s prescription? In a chapter titled ‘A Capital Solution’, Moyo called for the substitution of aid with private market debt. That is, she called on Western countries to significantly reduce their aid to Africa and at the same time called on African governments to make up for the shortfall by borrowing from private creditors and bondholders such as hedge funds, banks, and so on. For Moyo, this was an elegant solution to the problem of corruption, which had historically bedevilled the foreign aid industrial complex. Money sourced from private debt markets was unlikely to fuel corruption in Africa because, Moyo argued, private creditors were sophisticated enough to not invest in countries likely to engage in corruption. After all, corruption acted as a drag on economic growth, which in turn threatened the prospects of debt repayment. On the other hand, to access much-needed private credit, African governments would need to demonstrate to private creditors that they were committed to fighting corruption and to investing the proceeds in growth-enhancing activities. Moyo’s policy solution was, therefore, a supposed win-win for all concerned.

Moyo’s ‘capital solution’ provided the intellectual cover for the financialisation of capital flows to Africa through the issuance of so-called Eurobonds (i.e., the issuance of bonds in US dollars and Euros), whose meteoric rise would engulf the continent in a new debt crisis by 2020. Ghana’s first issuance of a Eurobond in 2007 was a turning point for the continent. The country’s debut bond of $750 million was issued to much fanfare and was highly sought after by financial investors in New York and London. (Reuters, ‘Huge Demand for Ghana’s Debut Eurobond’, Ghana Web, 27 September 2007, https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/artikel.php?ID=131428.). In a quest to satisfy investors’ appetites, Ghana followed up by issuing two additional Eurobonds totalling $2 billion in 2013 and 2014. Other countries in Africa soon followed suit. (Vivian Kai Mensah, ‘Ghana Issues Third Eurobond’, 11 September 2014, Citi 97.3 FM, https://citifmonline.com/2014/09/ghana-issues-third-eurobond/#sthash.Ry1XkD86.dpbs.).

In 2011, Zambia obtained its first sovereign credit rating (a credit score of sorts) from the ratings agency Fitch. Shortly thereafter, the country issued two Eurobonds in quick succession in 2012 and 2014, a scenario that increased Zambia’s external debt by an incredible 300% in three years. (Grieve Chelwa, ‘It’s Time to Treat Commodity-Backed Loans to African Countries the Same Way We Treat Equity’, Quartz, 2 June, 2015, https://qz.com/africa/417167/its-time-to-treat-commodity-backed-loans-to-african-countries-the-same-way-we-treat-equity; Grieve Chelwa, ‘The “Truth” about Zambia’s Debt’, Grieve Chelwa (blog), 15 October 2020, http://gchelwa.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-truth-about-zambias-debt.html.). Kenya likewise jumped on the bandwagon, issuing three Eurobonds between 2014 and 2019 that totalled around $5.5 billion.(Paul Wafula, ‘Kenya: Eurobond Dossier Reveals Kenya’s Deep Economic Ties to China, IMF’, AllAfrica, 17 June 2021, https://allafrica.com/stories/202106170380.html.).

Eurobond issuance on the continent grew at an incredible pace in the second decade of the twenty-first century: by 2020, twenty-one African countries had issued Eurobonds (several, in many cases). According to the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics handbook, the stock of Eurobond debt for sub-Saharan Africa grew from about $32 billon in 2010 to $135 billon in 2020, a 322% rate of increase. (World Bank, International Debt Statistics 2022 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022), https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/36289/9781464818004.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y)

In other words, the stock of Eurobond debt had more than tripled in just ten years.

The rate of increase in the stock of Eurobond debt between 2010 and 2020 far outstripped other sources of foreign currency debt in Africa. For example, multilateral debt from the World Bank, IMF, African Development Bank, and other institutions increased by about 144% over the same period, a rate that is less than half that of the increase in Eurobond debt. Similarly, bilateral debt from governments in countries such as China, France, the US, and the UK to governments in Africa also increased at a rate of 145%, which was also less than half the rate of increase in Eurobond debt. (World Bank, International Debt Statistics 2022 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022), https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/36289/9781464818004.pdf?sequence=4isAllowed=y.).

This last point on bilateral debt is worth highlighting given the argument on ‘debt trap diplomacy’ that has become commonplace with respect to debt from China. The argument alleges that China is using debt to trap Africa in a perpetual cycle of indebtedness and servitude. However, the facts present a different picture. Though World Bank’s International Debt Statistics handbook does not provide a country-by-country breakdown of bilateral debt to Africa that would allow us to isolate the Chinese component, it shows that by 2020 Africa’s total external debt owed to bilateral creditors (i.e., countries) stood at $115 billion, compared Eurobond debt of $135 billion. Further, the figure for bilateral debt provided by the World Bank is for all bilateral creditors, implying that Eurobond debt outstripped all debt from bilateral creditors, which includes China. A careful analysis from Debt Justice shows that African debt to China was $83 billion in 2020, a number smaller than the $135 billon owed to private bondholders. (The Growing Debt Crisis in Lower Income Countries and Cuts in Public Spending’, Debt Justice, July 2022, https://debtjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Who-African-governments-debt-is-owed-to_Media-Briefing_07.22.pdf, 2.). Figures on Chinese loans and Africa’s debt produced by researchers working at the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University in the United States are often cited in support of the debt trap diplomacy argument (despite their own researchers having published articles debunking the Chinese debt trap narrative). (Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire, ‘The Chinese “Debt Trap” Is a Myth’, The Atlantic, 6 February 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/.). However, they are not very useful in this particular case because, according to CARI itself, its database ‘does not track [debt] disbursements and repayments’.(‘Loan Data’, China Africa Research Initiative, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, accessed 13 February 2023, http://www.sais-cari.org/data.). I36 Edwin Mutai, ‘Ouko Says Eurobond Billions Still a Mystery’, Business Daily Africa, 23 January 2018, https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/economy/ouko-says-eurobond-billions-still-a-mystery–2186608; Steven Mvula and Frank Ching’ambu, ‘Where Did the Eurobond Given to ZR Go?’, Frontlines Zambia, 4 August 2022, https://frontlineszambia.com/archives/26311).
In other words, CARI only reports on newspaper announcements of loan contraction but does not track to see if the contracted loan left China and, if it did, if the recipient government in Africa subsequently paid it off or paid off portions of it. Therefore, CARI figures can be misrepresented in ways that vastly exaggerate the true stock of Chinese debt to Africa.

This goes to show that the current sovereign debt crisis currently engulfing the African continent is largely the creation of private creditors via the Eurobond craze that possessed and took hold of the continent in the second decade of the twenty-first century, helped along by the intellectual justifications of Dambisa Moyo and others. Eurobonds did not fix the problem of corruption that was said to be endemic with foreign aid, as Moyo argued they would. For example, hundreds of millions of dollars of Kenya’s first Eurobond issuance are said to have gone ‘missing’. In Zambia, questions have been raised about where the Eurobond money went.(Edwin Mutai, ‘Ouko Says Eurobond Billions Still a Mystery’, Business Daily Africa, 23 January 2018, https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/economy/ouko-says-eurobond-billions-still-a-mystery–2186608; Steven Mvula and Frank Ching’ambu, ‘Where Did the Eurobond Given to ZR Go?’, Frontlines Zambia, 4 August 2022, https://frontlineszambia.com/archives/26311.).
In Mozambique, loans and bonds were illegally withdrawn and misused by state-owned enterprises (known as the Tuna Bond Scandal). As these cases illustrate, Western private bankers and creditors have facilitated this type of theft (‘Mozambique and the “Tuna Bond” Scandal’, Spotlight on Corruption, 9 February 2021, ; Lily Kuo, ‘Kenya’s Ex-PM Accuses US Banks of Helping the Government Steal $1 Billion from the Country’s First Eurobond’, Quartz, 4 January 2016, https://qz.com/africa/594324/kenyas-ex-pm-accuses-us-banks-of-helping-the-government-steal-1-billion-from-the-countrys-first-eurobond.).

Finally, analysing the sources of debt in Africa casts doubts on current multilateral initiatives aimed at resolving Africa’s sovereign debt crisis. One example is the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), launched by the G20 in May 2020, soon after the COVID-19 pandemic began to send shockwaves across the globe, to encourage bilateral and multilateral creditors to suspend interest payments on debt owed by poorer nations, including those in Africa, for a year. The DSSI was hardly successful, as many creditors – with the exception of a few, such as China – refused to suspend interest payments.(Alicia García-Herrero, Suman Bery, and Pauline Weil, ‘How Is the G20 Tackling Debt Problems of the Poorest Countries?’, Bruegel (blog), 25 February 2021,https://www.bruegel.org/blog-post/how-g20-tackling-debt-problems-poorest-countries; ‘China Says Has Given $2.1 Billion of Debt Relief to Poor Countries’, Reuters, 20 November 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-debt-g20-idUSKBN28009A.).
In addition, many analysts remarked that the DSSI was not fit for purpose, since it only applied to official debt (multilateral and bilateral), while the sovereign debt crisis was largely fuelled by a private bond crisis as shown above.

As the DSSI expired in June 2021 and the sovereign debt crisis got worse, the G20 launched the Common Framework for Debt Treatments, which would become the guiding mechanism for debt restructuring after the initial years of the pandemic. (‘The Common Framework for Debt Treatment beyond the DSSI’, Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Italian Government, accessed 13 February 2023, https://www.mef.gov.it/en/G20-Italy/common-framework.html). Unfortunately, it is bedevilled by many of the same problems that afflicted the DSSI. First, the Common Framework only has mechanisms for resolving official credit. But, as the above analysis shows, a substantial portion (and by far the largest single source) of Africa’s sovereign debt is owed to private bondholders and creditors. Their absence largely confines debt restructuring discussions to the theoretical sphere, with little practical value. Second, the Common Framework lays the ground for an official creditor committee, which in the case of Zambia is co-chaired by France and China. France is seen to represent the old Paris Club of creditor countries, which together make up a sizeable portion of the official credit given to Zambia. China is a co-chair given its emergence as an important source of credit to Africa, and Zambia in particular. However, the structure and governance of Zambia’s creditor committee with the two co-chairs has opened the country to geopolitical manoeuvrings and, in the process, largely paralysed the prospects for genuine debt restructuring anytime soon.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

IMF and our debt crisis Featured

May 14, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

In 1919, John Maynard Keynes of the United Kingdom’s Treasury Department published a book that became a sensation. In the book, entitled The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes observed that the Great War had ‘so shaken the system as to endanger the life of Europe itself’. (John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, [1919] 2019), 58.). The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, did not grasp the underlying problems that had led to the war and only cemented the victory of some countries against others. The treaty left structural problems intact, such as the ‘disordered finances’, in Keynes’ words, of many countries (not only Germany, which faced an enormous and unpayable reparations bill). The Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Sterling Crisis of 1931, and the Banking Panics of 1931–1933 revealed the underlying vulnerabilities of capitalism, with the ‘disordered finances’ being the spur towards the potential general collapse of the system. In 1936, Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, a manual to save capitalism by a theoretical plea for governments to use state resources to recycle profits and balance an unbalanceable system. Keynes, who dabbled in eugenics theory, did not extend his views on state intervention to protect the system in the British colonies and prevent the decline of their population’s living standards.

When the United States invited its allies to Bretton Woods (New Hampshire) in July 1944 to discuss how to manage the structural crises that contributed to the Second World War, Keynes – who was one of the main figures at this meeting – said that it would be ‘the most monstrous monkey house assembled for many years’, suggesting that ‘twenty one countries [that] have been invited’ – presenting a list of primarily colonised countries, from Guatemala and Liberia to Iraq and the Philippines – ‘clearly have nothing to contribute and will merely encumber the ground’. (John Maynard Keynes, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: Volume XXVI, Activities
1941–1946. Shaping the Post-War World: Bretton Woods and Reparations, ed. D. E. Moggridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 42.)

Instead, Keynes preferred that the two founder states of the Bretton Woods Conference, the United Kingdom and the United States, ‘settle the charter and the main details of the new body without being subjected to the delays and confused counsels of an international conference’, as he explained a few years earlier. (International Monetary Fund, IMF History Volume 3 (1945–1965): Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation Volume III: Documents (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, [1969] 1996), 15.) In fact, Keynes (on behalf of the United Kingdom) and Harry Dexter White (on behalf of the United States) arrived at the meeting with two plans already drafted, which they put on the table and upon which the final Articles of Agreement for the International Monetary Fund as well as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (or the World Bank) were built. The other participants were largely onlookers.

Despite the limited input of most of the world, which was still under colonial rule, the purpose of the IMF as laid out in the Articles of Agreement was straightforward, none of it built to extend the power of the British imperial system. The main thrust of the articles was to assist the ‘expansion and balanced growth of international trade’ and to ‘contribute thereby to the promotion and maintenance of high levels of employment and real income and to the development of the productive resources of all members as primary objectives of economic policy’. (International Monetary Fund, Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2020), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/aa/pdf/aa.pdf). To establish these ‘primary objectives’, the IMF was tasked with preventing any short-term problems from becoming long-term crises, such as by maintaining exchange rate stability and facilitating loans to prevent balance-of-payments spirals ‘without resorting to measures destructive to national or international prosperity’. When the former colonial countries won their freedom, most of them became members of the IMF based on the Articles of Agreement, and in 1961, the IMF created its Africa Department. Until the Third World Debt Crisis that began to spiral with Mexico’s default in 1982, the IMF had primarily operated by providing short-term financing in a relatively modest fashion through the Compensatory Financing Facility (1963) and the Buffer Stock Financing Facility (1969). (International Monetary Fund Policy Development and Review Department, ‘Review of the Compensatory and Contingency Financing Facility (CCFF) and Buffer Stock Financing Facility (BSFF) – Preliminary Considerations’, International Monetary Fund, 9 December 1999, https://www.imf.org/external/np/ccffbsff/review/index.htm.).

In the aftermath of Mexico’s default, the IMF conducted what its managing director, Michel Camdessus, called the ‘silent revolution’. (James M. Boughton, The IMF and the Silent Revolution Global Finance and Development in the 1980s (International Monetary Fund, 11 September 2000), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/silent/index.htm#3.).

Against its manifest purpose, the IMF began to respond to requests for short-term bridge financing by demanding that countries radically change their domestic economic policies as a condition for approval. Through their new programmes, the Structural Adjustment Facility (1986), and then the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (1987), the IMF put a singular recipe on the table: privatise the economy, including the state sector; commodify areas of human life that had up to that point been in the public domain; terminate any government deficit financing; and dissolve any barriers on foreign capital investment and trade (such as subsidies and tariffs). The IMF had experimented with these measures in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru in the 1950s with limited success before turning them into the basis for their policy not towards all countries, but specifically to be used against states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which struggled with an international economic system shaped by colonialism and capitalism. These were the countries that had championed the formation of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 to advance their own proposals to exit the neocolonial world order, proposals that were passed by the UN General Assembly in 1974 as the New International Economic Order (NIEO). The new IMF policy emerged in contest against the possibility of an NIEO, since rather than allow for a better deal for raw material prices or for tariff-subsidy arrangements, it demanded the withdrawal of all these anti-colonial schemes. Even Raghuram Rajan, the IMF’s own chief economist from 2003 to 2007, wrote in his book Fault Lines (2010) that the IMF’s policies appeared as a ‘new form of financial colonialism’. (Raghuram Rajan, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010), 93.).

The IMF’s ‘silent revolution’ intensified the crisis faced by the poorer nations, driving them into a spiral of indebtedness and poverty. The general formula for this spiral is as follows:

Countries go into short-term balance-of-payments debt because of their lack of capital – much of it stolen during the colonial period – and their reliance upon borrowing to conduct (often expensive) capital improvements in their countries (some of which are in the raw material extraction sector, thereby operating as a subsidy for foreign mining companies).
The IMF arrives and informs the finance ministries that government spending for education, healthcare, and other social development projects must be cut in order to prioritise payments to wealthy bondholders (in the London Club) and to governments – mostly the old colonial states – (in the Paris Club) who have lent them money.
To pay the debt servicing on these loans, the poorer nations cut their government spending, thereby impoverishing their people further, and export more of their cheapened raw materials (rather than more profitable finished products). When countries start to export more and more primary commodities, this produces a price war that leads to a steep decline in the revenues gained from the volume of exports.
With weakened revenues from imports, the poorer nations must continue to cut their social spending, ramp up their sales of raw materials and public assets, and borrow more money from external private and governmental sources… just to pay off the interest on their ballooning debt.
The imperative of ‘exchange rate stability’ prevents governments in the poorer nations from exercising any effective monetary policy – including implementing capital controls – while their fiscal policy is already eviscerated by balanced budget demands from the IMF, social spending cuts, and pressure from wealthy bondholders to ‘reform’ (i.e., surrender) their tax policy.
In 2016, senior members of the IMF’s research department published an article called ‘Neoliberalism: Oversold?’, which argued that the ‘adverse feedback loop’ set in motion by austerity, followed by increased inequality and then yet more austerity, had to be broken by a less rigid, less fundamentalist approach to ‘liberalisation’ and neoliberalism. (Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri, ‘Neoliberalism: Oversold?’ Finance and Deveopment 53, no. 2 (June 2016), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm.).

There was even a suggestion of ‘greater acceptance of [capital] controls to deal with the volatility of capital flows’. While there was a decline in the conditions that the IMF required to receive their loans over the course of the decade before this paper was published, there is no evidence of any qualitative change in IMF policy. (Alexander E. Kentikelenis, Thomas H. Stubbs, and Lawrence P. King, ‘IMF Conditionality and Development Policy Space, 1985–2014’, Review of International Political Economy 23, no. 4 (2016): 543-582.).

Guinea, for instance – a country that has at least a third of the world’s bauxite – entered the IMF rollercoaster in 2011 and immediately became trapped in the debt-austerity cycle.(Lounceny Nabé and Kerfalla Yansané, ‘Guinea: Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding’, International Monetary Fund, 20 June 2011, https://www.imf.org/external/np/loi/2011/gin/063011.pdf.). In 2014, the Guinean government of Alpha Condé wrote to the IMF that the ‘tight fiscal and monetary policy’ had led to a ‘reduction in spending, including on domestic investment’, which made it impossible for Guinea ‘to respect the indicative targets for spending in priority sectors’. (Mohamed Diaré and Lounceny Nabé, ‘Guinea: Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding’, International Monetary Fund, 1 February 2014, https://www.imf.org/External/NP/LOI/2014/GIN/020114.pdf). In other words, Guinea borrowed to try and exit a crisis, but the borrowing itself led to cuts in social spending and deepened its crisis. In 2019–2020, the country experienced a cycle of protests sparked both by Condé’s attempt to change the constitution as well as the worsened economic situation. A UNICEF report found that, in 2019, twenty-five very poor countries spent more on debt servicing than on education, health, and social protection combined. Sixteen of those countries are on the African continent.(UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, COVID-19 and the Looming Debt Crisis, Innocenti Policy Brief 2021-01, Protecting and Transforming Social Spending for Inclusive Recoveries (Florence: UNICEF, April 2021), https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/Social-spending-series_COVID-19-and-the-looming-debt-crisis.pdf, 15.). In the early months of the pandemic in 2020, the IMF offered to open up new windows for borrowing that they said would come without conditionalities. (Kristalina Georgieva, ‘The Next Phase of the Crisis: Further Action Needed for a Resilient Recovery’, IMF (blog), 16 July 2020, https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2020/07/16/blog-g20-md-the-next-phase-of-the-crisis-further-action-needed-for-a-resilient-recovery.).

The G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative and other such offers to pause debt payments suggested that the poorer nations would receive assistance to prevent total economic collapse and to gain access to vaccines. However, Oxfam found that thirteen of the fifteen IMF loan programmes during the second year of the pandemic (2021) required ‘new austerity measures such as taxes on food and fuel or spending cuts that could put vital public services at risk’. (Oxfam International, ‘IMF Must Abandon Demands for Austerity as Cost-of-Living Crisis Drives up Hunger and Poverty Worldwide’, Oxfam Press Release, 19 April 2022, https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/imf-must-abandon-demands-austerity-cost-living-crisis-drives-hunger-and-poverty.) The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index reveals that fourteen out of the sixteen countries in West Africa planned to cut their budgets by a total of $26.8 billion in 2021 to contain haemorrhaging national debt crises and that these policies have been encouraged by the IMF’s COVID-19 loans. (Matthew Martin et al., The West Africa Inequality Crisis: Fighting Austerity and the Pandemic, Oxfam and Development Finance International, 14 October 2021, https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621300/rr-west-africa-cri-austerity-pandemic-141021-en.pdf, 4, 19.).

The evidence is clear: the IMF not only engineers austerity-driven debt crises, but its policies are designed to ensure and manage a permanent debt crisis, not to erase debt.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

IMF offers us no viable exit from a permanent debt crisis. Featured

May 13, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Before the COVID-19 pandemic was announced by the World Health Organisation in March 2020, our poorer nations already struggled with seriously high – and unpayable – levels of debt. Between 2011 and 2019, the World Bank reported, “public debt in a sample of 65 developing countries increased by 18 per cent of GDP on average – and by much more in several cases. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, debt increased by 27 per cent of GDP on average” (Marcello Estevão and Sebastian Essl, ‘When the Debt Crises Hit, Don’t Simply Blame the Pandemic’, World Bank (blog), 28 June 2022, (https://blogs.worldbank.org/…/when-debt-crises-hit-dont…).

The debt crisis did not take place because of government spending on long-term infrastructure projects, which could eventually pay for themselves by increasing growth rates and allow these countries to exit from a permanent debt crisis. Rather, these governments borrowed money upon borrowed money to pay off older debts to wealthy bondholders, as well as to pay for their current bills (such as to maintain education, health, and basic civic services). “Among the thirty-three sub-Saharan countries in our sample”, the World Bank noted, “current spending outstripped capital investment by a ratio of nearly three to one” (Estevão and Essl, ‘When the Debt Crises Hit, Don’t Simply Blame the Pandemic’).

When the pandemic struck, countries that had adopted the World Bank-International Monetary Fund policy to grow their way out of the debt crisis floundered. Growth rates shrank, which meant that debt volumes ballooned, and so these governments decided to borrow more and adopt deeper austerity policies, which dramatically increased the debt burden on their populations.

Registering, in their own way, what is universally acknowledged as an intractable debt crisis in the poorer nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that a serious banking crisis is likely to emerge (while ignoring the factors driving this scenario). “Our updated global bank stress test shows that, in a severely adverse scenario, up to 29 per cent of emerging market banks would breach capital requirements”, the IMF wrote in October 2022.(International Monetary Fund, Global Financial Stability Report – Navigating the High-Inflation Environment (Washington, DC: IMF, October 2022),https://www.imf.org/…/global-financial-stability-report…).

This means that the context of high debt, high inflation, and low growth rates (with lowered employment expectations) could lead to the collapse of a third of the banks in the poorer nations.

Neither the IMF nor the World Bank nor indeed any of the international financial institutions (IFIs) have any credible pathway out of this crisis. Indeed, the IMF report surrenders to reality as it tells central banks across the globe to “avoid a de-anchoring of inflation expectations” and to ensure that “the tightening of financial conditions needs to be calibrated carefully, to aim at avoiding disorderly market conditions that could put financial stability unduly at risk”. (IMF, Global Financial Stability Report, ix).

The focus here is to keep ‘the market’ happy, while there is remarkably no care for the downward spiral of living conditions for the vast majority of the people on the planet. In its October 2022 Fiscal Monitor Report, subtitled ‘Helping People Bounce Back’, the IMF noted that while governments’ top priorities must be “to ensure everyone has access to affordable food and to protect low-income households from rising inflation”, they must not attempt “to limit price increases through price controls, subsidies, or tax cuts”, which would “be costly to the budget and ultimately ineffective”. (International Monetary Fund, Fiscal Monitor: Helping People Bounce Back (Washington, DC: IMF, October 2022), https://www.imf.org/…/2022/10/09/fiscal-monitor-october-22).

In January 2023, the IMF’s World Economic Outlook predicted a slightly better, albeit ‘subpar’, growth forecast but warned of continued worries of debt distress in the poorer nations, writing that “The combination of high debt levels from the pandemic, lower growth, and higher borrowing costs exacerbates the vulnerability of these economies, especially those with significant near-term dollar financing needs”. (International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Update: Inflation Peaking amid Low Growth (IMF, January 2023), https://www.imf.org/…/world-economic-outlook-update…).

The antidote to debt distress, according to the IMF, is “fiscal consolidation and growth-enhancing supply-side reforms”, namely more of the same old austerity-debt trap. If the governments of the poorer nations are told not to use these basic tools (which are used routinely in the richer nations), their only choice – as far as the IMF is concerned – is to borrow in order to provide even low levels of relief to the very poorest people in their countries. Effectively, the IMF has surrendered to the prevailing reality and offers the poorer nations no viable exit from a permanent debt crisis.

Fred M’membe President of the Socialist Party

Job creation under the Socialist Party government Featured

May 11, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The Socialist Party (SP) will create employment once voted into power with a job-creation strategy centred around the three pillars of its social and political programme; education, health and peasant agriculture.

Under the SP government, schools will not be run the way they currently are. We will provide free education from nursery at the age of three all the way to university, and it will be compulsory up to grade 12.

Education will be a major undertaking in this country and will be allocated not less than 25 per cent of the national budget. Under this programme, teachers will not be left to manage and run schools on their own. In order to have an effective, efficient, and orderly system, the running of schools will include other professionals and a broad spectrum of workers, such as human resources personnel, information technology experts, accountants, marketing personnel, cleaners, drivers, mechanics, gardeners, nurses, clinical officers, and catering staff, among others. Schools, colleges and universities will need to be supplied with all sorts of teaching aids and other goods and services, and these will be produced in factories by our people, meaning that education will directly and indirectly be one of the biggest employers.

The health sector will also be used to create a number of jobs. By expanding Zambia’s health services – both in terms of quantity and quality – we will need to employ more people. This will entail a need for more nurses, clinical officers, doctors, pharmacists, radiographers, and many other health and general workers. In addition, our government will prioritise the manufacture of some of the medicines we use, even under licence. We will also need to create factories producing health equipment of all sorts. This, together with many other functions that will be added to health services, will create many more jobs.

Another sector that we will prioritise to create employment is peasant agriculture. And when we say peasant agriculture, we don’t mean that everyone will be carrying a kambwili, hoe and be tillers of land. There’s an urgent need to transform the way peasant agriculture is carried out.

We cannot increase agricultural production with a hoe, that’s for planting flowers around your house and a few beds of vegetables to feed a small family. Our plans are much bigger than that and will involve many jobs being created in the agricultural sector because of the transformations we will make.

Transformative peasant agriculture under this government will need new equipment, that is; appropriate ploughs, planters, harvesters and other necessities. To produce these, we will need to set up factories all over the country employing engineers and their technicians, human resources experts, accountants, IT experts, marketing and sales staff, drivers, mechanics, nurses and clinical officers to ran staff clinics, catering people to manage the staff cafeterias, and so on. Of course, our reality, as it stands today, is that we may not have all the engineering expertise required to set up and run these factories. We may have to rely on expatriate skills while we train our people in our schools, colleges and universities.

We will also need to set up factories producing agricultural chemicals. These will require us to employ a diverse range of scientists and other staff. In addition, we will need to create factories that produce veterinary medicines for our livestock. This undertaking will employ scientists, technicians, HR people, accountants, ICT experts, marketing and sales experts and many others. The medicines produced will need to be administered by vets, working with lab technicians. In this way we will be creating more and more jobs for our people.

And, of course, peasant agriculture will need to be financed. This will require us to create a myriad of financial institutions, such as agriculture banks and insurance companies. These institutions will employ bankers, lawyers, accountants, IT experts, insurance personnel and many others, again creating more and more jobs.The agricultural output produced by our factories will need to be delivered to our peasant farmers. This will create logistics jobs for drivers, mechanics and other support staff. Furthermore, the cotton we produce in Nyimba, Petauke, Katete, Chipata, Chadiza, Lundazi, Chama and other places, will not leave Eastern Province unprocessed. Textile factories will be established in employing people from all over the country in many, various roles. These factories will be producing reels of all sorts of cloth, but the cloth produced will not be exported as it is.

Clothing factories will be created to design and produce shirts, trousers, dresses, caps, canvas shoes, belts, and many other products. These factories will require sewing machines and needles so small factories will be created to manufacture and service the machines. The clothing factories will further need buttons and zips. The buttons can be produced from the horns of cattle, hard wood and stones, creating even more jobs. And the finished products will need to be packaged. This will require us to create factories producing packaging materials. Drivers will be needed to transport the finished products from the factories to the ports of Dar-es-Salam, Walvis Bay and Durban. Furthermore, delivery trucks will need to be serviced by mechanics. In this way, more jobs will be created.

Our strategies on cotton production and its processing and export will be extended to food crops. Small and large factories will be created all over the country to process agricultural produce. For instance, factories can be built to process tomato into jam, juice, soup, puree or paste. Some of these products can be exported, and some consumed locally, resulting in more jobs. In addition, it is important to also mention that there will be new jobs created in other sectors of our economy, such as mining, construction, forestry, and the provision of the many other services needed in an organised society.

Fred M’membe

Professionalism Featured

May 8, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

When some people are pushed to limit they rebel. It’s pleasing to some professionals refusing to do wrong things and resigning from their positions. This is the professional culture we would like to emerge in our country among those appointed to public office. This will certainly make politicians aware and mindful of interfering with the running of public institutions.

Consequently, political authorities will refrain in meddling in the operations of state run institutions for fear of office bearers stepping down whenever undue political interference at whatever level is exerted on the board and management decisions of public institutions which are supposed to operate independently.

Not too long ago, we saw the high profile resignation of the Bank of Zambia Governor and most recently the resignation of ZCCM-IH Board Chairperson. Whilst reasons for these resignations may never be provided, we can only conclude that, they relate to the divergence of views between the appointing authority and the concerned persons running public institutions. In a nutshell, political interference by the appointing authorities.

One common thread of the resignations we have cited is that these are individuals who have worked both local and abroad for reputable institutions and are highly qualified individuals who are well conversant with corporate governance issues and therefore, these resignations must have been triggered by their conscience on breaching corporate governance standards.

We urge the appointing authorities to take cognisance of these developments and strongly desist from interfering with the running of state institutions. This is evident from the recently leaked audio which involved a provincial minister, the Head of State and FRA Board chair.

We also urge professionals appointed in public office to extol their professionalism and resist from taking decisions imposed upon them by the appointing authorities. In the event the heat is too much, they should exemplarily step down. This is one way of strengthening our economy, institutional governance structures and at the same time reminding politicians to stay in their lane. After all, for one to be appointed in senior public office, it means the appointing authority is thoroughly satisfied with their competence to independently discharge their duties and therefore needless to interfere. It is a delegated responsibility to act on behalf of the appointing authority and make independent decisions without external undue influence.

This is a good development for the nation and hopefully those inhibited to discharge their duties due to interference will exercise their conscience to step aside.

Fred M’membe President of the Socialist Party

Debt Featured

May 5, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

We think it’s mischievous to say all benchmarks have been met when the IMF statement clearly sets out conditions to progress with the disbursement of US$188 million subject to financing assurances from debt restructuring.

How can they say all benchmarks have been met when there are outstanding conditions set out in the IMF statement? How can one be confident of the outcome when there are preconditions that have still not been met?

While we support the speedy conclusion of debt restructuring, we are not confident because the Minister of Finance has made numerous statements and given timelines in which they were expected to conclude the issue – timelines that have come and gone. How can one be confident when they keep changing timelines?

Secondly, the issue of debt restructuring being a panacea for our economic challenges is being amplified.

Over the past two years we have not been servicing our debt, so where have the savings gone? Once debt restructuring is concluded we will have to start paying the currently suspended debt, meaning we will have less money than we have had in the past two years. Will this solve our economic challenges? The answer is a categorical NO.

The real solution lies in formulating an internal system; an economic recovery plan focusing on industrialisation, expanding our existing manufacturing capacities – and introducing new ones – sound agriculture policy, reviewing tax waivers provided to the mining and other sectors, and energy sector reforms, among other things.

What is needed is to adopt a non-favourite child policy; to treat all creditors the same and engage with each credit category on a bilateral basis, in addition to the G20 Common Framework.

Fred M’membePresident of Socialist Party Zambia

Inflation Featured

May 4, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Inflation is a source of concern whenever it rises.

One of the key contributors to inflation rising is the depreciation of the Kwacha, as our country is import dependent. This is a structural issue with the state of our economy.

To address this issue we need to focus on industrialization, import substitution, and local content policy for goods manufactured locally to ensure we don’t import broken down parts just to be assembled in Zambia.

As an example, if you go to Builders’ Warehouse, work suits are imported from South Africa. Why can’t we incentivize our textile industry? We should be able to do this because we grow enough cotton. Military uniforms are imported. Why can’t we manufacture them locally? So increasing local production and promoting new manufacturing plants to lessen dependence on imports is a key policy measure for us.

Secondly, we have serious reservations about how inflation is measured currently and we will revisit the calibration of goods and services included in the inflation basket.

We would like Zamstats to avail the list of goods and services included in the inflation basket publicly so we can assess the relevance and weightings assigned, to ensure their practicality.

As an example, is it a fair representation to have hairpieces in the inflation basket but exclude fuel on account of the fact that the fuel impact is represented through the prices of goods affected by fuel?

The whole measurement methodology for both GDP and Inflation needs to be revisited.

Fred M’membe

That drama was not necessary Featured

May 4, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The drama at former president Edgar Lungu’s residence was totally unnecessary and is unjustifiable. Whatever crimes he or some members of his household were suspected to have committed, the police could have handled issues in a less dramatic and traumatising way.

We saw such practices under Mr Lungu’s reign and we strongly condemned them. Mr Hakainde Hichilema was a victim of such practices. Zambians of good will certainly don’t want such practices to continue even under feelings or reasons of vengeance.

It is a well-known fact that throughout history, those who administer or control the criminal justice system hold the power with the potential for abuse and tyranny. Let’s not go that way. We can do things better and in the right way.

Let’s pursue justice with compassion even when dealing with those who brutalised us. That’s the only way we will be able to build a more just, fair and humane society in our homeland.

These are really hard, difficult and challenging times. But they are not supposed to mean a situation in which things get worse and worse. It means a crossroads, a time for decisions and actions – in this case, about which way we want our society, politics and economy to go.

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party [Zambia]

NAPSA partial withdrawal Featured

May 4, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

I again return to NAPSA partial withdrawal. There are fundamental issues on the NAPSA partial withdrawal:

The policy has been implemented without sufficient sensitization of the beneficiaries on the implications of partial withdrawal and more importantly what they should do with the money. Moving funds from an investment account to a consumption account is not a wise decision. No training has been provided or mentorship workshops administered to school the beneficiaries on how to re-invest the funds in higher return investments. Zambia is well known for lacking a savings and entrepreneurship culture, coupled with the existing harsh economic conditions prevailing, it is likely that the benefits will be used for consumption without creating future wealth. Consequently, we risk creating destitutes at retirement.
The NAPSA partial withdraw leaves us confused at a policy level as to what government is trying to achieve. In February this year, the Bank of Zambia increased the statutory reserve ratio to remove liquidity from the market in order to manage the rapid depreciation of the Kwacha and reduce the rate of inflation. We are told that NAPSA will payout K11 billion which means pumping liquidity into the market. The K11 billion liquidity being pushed into the market will more than offset the liquidity taken out by the Bank of Zambia decision. In a nutshell, one policy measure by the Bank of Zambia is being offset by NAPSA pumping additional liquidity in the market. The two policy measures undertaken contradict and cancel each other out.
We are also concerned that NAPSA is being used as a cash cow by government, to participate in government securities subscription, provide loans to foreign entities to construct the Ndola-Lusaka dual carriage way and now partial pension withdrawals. How much milk can you squeeze out of this cow before it collapses?

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party [Zambia]

Labour Day Featured

May 1, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

These are very hard times! The cost of living is skyrocketing, jobs are being lost and becoming fewer and fewer, the few remaining jobs are being degraded and increasingly unsecure.

But in the midst of all these difficulties, challenges and sufferings let’s not forget that the workers have given us whatever we have, made us what we are, and will make us what we hope to be; and we thank them for all, and above all for giving us eyes to see, hearts to feel and voices to speak for the workers.

Labour Day is a good day to rest the hands and give the brain a chance – to think about what has been, and is, and is yet to be.

The way has been long and weary and full of pain, and many have fallen by the wayside, but the Unconquerable Army of Labour is still on the march and as it rests on its arms today and casts a look ahead, it beholds upon the horizon the first glowing rays of the Social Sunrise.

The Socialist Party Zambia and the Trade Union Movement must be one today in celebration of Labour Day and pledge each other their mutual fidelity and support in every battle, economic and political, until the field is won and the Workers are strong and in control. Forget not the past on Labour Day!

Comrades, this is the day for Workers to think of the Class Struggle and the Ballot—the day for Labour to clasp the hand of Labour and girdle the globe with the International Revolutionary Solidarity of the Working Class.

We are all one—all workers of all lands and climes. We know not colour, tribe, nor creed, nor sex in the Labour Movement. We know only that our hearts throb with the same proletarian stroke, that we are keeping step with our class in the march to the goal and that the solidarity of Labour will vanquish exploitation and Humanize the World.

It gets dark sometimes but the morning comes. Don’t lose hope, don’t give up!

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party [Zambia]

Are these shortages of mealie meal a produce of Socialism? Featured

April 24, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Mr Hakainde Hichilema once attributed the shortages of essential commodities like cooking oil, and luxury items like Coca-Cola under the Kaunda era to socialist policies. He linked the shortages of basic commodities to socialism. He said, “communism and socialism failed, It did not just fail here it failed even in the heart of communism, so when I see advancement of those issues, sometimes I say, ‘do we want to go back to shortages. We heard of the cooking oil, queuing for cooking oil’… The Coca-Cola you take for granted today, was not there…”

Today, we have very serious mealie meal shortages that the country has not witnessed in a while in a very capitalist Zambia of Mr Hichilema! How does he explain this ideologically, and these shortages?

Our response to Mr Hichilema’s claims at that time was as follows:

IN DEFENCE OF OUR SOVEREIGNTY, DIGNITY AND SOCIALISM

By Dr Fred M’membe

It’s very sad that some key political leaders of our country don’t know or understand what caused shortages of cooking oil and other essential commodities during the last part of Dr Kenneth Kaunda’s reign.

These leaders are out of ignorance attributing the shortages of many consumer goods under the Kaunda era to socialism.

Firstly, the Kaunda government was not a socialist government. At most, Dr Kaunda can be said to have been a social democrat. And these were extremely honest leaders who cared more about their people than self enrichment. They had opportunities to enrich themselves like their colleagues did in Kenya and other African countries who robbed their people of land.

The period of shortages was at the height of the liberation struggle in southern Africa when the country was totally blockaded – with no dealings with South Africa, Namibia, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Angola, Mozambique, and Botswana was not the prosperous Botswana of today.

Tanzania was also not the Tanzania of today. And oil prices had shot up worldwide. They had to start companies to produce their own cooking oil and other essential commodities. And these were the companies some of these leaders denigrating them today came to privatise at very exorbitant fees or commissions and enriched themselves.

Thanks to the very high sacrifices our leaders and our people had make that made it possible for our leaders today to go to liberated South Africa and do deals with representatives of corporations that colonised, exploited and humiliated us for centuries.

People who claim to be economists should have a better understanding of things than this. This is really an exhibition of crass ignorance and dishonesty.

Socialism is not about, or synonymous with, shortages of mealie meal, cooking oil and other essential commodities.

How can someone in this era and age think having or drinking Coca-Cola is a big achievement, an indicator of economic and social prosperity? What is Coca-Cola anyway? A mixture of carbon dioxide, water, sugar and caffeine! Of what nutrition value is Coca-Cola anyway? It is actually dangerous and harmful to the human body.

And what is wrong with our people coming up with their drinks?

Is this how empty and pro imperialist they are? What will remain of this country at the end of their rule? Coca-Cola will be everything! They will own everything. What will remain under the ownership of our people?

Socialism is about a better and dignified life for all our people anchored on equity, solidarity, humility and honesty and sovereignty of their homeland.

And socialism has shown how poor nations can get out of poverty in the shortest historical times. Look at the achievements of Cuba – a country fought and blockaded for over 63 years. Without the minerals Zambia has, Cuba in 2020 had a GDP of around 107.35 billion U.S. dollars. GDP is an important indicator of a country’s economic power.

GDP in Zambia was expected to reach 24.00 USD Billion by the end of 2021. In the long-term, the Zambia GDP which has been pursuing unbridled neoliberal capitalist policies for more than 30 years is projected to trend around 27.00 USD Billion in 2023, according to some econometric models.
India’s socialist state of Kerale is leading in many economic and social indicators and scientific achievements.

Whatever their attempts to credit China’s achievements to capitalism, that is a great socialist state pursuing socialism with Chinese characteristics. And this what its leaders say. They attribute their economic successes to socialism.
We also have the successes of Vietnam.

The ignorant attempt to smear socialism and socialists to hide their greed and corruption quest to become billionaires won’t do. No matter what they say or do socialism will one day triumph in our homeland.

Capitalism has for centuries failed our people. Let them show us where capitalism has succeeded in Africa?

And more interesting is the fact that the most achievements scored in Zambia can be attributed to certain socialist inspired principles that were implemented in the country. The creation of free education, infrastructure development, creation of state owned enterprises that employed many and some which still stand today are as a result of having a human face towards national economic development which in itself is socialism.

Most leaders today who are a product of free education and other socially oriented programmes want to ridicule a system that moved them from poverty and then support imperialist policies that only benefit a few foreign interests.

Zambia definitely needs a citizen led economic development agenda which under a socialist government will be attained.

We want a Zambia where Zambians can have genuine businesses and not these crooked dealers, tenderpreneurs calling themselves businessmen.

Like China, Zambia will manage to free its people from poverty through socialism with Zambian characteristics.

It’s socialism and only socialism that can guarantee our sovereignty, dignity and prosperity.

Fred M’membe

Jumping from the frying pan into the fire and back again Featured

April 24, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

When a government targets for destruction the pillars that hold society together it is actually destroying itself.

There’s no doubt that this government of Mr Hakainde Hichilema has, from as early as late 2021, targeted the Catholic Church leadership, relatively influential politicians and civil society activists for neutralisation or destruction.

Among the highly targeted are Catholic bishops as well as PF and Socialist Party leaders.

But such methods have seldom produced the desired results. The only sure way of getting the best or positive results is by doing the right things; delivering the essential services needed by our people and giving them a better and happier life .

One can eliminate individuals and send opponents to jail or early graves but that doesn’t improve the living conditions of our people.

I see very dangerous signs that this government is turning tyrannical, into a killing machine.

But the ending of tyrants is always the same. They say those who live or rule by the sword perish by it.

It seems we have jumped from the frying pan into the fire and back again.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party [Zambia]

Hichilema’s very worrying comments, insinuations Featured

April 16, 2023 by Fred M'membe in Opinions

The excitement of Mr Hakainde Hichilema over my carrying a firearm is very worrying.

He is passing judgement on a matter I am being prosecuted over by law enforcement agencies under his control and command. In more fair and just societies his comments and insinuations would constitute a very serious breach, prejudicing my case.

The fact that Mr Hichilema has never carried a firearm even when his life was in constant danger as an opposition leader doesn’t make my carrying a firearm illegal or unjustifiable.

It’s lawful for any Zambian to own and carry a licensed firearm and use it within legally permissible conditions and circumstances.

I have carried a firearm for most of my life. The life I have lived required me to carry a firearm, and I have been properly and adequately trained in the use of firearms.

The life Mr Hichilema has lived is very different from mine. His path in life is very different from mine. Each path in life is different.

It’s not fair and just for Mr Hichilema to prejudice my case. From his comments and insinuations it’s very clear that he is very excited about this case and he would like to see me fixed. And he seems to have serious problems concealing his excitement. But for now, let him keep his excitement and desires to himself and allow me a fair and unprejudiced trial.

The exercise of power must be a constant practice of self-limitation and modesty.

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party [Zambia]

Desperate mealie meal measures Featured

April 12, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The desperate measures to address the mealie meal shortages won’t do.

The issuing of a Statutory Instrument by the Minister of Finance removing duties on the importation of mealie meal is a really desperate measure.

The real issue that needs to be addressed is maize parity pricing in the region. Our maize is too cheap in comparison to other countries in the region so the pressure of our maize leaving the country will always be there.

If, for instance, we allow regional market prices to prevail in Zambia then the issue of smuggling will be mitigated. However, the consequence of that is that mealie prices will sky rocket to K400/500 per 25kg bag, which the government knows can cause civil strife.

Despite duties being waived, the imported product will almost definitely land at a higher price than local product. A 25 kg bag of mealie meal in South Africa is presently retailing at R240, so add transportation and insurance costs and also financing costs from the banks, and the landed costs will be around K300.

Even under this duty waiver, the export pressure given highly lucrative prices in neighbouring countries will still incentivise the smuggling of the imported mealie meal.

Sadly, the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) stocks have been depleted due to careless release of the maize reserve and, as alluded in my previous articles, we do not have a fallback position.

The challenge the government is faced with here in summary is twofold: trying to control or influence price and secondly, maintain steady supply. Now the laws of supply and demand dictate a price jump should supply lag. So we are caught between a rock and a hard place. Stabilise supply by increasing prices and people will react, increase supply at depressed prices and smuggling will continue with shortages persisting as a result.

Conclusion: it is unlikely that the Minister of Finance’s Statutory Instrument will help solve this problem until parity price in the region normalises.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

What has become of the UPND strategy to fix the economy? Featured

April 12, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

What has happened to the strategies that Mr Hakainde Hichilema had on maize meal, on our staple food? Did they really know what they were saying?

We are truly in a crisis. And the desperate measures to address the mealie meal shortages won’t do.

The issuing of a Statutory Instrument by the Minister of Finance removing duties on the importation of mealie meal is a really desperate measure.

Even under this duty waiver, the export pressure given highly lucrative prices in neighbouring countries will still incentivise the smuggling of the imported mealie meal.

Sadly, the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) stocks have been depleted due to careless release of the maize reserve and, as alluded in my previous articles, we do not have a fallback position.

Conclusion: it is unlikely that the Minister of Finance’s Statutory Instrument will help solve this problem until parity price in the region normalises.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

How credible are statements from govt? Featured

April 6, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

Not too long ago, great concerns were being expressed by many citizens about the continuous depreciation of the Kwacha which was impacting the high cost of living.

The Minister of Finance, Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane, explained that this was largely due the delayed debt restructuring programme.

We are delighted that the Kwacha has significantly appreciated in the last two days and we pray that this trend helps to lower the high cost of living. We also hope that it will have a consequential effect of maintaining inflation within the target range of 6-8 per cent. As SP, we are delighted because such positive developments will cushion the citizens from the high costs of living and improve their livelihoods.

However, in order to give confidence to the citizens on the sustainability of this positive move, can government clearly state what measures it has put in place for this positive change? We are aware that the debt restructuring programme has not been concluded, so what has changed and is this change sustainable?

You will recall that I did point out that the exchange rate was being impacted by multiple factors, but government insisted that the depreciation was largely driven by stalled debt restructuring talks. How credible are statements being issued by government? And based on this example can we as citizens believe what government is telling the nation?

Credibility is critical for citizens to buy into government pronouncements, failure to which the citizenry loses faith in government. Can the Minister of Finance explain circumstances leading to this new development seeing as debt restructuring is still stalled so as to enable citizens to better plan going forward.

Our take is that in addition to first quarter tax receipts, they have released huge amounts from international reserves under panic.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

NAPSA partial withdrawals Featured

March 29, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

I have not so far commented on the NAPSA partial withdrawals. What was published under my name was Fake News.

Since it seems I am expected to say something let me do so.

An immediate impact on the government is that NAPSA is an anchor investor in government bonds. Therefore, releasing a projected 20 per cent partial payment of K11 billion will deprive NAPSA of the liquidity required to participate in government securities. Consequently, the government will be starved of the much-needed operational funding required to function. Note that in the April 27, 2023 bond auction of K2.6 billion, the government only raised K636 million, which was a massive under subscription. This can be partially attributed to NAPSA’s absence or its minimal participation in government bonds. Also, the uncertainty regarding debt restructuring has most likely resulted in non-resident bond players pulling out their investments upon maturity. This will certainly negatively impact the exchange rate further.

Added to this, inflation is now hitting double digits despite assurances by the Minister of Finance that it was unlikely to do so. Alas, the Statistician General announced on April 27 that the April inflation rate had reached 10.2 per cent.

All this points to a lack of comprehensive economic recovery policy/strategy by Mr Hakainde Hichilema’s UPND government. Instead of coming up with a master plan for the country’s economic recovery, it seems to be in “fire fighting mode”. Principally, it is focusing on day-to-day operational matters instead of formulating a strategic economic recovery master plan on how it will incentivise domestic value addition, bring Mopani and KCM on board, and come up with a clear policy on agriculture, among other things.

As long as the government remains operationally focused and not strategic, our economy is headed for doom.

The lack of consistent policies includes NAPSA partial withdrawals. On one hand, the Bank of Zambia raises the statutory reserve ratio in the market to stifle liquidity in the hope that the Kwacha depreciation can be tamed, as explained by the Minister of Finance; but at the same time there is a need to pump K11 billion back into the same market through partial NAPSA withdrawals, increasing liquidity in the market. So which is it to be? Decrease liquidity to tame Kwacha depreciation or increase liquidity to gain political mileage and appease the masses? What exactly is the policy direction?

Effectively, the fiscal side is cancelling out or neutralising the monetary policy measure. The right hand does not seem to know what the left hand is doing. Providing liquidity in an already starved market is a good measure to stir economic growth. Admittedly, inflation may be negatively affected, but we can live with that in the short term, but contracting the economy by reducing liquidity in the market is like removing blood from a patient. Achieving a single digit inflation number is meaningless if the patient dies. This is a very narrow perspective on how to solve the economic malaise of the country’s economy and grow it. A balance needs to be struck between creating an environment for economic growth while also managing inflation, and this may mean inflation trends outside the 6-8 percent target range for a while. However, once the economy starts to grow, inflation will drop as a consequence.

Fred M’membe

It’s time to do our own thing Featured

March 27, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

It’s time to move away from Western economic hegemony and dictatorship and see things for ourselves, analyse things for ourselves and come to our conclusions.

We have been swallowing their recipes without chewing and blindly following their prescriptions. It’s time to take our own paths – and every path is different.

For example, take inflation targeting used blindly by the Bank of Zambia through interest rate hikes, it does not work for our country because very few Zambian companies/SMEs and individuals have access to credit which is used as a transmission mechanism for interest rate hikes in the hope that it subdues expenditure consequently bringing down inflation. But this cannot work in Zambia because very few people have credit and therefore not directly impacted by rate hikes.

By contrast in the Western world and a few African countries like South Africa literally everyone there has a credit facility – be it contract phone, domestic equipment/furniture hire purchase, credit card, home and motor vehicle finance and so on and so forth.

Those who disagree with what we are saying let them explain to us how this works in Zambia!

We know this is what the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund recommend. But is it working, is it the right way to go?

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

What democracy can the United States promote? Featured

March 25, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

On March 29-30, 2023, the United States will co-host the second Summit for Democracy with the governments of Costa Rica, the Netherlands, Republic of Korea, and Republic of Zambia. But what democracy can the United States government really promote or advance for an African country?

How many of our elected leaders and governments have the United States toppled and killed? …

(https://socialistpartyzambia.com/2022/12/01/the-united-states-will-co-host-the-second-summit-for-democracy-with-the-governments-of-costa-rica/)

What democracy can the United States really teach us or advance in our poor countries?

This is the country the Zambian government of Mr Hakainde Hichilema has hired itself to as a puppet. What a shame! What an embarrassment!

What democracy are they advancing or promoting with the United States? The AFRICOM type of democracy!

We urge them to retreat from this embarrassing neocolonial mentality and imperialist puppet, lackey behaviour.

They are stripping our country and our people of the anti-imperialist badge of honour they have worn since independence. For what? We have become the continent’s laughing stock.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

Reflections on the economy Featured

February 22, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

The Bank of Zambia has failed to meet the required K2.6 billion per bond auction as only K854 million was raised during the latest auction results published on February 17 this year.

The subscription rates are an economic barometer of the economy, as an over subscription is generally seen as mark of economic confidence by investors, while an under subscription is seen as a score for low investor confidence.

The Bank of Zambia, trying to raise funds on behalf of the government by issuing government bonds, only managed to raise K854 million out of the targeted K2.6 billion, an under subscription or low uptake of 32 per cent. Investors are on the fence due to uncertainty with regards to national debt restructuring.

We will not be surprised if the bankers of economic evils eventually start printing money.

These are the effects of removing liquidity from the markets. We strongly suspect financial institution participation in government securities has dwindled resulting in low subscriptions, meaning the funding of government operations will be negatively impacted.

And we don’t think this is caused by debt restructuring uncertainty as is being suggested. This should be seen as a direct consequence of low liquidity levels primarily, and the possible pull out of non-resident investors upon maturity of their securities. The rise in interest rates in the United States and Europe is also incentivising non-resident investors to pull out of emerging markets bond investments and redirecting back to the United States and Europe which carry less country risk than emerging markets, in other words in more secure economic environments.

The maturity risk is now materialising whereby offshore investors in government securities are now cashing out on maturity of their investments instead of rolling over. So we will now end in a net payout position for government securities with the following consequences:

(i) Depletion of international reserves as investors externalise their investment. The question is: what are the international reserves cover for offshore investment holding in government securities?

(ii) Pressure on the Kwacha with a medium-term outlook of continued depreciation, which will result in higher, imported inflation impact.
The question is: how will the increase in statutory reserve ratio, which has reduced liquidity in the market, mitigate this? Ultimately it appears this policy measure is impotent – for lack of a better word. Worse still, it slows down economic growth.

(iii) Under subscription in government securities, which is one of the main sources of funds for government operations, will significantly affect funding of government operations, including civil servants’ payroll.

Based on February 17 under subscription of only K845 million out of a total offer of K2.6 billion means the government has to look elsewhere to raise funds for the shortfall. The question is: given the already underperforming economy, what alternatives does government have? External loans. But who will be ready to give us loans? The commercial loans window is closed given the debt default and limited bilateral funding.

Where to as a country?

• Reverse the generous tax holidays given to the mining sector.
• Engage China on a bilateral basis to give us a three-year moratorium on its debt while we grapple with the never-ending IMF-G20 common framework.
• Introduce austerity measures, including government-wide international travels at all levels, including for the Head of State.

Lastly, reverse wrong monetary policy decisions taken by the Bank of Zambia to increase the statutory reserve ratio. The under subscription in government securities, stated above, is partially due to reduced participation of the banks in subscribing to government securities. It is also clear that this policy direction will not impact the exchange rate depreciation as it is now evident that the forex demand side is significantly driven by non-resident/offshore investors cashing out and not rolling over their government securities. This is a highly misdirected policy decision. As if this is not enough, the MPC was further increased by 0.25 per cent, making it unbearable for those with commercial loans and those intending to borrow. We hope your new 4×4, which was funded using vehicle and asset finance, will not be taken away if you default due to the high cost of credit.

Austerity measures should also include Mr Hakainde Hichilema moving to Nkwazi House to defray his daily transportation costs to and from his not so Community House and route lining costs. The country is bleeding and we can’t keep up with the same excuse of Nkwazi House being uninhabitable when ordinary citizens are going without food.

A leader should lead by example from the front and demonstrate that he, too, is sacrificing.

Fred M’membe

Tribalism in Zambia Police Featured

February 21, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

There is a need for Mr Hakainde Hichilema to explain why Zambia Police key command positions at all levels and in all departments or units are predominantly occupied by people from one ethnicity and related ethnicities almost to the exclusion of all others.

Is it by pure merit or coincidence that:

Inspector General of Police Lemmy Kajoba is KAONDE?
Deputy Inspector General of Police (State House) Fanwell Siandenge is TONGA?
Deputy Inspector General of Police (Operations) Milner Libusa Muyambango is LOZI?
Deputy Inspector General of Police (Administration) Doris Nayame is MAMBWE?
Director Administration Byemba Musole is LOZI?
Director CID Yuyi Mwala is LOZI?
Deputy Director CID Maxwell Timba is TONGA?
SPIO (Intelligence) Mweemba Robertson is TONGA?
PRO Rae Hamoonga is TONGA?
Commissioner Administration Auxensio Daka (who is said to have been recommended by the late president Lupiya Banda) is NSENGA?
Quarter Master Mubita Munenbo is LOZI?

STATE HOUSE POLICE:

DIG Fanwell Siandenge is TONGA?
Aide de Camp Shapa Wakung’uma is LOZI?
Commissioner of Police Justin Moolo is TONGA?
In Charge Administration Malambo is TONGA?
In Charge Intelligence Chiwala is TONGA?
In Charge Operations Lumanyendo (a relative of Siandenge and coming from the same village) is TONGA?
Senior Driver Mubiana is LOZI (but they often opt to use his junior Mbaimba who is TONGA)?
In Charge Bodyguard Siandiza is TONGA?
Callabashi-Mrs Serah Mwenya (BEMBA)?
Armoury in Charge Mumeka is KAONDE?
Food Analyst Mazaza is LUNDA?
In Charge Garage Kakeja is KAONDE?
Quarter Master Mukolo is LOZI?

COMMISSIONERS OF POLICE:

Lusaka Province – Kreto Nkaanza is TONGA?
Copperbelt Province – Peacewell Mweemba is TONGA?
Central Province – Mukuka Davies Chileshe (who is a close associate of Deputy Inspector General Muyambango) is BEMBA?
Eastern Province – Limpo Liwali is LOZI?
Northern Province – Gloria Mulele (a very close associate of DIG operations Milner Muyambango) is TONGA?
Muchinga Province – Mubaanga Kaunda is LUNDA?
Luapula – Fwambo Siame is MAMBWE?
Southern – Paul Achiume is TUMBUKA?
North Western Province – Dennis Moola is TONGA?
Western Province – Roy Kashimba is LUNDA?

UNIT COMMANDERS:

Paramilitary – Yobe Luhana (who is step brother to Deputy Inspector General Siandenge) is TUMBUKA?
Protective Unit – Fred Hamamba is TONGA?
Airport – Robison Moonga is TONGA?
Lilayi College – Desmond Mwaanza is TONGA?
TAZARA – Simon Mbaulu is LUVALE?
Mobile Unit – Pethias Siandenge (who is younger brother of Deputy Inspector Siandenge) is TONGA?

PROVINCIAL POLICE
INTELLINGENCE:

Lusaka Province – Malambo Muchinda is TONGA?
Northern Province – James Chiti is BEMBA?
Luapula Province – Chimuli Kapenda is LUVALE?
Muchinga Province – Munankopa Nesbert is TONGA?
North Western Province – Abel Chifumpa is LENJE?
Southern Province – Clement Matomola is LOZI?
Central Province – Limwanya Kapupa is LOZI?
Copperbelt Province – Chris Chipepo Chiyabi is TONGA?
Eastern Province – Edify Milambo is TONGA?
Western Province – Joe Malumo is LOZI?

UNIT INTEL OFFICERS:

College – Mponyela Ireen is LOZI?
Mobile Unit – Kanondo Royd is LUNDA?
TAZARA – Fwankila is TONGA?
Airport – Mbwainga Harry is TONGA?
Protective Unit – Kaumbi Lilian is LOZI?
Paramilitary – Neverson Mpundu is BEMBA?

These are the key positions in Zambia Police.
Like Deputy Inspector General Siandenge, some of these officers were part of the UPND security team. Two of Deputy Inspector General Siandenge’s brothers are in charge of the two striking police units – paramilitary and mobile units.

Where does this staffing of the police leave the opposition when it comes to policing politics and elections? Would Mr Hichilema keep quiet and accept this if he was in opposition?

These are honest questions seeking honest answers.

Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party Zambia

WHAT’S FUELLING TRIBAL POLITICS DEBATES? Featured

January 31, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

It seems Mr Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND are perched on the defensive over accusations of tribalism. Why? Probably it is because of the promises they made to have a tribal and regionally balanced and representative government. Critiques are asking if what they are seeing is equal to what they were promised:

President (Tonga)
Vice-President (Bemba married to a Lozi)
Speaker (Lozi)
Chief Justice (Lenje)
Acting President of the Constitutional Court (Lozi)
Attorney General (Lenje)
Solicitor General (Tonga)
Chairman of the Judicial Service Commission (Lozi)
Chairman of the Judicial Complaints Commission (Tonga)
Commissioner of Lands (Tonga)
Chief Legal Advisor to the President (Lozi)
Minister of Justice (Tonga).

They are saying the key state institutions and the country’s justice system are basically is the hands of Tongas and Lozis (with very little or no meaningful participation from the rest)

They are saying the same about the key government ministries (Ministries that are not easily done away with by any government):

Home Affairs (Tonga)
Local Government (Tonga)
Education (Tonga)
Tourism (Tonga)
-Justice (Tonga)
Foreign Affairs (Lenje)
Health (Soli)
Defence (Luvale)
Infrastructure (Lozi)
Finance (Lozi)
Lands (Lunda)
Governor of Bank of Zambia (Tonga).

The rest are, in the main, pushed to ministries that can easily be done away and receive very limited budgetary allocations.

They say the picture is the same for key defence and security agencies:

Zambia Army Commander (Lozi)
Zambia Air Force Commander (Kaonde)
ZNS Commandant (Luvale)
Inspector General of Police (Kaonde)
Director General of Intelligence (Lozi)
Commissioner General of Correctional Services (Tonga)
Chief Immigration officer (Lozi)

They are saying in all these key command defence and security positions there’s no one from the East or the North as the political leadership to keep the tribal and regional balance the political leadership had promised.

They are also pointing to the Electoral Commission of Zambia:

chairperson (Lozi)
vice-person (Mambwe)
the other three commissioners are Tonga, Lozi and Lunda

There’s no one from the East or the North proper.

These concerns are raised about lower positions in these and other state, government and quasi government institutions and agencies.

These are the concerns they are raising and the response is to label them tribalists, divisive elements and prosecute or persecute them on charges of tribal hatred.

With these concerns and the debates they are generating our multiparty political dispensation is back on the spot. The concern is no longer the lack of political pluralism or diversity, but the hijacking of the political processes by tribal politics.

The challenge to our multiparty political dispensation is not the prevalence of ethnic diversity, but the use of identity politics to promote narrow tribal interests. It is tribalism.

But the African experience over the last six decades has
shown us the dangers of ethnic competition and underscore the importance of building nations around ideas rather than clan identities.

In the absence of efforts to build genuine political parties with clear ideologies that compete on the basis of ideas, we have reverted to tribal identities as foundations for political competition.

Leaders are often exploiting tribal loyalty to advance personal gain, parochial interests, patronage, and cronyism. How else can one explain the tribal or regional voting that was confirmed by a Commission of Inquiry following the 2016 elections?

We shouldn’t forget the fact that tribes are not built on multiparty democratic ideas but thrive on zero-sum competition. As a result, they are inimical to multiparty democratic advancement.

In essence, tribal practices are occupying a vacuum created by lack of strong multiparty democratic institutions. The political parties are unable to find common ground through coherent party manifestos and ideological positions.

Many members of our political parties often don’t even know that their parties have manifestos.

The manifestos are generally issued just before the elections because much of the effort goes into regional manoeuvring and building tribal alliances.

Tribal politicians are clever and calculating.
They are quick to dress in the latest fashion and co-opt emerging trends to preserve their identities. They buy influence and create convenient alliances.

Their sole mission is self-preservation, with the side effect of subverting multiparty democratic evolution.
For them tribal politics is a zero-sum game.

The way forward for our multiparty democracy lies in concerted efforts to build modern political parties founded on strong ideological foundations, clear development ideas and not tribal bonds.

Such political parties must base their competition for power on ideological and development platforms.

Defining party platforms will need to be supported by the search for ideas – not the appeal to tribal coalitions.

Political parties that create genuine ideological and development platforms will launch initiatives that reflect popular needs.

Those that rely on manipulating ethnic alliances will bring sectarian animosity into government business by appointing to key government positions people from their tribes and allied ethnicities.

Party manifestos should fundamentally be documents in which parties outline their principles and goals in a manner that goes beyond popular rhetoric and cheap promises. They should arise from careful discussion, compromise, and efforts to express the core values and commitments of the party.

But building clear party platforms requires effective intellectual input, usually provided through think-tanks and other research institutions. Most of our political parties lack such support and generally their manifestos are cobbled together with little consultation.

Tribal groupings see themselves as infallible but parties have to be accountable to the people.

By stating a vision for the future, political parties provide voters with ways to measure their performance on all fronts.

Forging platforms fosters debate within parties that transcend tribal differences. Such debates are a central pillar of multiparty democracy. Building modern political parties and associated think-tanks is, therefore, the most urgent way to counter tribal politics. Policy debate is a key element of multiparty democracy.

Specific manifestos would foster healthy political competition that would force parties to distinguish themselves from each other. Conversely, such debates would also help to illustrate areas of common interest.

Indeed, it is becoming clear that issues such as poverty, infrastructure – energy, transportation, agriculture and food, and telecommunication – and youth employment are emerging as common themes in our politics irrespective of ideological differences.

So long as multiparty democracy offers the best chance for sustained growth and prosperity, tribal politics must be replaced by genuine party platforms and modern democratic institutions like think-tanks.

Otherwise our road to doom will continue to be paved by tribal intentions.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party

What’s fueling tribal politics debates? Featured

January 31, 2023 by Socialist Party Zambia in Opinions

President (Tonga)
Vice-President (Bemba married to a Lozi)
Speaker (Lozi)
Chief Justice (Lenje)
Acting President of the Constitutional Court (Lozi)
Attorney General (Lenje)
Solicitor General (Tonga)
Chairman of the Judicial Service Commission (Lozi)
Chairman of the Judicial Complaints Commission (Tonga)
Commissioner of Lands (Tonga)
Chief Legal Advisor to the President (Lozi)
Minister of Justice (Tonga).

They are saying the key state institutions and the country’s justice system are basically is the hands of Tongas and Lozis (with very little or no meaningful participation from the rest)

They are saying the same about the key government ministries (Ministries that are not easily done away with by any government):

Home Affairs (Tonga)
Local Government (Tonga)
Education (Tonga)
Tourism (Tonga)
-Justice (Tonga)
Foreign Affairs (Lenje)
Health (Soli)
Defence (Luvale)
Infrastructure (Lozi)
Finance (Lozi)
Lands (Lunda)
Governor of Bank of Zambia (Tonga).

The rest are, in the main, pushed to ministries that can easily be done away and receive very limited budgetary allocations.

They say the picture is the same for key defence and security agencies:

Zambia Army Commander (Lozi)
Zambia Air Force Commander (Kaonde)
ZNS Commandant (Luvale)
Inspector General of Police (Kaonde)
Director General of Intelligence (Lozi)
Commissioner General of Correctional Services (Tonga)
Chief Immigration officer (Lozi)

They are also pointing to the Electoral Commission of Zambia:

chairperson (Lozi)
vice-person (Mambwe)
the other three commissioners are Tonga, Lozi and Lunda