LETTERS - KK and Mine Privatisation
KK’s support for MugabeBy Jenkins Chisoni, Glasgow
Wednesday March 21, 2007 [02:00]
It is a fact that history will not deny KK heroism in the freedom fight of southern Africa. I personally, having lived during the time of the fight, do not have any quarrel with our first president over his place in history. Let’s face it, that is history and there is no way it can justify Gabriel Robert Mugabe's cruelty to his people. Big man, don't forget that when Chiluba locked you up on trumped up charges the whole of Zambia, world and your late friend Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in particular rose to your defence with total disgust at what Chiluba had done to you.
It was injustice at its worst. Surely Ba KK, can't you see injustice when it shows its face without telling us about the history of your heroism in that part of the world? Why should Bishop Tutu see it the way it is now and you can't? Perhaps the attack by Sikatana on Mtonga in Parliament on the estmates for human rights commission speaks clearly for what you were able to do during your term in office. Mtonga himself confirmed that Sikatana confronted you on human rights abuses by your police force, Mugabe-style.
Strickly speaking, it took Mugabe a long time for him to recover from the support you gave to Joshua Nkomo so that he could honour you for your part in the Zimbabwean struggle. When he finally honoured you, for those of us who were there, it was more to do with satisfying his vice-president Nkomo because at that stage, he had already honoured Samora, a latecomer in the struggle, but his real hero. Late Dr Edwardo Mondlane was your contemporary in the struggle and not Samora. Mugabe first waged the Zanu Chimurenga fight from Zambian soil and only decamped to Mozambique when that country became independent because of your unflinching support for late Nkomo.
A very small Zanu office was left in Zambia when Mugabe's organisation decided to operate from Mozambique. KK, I am totally against your support for Robert Mugabe's deliberate criminal acts against his people.
The land issue cannot have a place to justify Mugabe's actions and is a misplacement of facts by you KK, unless you are fearful of opening the wounds of the police state you created in Zambia during your rule. Human rights during your rule was a pipe dream for most Zambians for it only paid if you belonged to UNIP. No wonder you can support Mugabe. There is no way anybody can describe Mugabe as a victim. Victim of what KK? Post, ask forgotten Chiruwe, if he is still alive, on what he got for challenging KK. Only sneaky people like Fine Tunning can survive to challenge all three presidents Zambia has had. Not the likes of Chiruwe and Morgan Tsivangirai in Zimbabwe.
Looking at Sekai Hove Holland's picture lying battered in her sick bed in a Harare hospital and being denied treatment in South Africa by Mugabe and his crony induced horror in most human rights sympathisers but could only induce sympathy for Mugabe 'the victim' in KK our first Zambian president. God-fearing man indeed.
http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=24107
Privatisation of mines
By Kombe
Wednesday March 21, 2007 [02:00]
The privatisation of copper mines in Zambia was too fast, secretive and lacked interests of the people of Zambia. Today these companies are getting a free ride without strong legal penalties and have reduced Zambian mine workers to beggars seated on copper thrones. Zambians are directly employed or indirectly sub-contracted as casual workers; without health benefits and work in unsafe and poor environment. These poor labour conditions in Zambia are not even acceptable in the investors’ countries of origin. As if that is not bad enough, the government does not even retain enough revenues from these companies.
What is the point of privatisation? A huge copper profit has been flying out and Zambians are getting more disadvantaged. Is this the price we pay for being poor despite having rich natural resources? The government has a mandate to act on behalf of Zambians but privatisation proved otherwise. It is a political myth to say that Zambia will lose investor confidence by renegotiating these contracts. Zambia can still be investor-friendly with contracts that respect our safety and environmental laws and contribute to Zambia’s common good in wages, health, education and sanitation.
The New Deal government (MMD) reforms that focus on future investors is just part of the solution; fix previous mining deals to avoid same mistakes in future. Nationalisation should be an option if investors fail to compromise or threaten lawsuits in international courts. Other countries have renegotiated contracts with investors before. Zambians are tired of living at the mercy of investors. The government is accountable to the people of Zambia and not to investors.
Labels: KAUNDA, LETTERS, MINING, MUGABE
posted by MrK @ 6:27 PM
5 Comments:
Why would things be any different when the MDC takes power? They will still inherit the same police force. They will do the bidding of the white farmers. And frankly, the few bruises I have seen on Tsvangirai and his supporters will be as nothing, compared to the violence that will be used in the eviction of the hundreds of thousands of African farmers who are going to be evicted from former white owned land.
So where do one's sympathies lie? With the poor, or with the rich? The MDC, in their manifesto, explicitly state that they will turn back the land reform program.
Imagine that, literally.
The MDC appear to be a rudder-less boat that short of ousting Mugabe,have no faesible agenda or schema. But small wonder--this is a pattern that has been repeated time and time again in Africa. The incumbent is ousted, and the assuming is spell bound into intertia, and after having recovered--into graft. Having said that, I have to agree with Chisoni when we writes that nothing-absolutely nothing-can ever justify Mugabe’s mistreatment of his own people which in essence has made him like the MDC-‘Anti Zimbabwe.’ From the notorious acts of terror he unleashed in Matabeleland that resulted in the senseless deaths of tens of thousands, to the ridiculous and outright cruel 'operation Murambatsvina' (clean up the dirt) in which thousands of Zimbabweans lost their homes and livelihood-Mugabe has continuously wreaked havoc with impunity. But what is really tragic is that he has done this to his own. It is time that we began to hold Africans accountable for the way they treat Africans. It is one think to be brutalized, taken for a ride, used and abused by the west. But it is an entirely different thing when we do it to ourselves-- self destructing from the inside out. Why should 'the other' love us when we cant even love ourselves? Interchange love with respect/value/. Overly clichéd but so true-charity begins where? Yes friends, it begins at home. It is time that we saw a different kind of leader emerge in Africa--a patriot who cannot be bought. A patriot that has a lucid and maddeningly brilliant idea of what they will do with the power when they get their (hopefully not grubby but skillful) hands on it. A Patriot both equipped and inclined, motivated not by greed and selfish interest but by a smoldering desire to see Africa become a serious contender on the global scene. None of this stuff is revolutionary, it is really quite simple. Why then are we continuously tripped up over it?
" It is time that we began to hold Africans accountable for the way they treat Africans. "
Turn on ourselves? That's your strategy? So how does this paper over the fact that the MDC have nothing to offer Zimbabwe?
Worse, they will turn back land reform. Whatever the present government is doing now, is as nothing as to what that is going to look like.
" A patriot that has a lucid and maddeningly brilliant idea of what they will do with the power when they get their (hopefully not grubby but skillful) hands on it. "
What idea would that be?
“Turn on ourselves? That's your strategy?”
I don’t see how accountability equates to a betrayal, a turning on ourselves. I just don’t.
“So how does this paper over the fact that the MDC have nothing to offer Zimbabwe?”
It doesn’t and I don’t think it needs to. MDC’s projected incompetence and Mugabe’s renowned brutality are mutually exclusive vices that can be condemned independently. To wit: the denigration of one should not ipso facto entail the sanction of the other. So for example, the fact that the fate of the average Zimbabwean is unlikely to improve under an MDC administration should not negate the fact that Zimbabweans have endured intense hardship under the clenched fist. Criticizing Mugabe does not necessarily entail MDC endorsement and the opposite should also hold true. We do not have to make an intellectual choice between the MDC and Mugabe. Don’t the Zimbabweans deserve a smorgasbord of a more palatable variety? Even if such a smorgasbord is not a tangible reality, are we not then free to state that fact? My point is this; we can reject both--without making a normative claim vis a vis the other.
“What idea would that be?”
I do not know. I have an idea, though. Now, whether it’s lucid or maddeningly brilliant is another question entirely. It is a work in progress and will continue to be defined and redefined, developed and perfected. That’s why a forum such as this is a great initiative. It can act as a conduit for the rapid exchange of ideas between the young, sober minded and passionate intelligentsia that have a serious commitment to developmental issues and good governance. So, well done.
“Turn on ourselves? That's your strategy?”
I don’t see how accountability equates to a betrayal, a turning on ourselves. I just don’t.
It makes no more sense to support the MDC, than it did to support the MMD in 1991.
Mugabe is an old man. Let him serve out his term, let someoen from ZANU-PF succeed him, and then the people of Zimbabwe can decide at the next election.
That would be the democratic way of doing things.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of things that SADC and the ADB can do to alleviate the economic situation in Zimbabwe.
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