Mealie-meal prices

Mealie-meal prices
Written by Editor

The high prices of mealie-meal are really worrying. And these high mealie-meal prices can be a serious source of instability. We remember what happened in 1986 when the prices of mealie-meal were raised beyond what most people felt they could meet. There were riots in Lusaka and on the Copperbelt. History should not be made to repeat itself. We therefore call on everyone to join hands with those in government and help deal with this highly sensitive issue.

We know that mealie-meal prices were used as a campaign issue in last month’s presidential election. Some stupid millers even lowered their prices for reasons that were not making sense just to aid their political friends. And these same millers, two weeks later have found reasons to increase the price of mealie-meal. Let’s avoid at all costs playing politics with the price of mealie-meal.

Let’s be patriotic, at least on this one issue and wish our people well. We shouldn’t gloat over national reverses. We should all wish to see our country’s economy gain and regain strength. Those in opposition should not look to defeat or to remove the MMD from office on the back of national failure. There will be sufficient grounds without that to argue for their removal.

The increase in mealie-meal prices has been dramatic and if they continue at this rate, they are likely to provoke social unrest. And they may also result in responses from the government which risk exacerbating instability in our economy, especially in the food market.

These high prices of mealie-meal will push the poor deeper into poverty and food insecurity. Therefore, urgent action is required to ensure that the great majority of our people who depend on mealie meal have access to it. But without coordinated actions and adequate policy measures, we are likely to see more and more of our people going hungry. Failure to act expeditiously may lead to a significant increase in the number of our people who may not afford a bag of mealie-meal. These high mealie-meal prices may jeopardise our fight against hunger.

We have to find a way to ensure that all our people have access to affordable mealie-meal, enough to develop their potentialities for enjoying a full life.

And we should consider these high mealie-meal prices as something that won’t simply just go away through decrees of one form or another. It must be considered as something that can be a secular, permanent condition of our precarious life. It may turn out to be a tragic daily experience, a disgraceful reality for all our poor people.

And if we don’t approach this problem correctly, it may continue to grow and worsen. But the existence in our country of a large number of hungry and undernourished people should constitute an affront to all of us. This should spur us to seek stable, permanent solutions to this serious problem. Accusing millers of all sorts of political schemes and conspiracies to undermine and embarrass government will not do. Moreover, the biggest player in the market is a company that is or is trying to be very close to this government. How can this same company that only a few weeks ago was aiding their political campaign by reducing the price of mealie-meal today be accused, among others, of trying to embarrass them? There is need to just face the truth about the type of market we have for mealie-meal.

We agree with Civil Society for Poverty Reduction executive director Mulima Akapelwa’s observations that the price of mealie meal must not be left to the whims of market forces because the people will die of hunger. And as Hakainde Hichilema has correctly observed, “it is the responsibility of any government worth its salt to make sure that its citizens have enough food”. And this responsibility cannot be totally left to the vagrancies of the market with all its irrationalities. There is no way we should accept blind laws to be offered up as divine norms that would bring the peace, order and wellbeing our people so badly need.

From our viewpoint, we are on the verge of a huge economic, social and political crisis. Let us try to build awareness about these realities, and alternatives will arise. History has shown that it is only from deep crises that great solutions have emerged. Our people’s right to life will definitely assert itself in a thousand different shapes. New ideas to prepare our people for the future are needed and we must start struggling right now by building awareness – a new awareness. To overcome these problems, we will require a lot of awareness, we will require more principles more than ever. It is not a matter of saying pleasant things to win elections, to win a few more votes. It is not a matter of expressing things to obtain support. We can’t start shaping a country of which we ourselves are scared.

We need to make the political leaders see the consequences of all this. Do not let them come around telling us that the market, that wild and crazy beast, is going to organise the nation, nor that the law of supply and demand can be above the organisational capacity of human beings or above the million and trillion neurons in the human brain. The market is a chaotic and uncontrollable wild beast. We are saying this when the market is still very fashionable to some of our businessmen and politicians. But it’s also a time when the market is being questioned in America and Europe and the human brain is being brought back to take charge. Surely, it cannot be the market that plans and determines our people’s future, the market preserving life.

We have no alternative but to face this problem squarely and ensure that in one way or another, reasonably priced mealie-meal is made available to all people. The prices of mealie-meal may seem small for our politicians, for our businessmen and other well-to-do citizens. But these prices are a matter of life and death for most of our poor people who constitute more than 70 per cent of our population and who depend almost exclusively on mealie-meal. Solidarity on this issue is required. And we make a clarion call to all our people to work tirelessly and ensure that the price of mealie-meal comes down because incomes won’t go up proportionately.