Maravi

We agree with Fr Lesa

We agree with Fr Lesa
By The Post
Wed 17 Nov. 2010, 04:00 CAT

In yesterday’s edition, we carried a story which quoted Fr John Lesa calling upon our people to vote for a leadership that will take the lead in mobilising our people to get rid of corruption.

We agree with Fr Lesa that our people have a duty to hold their leaders to account, thereby ensuring that the vice of corruption that has ravaged our country is combated in a meaningful way.

We also agree with Fr Lesa when he says that it is because of selfishness amongst our leaders that our country looks like a nation emerging from war. The statistics about the welfare of our people are sometimes worse than those of countries that are at war. This is something that we should be ashamed of as a nation. We hear Rupiah Banda and his ministers celebrate the growth of the Zambian economy.

They churn out statistics about Zambia growing by this or that percentage. What they fail to tell us is how many more people are attending hospitals and receiving medical care which they could not receive a few years ago; how many more children are going to secondary school and getting a decent education, who could not otherwise access education; how many more teachers, doctors, nurses and other essential public workers are we producing as a result of this so-called growth of the economy? These are the issues that matter to our people. They want to be able to access medical care when they need it; they want to be able to send their children to school with the knowledge that they will be taught by motivated, well-trained and qualified teachers.

This is what the growth of an economy should translate into. We cannot celebrate the growth of our economy when vast numbers of our people cannot afford to eat what they need just to survive. A government that does not spend its energy addressing these basic and fundamental requirements of its people is irrelevant and an anti-thesis to the necessity of government.

Governments exist because of the will of the people, and that will can never be characterised by the denial of medical care, denial of good education and, more fundamentally, the denial of food. A government that is indifferent to whether its people eat or not; whether they receive the basic necessities of life or not is not a government for the people, but it is an enemy of the people. We say this because no one elects a government so that their suffering can increase. All those who participate in elections do so in the hope that their vote will count and their lives will improve.

But this is not what we see with Rupiah. His approach to running government is akin to abstract art that may not have any real relevance and use in the eyes of those who see it. But government is not supposed to be abstract art; it is supposed to be a three-dimensional engagement with our people which is designed to meet their needs. Rupiah is supposed to understand the basic needs of our people and design a programme that meets them. We are not saying here that Rupiah should provide mealie-meal for every household in our country. But there are certain things that he has to do that ensure that every household has a better chance of affording a bag of mealie-meal. In other words, it is his job to ensure that every citizen is looked after.

But a government that is preoccupied with its own interests and appetites cannot be expected to worry about its people. This is the kind of government that Rupiah is running. It is not a government of the people, for the people; it is a government of Rupiah, for Rupiah and his family, friends and hangers-on.

Our people must not expect much in terms of better living standards for as long as their government is more preoccupied with small things that have no consequence in the wider scheme of things. A government of the people would be wrestling with how to better deliver services and help our people to be self-reliant. They would be concerned about how the resources that the country is blessed with can be used to improve the lot of all our people.

Such a government would engage in understanding practical economic theories that impact on the lives of our people positively. But Rupiah’s economic policies are parrot policies. They repeat the nonsense that people tell them without asking themselves how those policies that they parrot impact the lives of our people. We have heard them celebrate this or that promise of investment that some foreign investor is bringing into the country. But we have never heard them say how much of that money is actually going to stay in this country and impact in very practical ways the government’s ability to deliver services.

In other words, how much tax are they going to collect from these services; how much money is actually going to trickle into the national Treasury. Many of our people have been calling for a fairer way of our country getting a share from its mineral resources. This can only come through taxation which, it seems, Rupiah and his minions are too timid to demand from the companies that are extracting copper and other resources from this country. We doubt whether we get any meaningful revenue from our timber which foreigners are being allowed to extract and export for nothing. But this is what happens when a government is more interested in its own stomach than delivering policies that allow our people to benefit from their resources.
It is not far-fetched to say that one of the reasons why Rupiah and his minions are failing to come up with policies that benefit our people is public corruption and abuse of office. How can a government which lines up for handouts from so-called investors to finance lavish lifestyles and corrupt politics ever implement policies that require those same investors to operate transparently and in the interest of our people?

As Fr Lesa correctly observes, corruption, therefore, becomes a very debilitated cancer which our people must fight if they are ever going to enjoy meaningful development. But we should not be naïve about how deep-rooted this problem is. Those who enjoy its benefits will do anything to ensure that the status quo continues.

And this is what Rupiah’s government seems to be telling us. They are so determined to ensure that any system that is capable of fighting corruption effectively is erased from our laws. This is what explains their determination to remove section 37 from the Anti Corruption Commission Act. To them, there is nothing wrong with the government saying that it is uncomfortable with a law that requires public officers to account for all their property and wealth. The current system of patronage is too lucrative to be inconvenienced by a small law such as the Anti Corruption Commission Act. And for that reason, Rupiah is ensuring that this law goes.

We have no doubt that if Rupiah had been calling for the strengthening of the law against corruption, including improving the penalties that are meted out to those who commit acts of corruption, his government would have been parroting the same song. People like George Kunda would have been eloquent champions of anti corruption rhetoric. What this tells us is that leadership is very important.

If the leader was asking for the right thing, chances are high that his followers would follow. On the other hand, if the leader is championing the cause of the corrupt, the likelihood of his followers doing the same is by the same token very high. This is what we have seen with Rupiah and Levy Mwanawasa before him. To that extent, therefore, Fr Lesa makes a very important point when he says our people must look for a leadership that will take a leading role in mobilising a citizenry to work hard and get rid of corruption.

If we fail to give ourselves leaders who do this for us, we should not be surprised that our country continues to wallow in poverty in the midst of plenty. We have a government that sees nothing wrong with refusing to tax the mining companies that are extracting valuable minerals from our ground and yet go to beg for alms from the governments of those same mining companies. This is a failure to reason. Rupiah and his minions would rather beg for what is theirs.

This behaviour is consistent with the culture of corruption and abuse of power that has blighted our continent. No one will save Africa but Africa itself, and no one will save Zambia but Zambia itself.

Labels: JOHN LESA

posted by MrK @ 4:20 PM