By The Post
Thu 30 June 2011, 04:00 CAT
Our country is endowed with rich natural resources, with all sorts of minerals. Unfortunately, we are not doing much to utilise them for the benefit of our people. It is not a curse but a blessing to have such mineral wealth. There are many countries in this world that have developed and improved the living conditions of their people through the exploitation of their mineral wealth.
We have all we need, all God can give, to develop our country and improve the living conditions of our people. We share the fears of Fr Richard Luonde of the Anglican Church in Kitwe when he says:
“As the country goes to the polls, the electorate must say no to leaders who have sided more with the investors and forgotten about the plight of their own people. Mining companies are making millions of dollars from the booming mining sector, but the returns are close to nothing for Zambia.
They are busy developing their countries using our resources but here young people have no meaningful employment and families sleep on empty stomachs due to high poverty levels. Zambians should send a strong signal to corrupt leaders using ballots this year.
This country needs real solutions to the problem of poverty. Lack of true leadership and political will to end chronic poverty is what is killing this nation. I urge all Zambians to look for leaders that will transform the economy and compel these investors to remit considerable revenues.”
There is need for our politicians and other leaders to always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in one’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children. This being the case, our leaders should proceed in all their engagements with foreign and other investors from the interests of the people and not from one’s self interest or from the interests of a small group.
Every word, every act and every policy of theirs must conform to the people’s interests. They should have the interests of the people and the sufferings of the great majority at heart.
It is clear that the political leadership of this country has failed to organise and manage the exploitation of our mineral wealth to the benefit of our people, to change the lives of many people wallowing in abject poverty.
They have failed to strike beneficial deals with investors in our mining sector. Today, even representatives of the most capitalistic governments in the world are telling us that there is something wrong with the way we are dealing with investors in our mining sector. Even the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the great defenders of foreign investors, are advising us to get more from the exploitation of our minerals by transnational corporations. But the political leadership of our country doesn’t seem to see the point; they are blinded by the personal benefits they get from investors in our mining sector.
They are protecting these investors in every conceivable way. Even when there are strikes by Zambian workers, the political leadership of our country has taken the side of the mining transnational corporations against the interests of their own people, their own poor workers. Why? Why are they failing to see what everyone is seeing? Why have they chosen to be on the side of investors in our mining sector and not on the side of the people?
To borrow from Julius Malema, they are more interested in protecting and defending the interests of investors as if they were elected by investors. This being the case, who will protect and defend the interests of the people?
It is this gap that threatens the interests of investors in this country; it is this short-sightedness of our political leaders that threatens the interest of investors. There is a crisis here that calls for a solution. It cannot be denied, and it is a matter that is being acknowledged internationally by all honest people, that our country is not getting much out of the exploitation of its mineral wealth by transnational corporations. There is an injustice here. There is banditry here. There is unfairness here. And this will certainly call for radical remedies.
People will soon start talking the language of Malema – the language of nationalising the mines. It is not this talk, the talk that Fr Luonde is today engaging in, that will create a crisis in our mining sector.
As Fidel Castro once put it; ideas don’t generate crises, it is crises that generate ideas. These one-sided deals, mining deals that only benefit mining transnational corporations will not do. A deal where only one party benefits is not a good deal. What is needed are mining deals where both the foreign investor and the people benefit. No one wants foreign investors not to benefit from their investment in our country.
We all know that they are here to make a profit and if there is no profit they will not come here, they will not stay. Equally, if there is no profit for us as a nation, there is no need for us to allow them to exploit the minerals of our country. It has to be a win-win situation. Both of us have to feel we are getting something out of the exploitation of these minerals. If the foreign investors want to be greedy and continue to take a lion’s share of the benefits of exploiting our mineral wealth, the deal won’t last long. The people will find better deals. They will soon start to demand the return to Caesar of what belongs to Caesar and to the people of what belongs to the people.
As things stand today, our country is benefitting very little from the exploitation of its mineral wealth. This is a reality that is increasingly being acknowledged by many people, including reputable international organisations and respected politicians the world over. This cannot continue.
Those who are mining in our country will not have good business in this country’s mining sector unless we are also, as a nation, getting a good deal from it. History may soon repeat itself.
Nationalisation, undesirable as it may seem today, may soon be an option for our people.
It is clear that the political leadership of our country has, as a result of corruption and incompetence, failed to get a good deal out of our engagement with mining transnational corporations. And Fr Luonde is right in his call for a new leadership and a new approach. We can’t continue on this path. We are dealing with a wasting asset and soon our mineral resources will be depleted without any benefits from it to show.
This will be a great betrayal of the future generations of this country. We shouldn’t be cheated by the number of jobs – 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 jobs – being announced so often to be created by mining ventures. What do these jobs amount to in terms of earnings, in terms of taxes? Most of our people who work for the mines earn very little. The total wage bills of these mining corporations, in terms of the Zambians they employ, are very low. And there is very little taxes arising from these jobs as far as pay-as-you-earn is concerned. For a few thousands of dollars our politicians have sold our people’s income from mining activities.
It is these same mining corporations that pay for their election campaigns so that they can continue to benefit from their weakenesses. Today some of them stupidly talk of foreign investors as their friends, their brothers. And their children call them uncle so and so! Since when did they become their friends, their brothers, their uncles? This is the stupidity corruption can generate in an individual. This is how the nation is being ripped off. This has to change. The people have to benefit from the mineral wealth God placed in this country. The next serious political battles in this country will be fought on the threshold of mining.
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