Empowering citizens the Alex way

COMMENT - Money. Businesses need money.

Empowering citizens the Alex way
By The Post
Mon 21 May 2012, 13:10 CAT

Alexander Chikwanda, our Minister of Finance, has made very interesting observations on the issue of citizen empowerment policies.

Alex says government-driven programmes of citizens economic empowerment have only succeeded in promoting corruption by enriching those close to the people administering empowerment programmes. He says for a long time, Zambians have grown up and have been raised in the system of patronage and cronyism. "Most people believe that corruption only involves stealing money. But cronyism, patronage are insidious forms of corruption.

That is why for me, I am not an enthusiast of the so-called empowerment policies whether in Zambia or South Africa. Just as a person, I think the only way the government can help to empower people is by creating conditions which are conducive for people to self-fulfil themselves and perform to the best of their potentialities. Development is predicated on individual creativity and initiative, to create an atmosphere, not based on favouritism.

It is important that we get the idea of development right. We create a system where there is no favouritism. Let those people who have began to work prosper, not these empowerments via government institutions. What they are doing is not empowering people; what they are doing is just to create some obnoxious forms of corruption. Citizen empowerment programmes have only resulted in the money being shared among few relatives and friends," explains Alex at length.

It is true, citizen empowerment programmes in this country, and to some extent in South Africa and other African countries, have not worked, have failed to achieve the intended goals and have been a recipe for favouritism, nepotism and corruption.

But citizen empowerment should not be seen as an end in itself. It should be seen as a means to some legitimate goal. Citizen empowerment should be seen as a medicine being administered in an attempt to cure an illness in society. But like any other medicine, citizen empowerment can only achieve some good result if it is being administered to an appropriate illness, at the right time and in the right doses.

Clearly, here correct diagnosis is important. If the problem is one that does not require citizen empowerment, trying to cure that problem with citizen empowerment programmes will not work. And we believe that some of our problems have not been as a result of citizens not being empowered and needing to be empowered. And the type of empowerment, like the type of medicine, cannot be applied in a generalised way. Each type of problem requires a specific remedy, a specific type of empowerment.

Sometimes, in a situation where a certain section of the population is discriminated against, this section may need to be empowered in one way or another. And the empowerment may not need to be cash handouts given to them. It may need, as Alex suggests, creating "a system where there is no favouritism", where there is equal access to resources by all citizens without regard to their distinguishing characteristics.

There are sometimes situations under which historical injustices and inequalities require the government to institute measures that bring everyone to an equal footing so that they can compete with each other favourably. Such measures should just address these issues and no more.

And these issues must be addressed in a manner that simply cures that problem without creating new ones as a result of side effects.

We don't think some citizen empowerment programmes that have gone on in this country and in other countries in our region have been conducted at the right time and with the right doses. And as such, they have produced veritable chaos, they have not achieved their intended goals.

After independence in this country, there were many citizen empowerment programmes under which money and all sorts of things were given to citizens. Those programmes produced nothing other than a perpetual dependency syndrome and a culture of not paying back debts.

What this teaches us is that the ways in which we will achieve our goals are bound by context, changing with circumstances even while remaining steadfast in our commitment to our vision.

It also teaches us that it is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another. You cannot build an economy or a society purely on the basis of entitlement, of citizen empowerment by the government. People have to make a contribution.

They have to have a sense of ownership which they don't get from being given things, money under the so-called citizen empowerment schemes.

This is money they have not worked for, they have not earned and their attitude towards it is usually poor - nindalama za boma. The government can create a favourable environment for all who want to work to be able to do so.

But the challenge of whether one succeeds or fails should lie with the individual who has to make his own contribution by mobilising his own sweat equity. And this accords very well with the biblical parable of the sower.

The citizen empowerment schemes that we saw over the last few years of the MMD government were nothing but simply a conduit for stealing public funds. And this fits in very well with what Alex is saying.

Money was given to people who had no capacity to use it for business. Money was given to relatives, friends and associates of those who administered the empowerment funds. There was also a lot of political patronage and cronyism over access to the citizen empowerment funds. It was money to be dished out to MMD cadres for purposes of political patronage.

This is not the citizen empowerment we need. What we need, at this stage of our development, is empowerment on the basis of equality. We still have a situation in this country where members of the racial minorities have more access to capital; the banks deal with them on more favourable terms and they get almost everything they want.

This has to change. And to change this we don't need to create a government fund for the majority citizens who are discriminated by the banks. The empowerment we need is one which forces our banks to deal with everyone fairly, justly and equitably. Of course, we are starting to see some changes in the behaviour of our banks.

There has been some political campaign on this front that is starting to bear some positive results. There is still resistance, especially with the transnational or multinational banks. But they too will be forced to change. If they don't change their attitude, then they should not have access to deposits that belong to the majority of our people; they should not have access to government deposits and should be made to rely on the support of those they support. This is the citizen empowerment we think we should pursue.

Even the empowerment of our rural citizens needs rethinking. We have to make it more responsible. The government cannot continue to dish out funds recklessly in support of farming activities that are not being run in a responsible and committed way. There has to be accountability in every scheme where public funds are used.