The Sunday Mail
AFTER every great party, usually long after the music would have given way to melancholic silence and the occasional clinking sound of stray bottles being cleared, it is often the splitting headache the morning after that signals the long journey to sobriety.
Thankfully, there are often many remedies to deal with the debilitating grogginess of a nasty hangover.
After the weariness wears off, comes the time to face reality, however, good or bad it might be.
Our neighbours north of the Zambezi River, Zambia, have been having a great party since last week, and deservedly so, as they welcomed Hakainde Hichilema as their seventh President.
There is everything to celebrate from the smooth, bloodless and seamless transfer of power in Lusaka, especially in this part of the world that is prejudicially stereotyped as an outpost of uncivilised regimes.
Please, get the Bishop right: He is only referring to the peaceful interregnum between Edgar Lungu and Hichilema’s reign, because the pre-election period had incidences of violence, especially in the North Western Province and some parts of the Western and Southern Provinces, a fact that is often glossed over in the afterglow of electoral victory.
In fact, among some of Lungu’s PF cadres that lost their lives during the campaign was James Kungo, the party’s leader in the North Western Province.
Notwithstanding this fact, the transition was peaceful relative to the scenes that we saw in the US during the 2020 presidential election.
Do you still remember what happened on January 6 when a mob attacked the US Capitol — America’s seat of power — to scuttle the certification of election results after Donald Trump refused to concede by claiming the election was rigged?
Five people lost their lives as a result of the skirmishes. The atmosphere that characterised the transition, if we can call it that, was so poisoned that 25 000 soldiers had to be deployed to fortify Washington during the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20.
Donald Trump did not even bother to show up for the event, joining an infamous list of US Presidents John Adams (1797 -1801), John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) and Andrew Johnson (1865-1869) who didn’t attend the swearing in of their successors
What a mess!
The US election clearly had everything African elections are often accused of — rigging, a petulant loser failing to accept defeat, violence, death and military intervention.
Imagine what would have been the narrative if what happened in the US had happened in Zambia?
Back to Reality
But for Hichilema, who has been sixth time lucky in capturing the presidency, the honeymoon will be disappointingly short, if it is not over already.
Zambia is neck-deep in debt, which has been made worse after defaulting on a US$42,5 million interest payment on some of its US$3 billion sovereign dollar-denominated bonds.
Overall, its external debt has ballooned to more than US$12 billion.
But, to be fair, it is not the only African country that finds itself in a pickle after issuing Eurobonds to raise funds for various projects.
Kenya, Angola, Egypt and Ghana are using 20 percent, 25 percent, 33 percent and 37 percent of their collected tax revenues on interest repayments.
Before dealing with the onerous debt issue, the new administration, however, faces the urgent task of vaccinating its people to reclaim a semblance of normalcy that is needed to spur economic activity.
By last week, Zambia had fully vaccinated about 250 000 people, which is considerably low considering its population of over 17 million. By comparison, Zimbabwe had fully vaccinated over 1,5 million in the same period.
With newly-found international goodwill and a recent US$1,3 billion boost from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Lusaka now has the wherewithal to follow through its planned agenda. But for someone who came into power on the crest of a popular youth vote, Hichilema was expected and indeed made ambitious promises to his expectant constituency, which he must dutifully serve.
He promised he “will do more than repair our economy”, guarantee “three decent meals each day”, reduce “youth unemployment” and not tolerate poverty. These are bold declarations and promises.
Bishop Lazi told you that he was cautiously optimistic of developments north of this teapot-shaped country, especially after witnessing the anti-climactic presidency of Frederick Chiluba, who had come into power by defeating founding President Kenneth Kaunda on the strength of a messianic message of economic hope and salvation.
When he was inaugurated on November 2, 1991, the Bishop was quite frankly moved by the ambitious promises made by the Bible-quoting Chiluba — who began his speech with a prayer — to jubilant and starry-eyed Zambians.
“The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months. But we are determined they will go away,” thundered the new president, adding: “Never again may we allow the next generation to inherit debt, corruption and misery.”
Upheaval
Well, what he vowed to avoid is exactly what happened.
Thirty years and five presidents later, Zambians, the new administration in particular, is indeed inheriting “debt, corruption and misery”.
According to German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,“The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
This is the point that Bishop Lazi was at pains to make last week. The problems that we face as Africans go beyond shuttling new faces in and shunting old faces out of State House every now and then, but have much to do with the rigged architecture of our economies, where we allow ourselves to have the short end of the stick in global trade.
We are happy to leave our fertile land lie fallow while we import food using foreign currency that we scarcely have.
We are happy to export raw mineral products and import finished goods at a higher cost. We are so obsessed with contracting foreigners to construct even our own roads while our young, budding entrepreneurs and workforce scrounge for opportunities.
We are so perverted that we export cotton and gleefully trade and sell second-hand garments from abroad.
And we continue to export jobs while our youth, who have become the generational king-makers, continue roaming up and down the streets, as industries continue to underperform in sympathy with muted economic activity.
Even now, as Covid-19 wreaks havoc on the continent, we continue to look at far-off lands for salvation. These are the issues that critically need attention.
Zimbabwe has, however, learned the hard way. Our own experiences have shown us that transitioning from such a parlous economic state to a sound footing that supports growth necessarily involves very painful and unpopular adjustments, including temporary and unavoidable upheavals.
James 1:2 says “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.”Sanctions have tested us and made us believe in ourselves once again.
The new political administration has particularly taken these valuable lessons to heart by investing in ensuring the country will always be climate-proofed to guarantee food security; universities have innovation hubs to incubate new ideas that can be commercialised; and local companies play a leading role in reconstructing Zimbabwe using internally-generated funds. Prudential management of resources and targeted investment in infrastructure projects has enabled the country to not only withstand adverse weather conditions and a global health crisis, but generate resources to rebuild Zimbabwe.
This is why this country, as small and as encumbered by sanctions it is, is eclipsing countries such as Nigeria, the biggest economy on the continent, in vaccinating its people.
Beginning last week, only two million people in Africa’s most populous nation had received one dose of the vaccine compared to 2,4 million people in Zimbabwe.
This is a microcosm of the successes that are being recorded in other economic sectors as well. It shows that Zimbabwe’s formula, which has come after a lot of upheaval, is now working.
You can change as many leaders as you want, but if you are using the same failed formula, you are doomed to fail.
As Matthew 2:21-23 counsels: “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, and a worse tear will result. And no one pours new wine into old wine-skins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wine-skins will be ruined. Instead, new wine is poured into new wine-skins.”
Africa needs to wake up.
Bishop out.
