By Staff Reporter
Economic Front (EF) leader Wynter Kabimba says Hakainde Hichilema is least concerned about Zambians and the extreme hunger afflicting them as his main motivation is on the profits that will accrue from the exports of mealie meal.
And ZNS insiders have said the Zambia National Service (ZNS) has the blessings from the UPND administration to export the mealie meal despite them having been initially engaged to come in and help reduce the prices and increase availability.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Kabimba said it should not be lost on anyone’s mind that one of the first actions President Hichilema took when he met the millers was to tell them that they were in business to make money, against the export restrictions they complained were imposed on them by the PF administration.
He said President Hichilema has simply extended that principle to ZNS.
“So for him this is about business. This is not about food security for his country and for his people. That’s how I read him myself,” Kabimba said. “So whatever is going to make money, even if the process of making that money is detrimental to the lives of Zambians, he will go ahead and do that. I mean let’s understand the man that he’s in State House. Let’s understand him.”
Kabimba said Hichilema clearly stated before assuming office, that it was easy to run a country as it was synonymous to running a private enterprise, which was on the basis of promoting profit.
“That’s the fundamental principle of HH’s governance,” Kabimba said. “So if Zesco exporting power to Mozambique is going to earn him money, does he care if the country is going for 10 hours without power? I mean we went through that. As people were suffering from blackouts here he was exporting power to neighbouring countries.”
Kabimba said the same goes for mealie meal, that even as the prices of the commodity are escalating now and putting further strain on Zambians, the President will export mealie meal to DRC and other countries as long as in his understanding that is bringing money into the country.
“For him, business ventures are more important than the governance of the country,” he said.
Kabimba said President Hichilema would not succeed if he thinks that ZNS is an institution that will redeem him from the problems in maize production and supply, going by how that institution has conducted itself from time immemorial.
Kabimba said it defies logic that on one hand ZNS is producing mealie meal for domestic consumption while on the other hand importing mealie meal for export, saying he has failed to reconcile the contradiction.
He said anybody who knows ZNS as an institution, will know that it is an incompetent institution which is fraught with corruption and abuse and lack of accountability.
Kabimba said this was not the first time ZNS was being called up to be part of the development of the country as past presidents also tried and failed, saying as for late president Levy Mwanawasa he got a lot of equipment for them through a grant from the Chinese for building bridges and roads around the country, but the machinery was just going to waste.
“When some of us hear HH say that this time around he has a different institution that is immune from corruption and it’s competent to be part of the development of this nation, we just laugh because it means the guys has completely no idea about the institution and how it operates,” Kabimba said.
Addressing something he feels is a common theme in this country, Kabimba wondered if ZNS even did a feasibility study on the business ventures of producing mealie meal, in terms of the production capacity and the consumption figures of the population and how much surplus can be produced.
He said these were economic decisions based on political pronouncements.
“The micromanagement that HH has introduced in public affairs is going to destroy the institutions and it’s going to destroy the economy, because everybody report to him directly,” Kabimba said. “And there is a quote that is in that story that Lieutenant General Solochi has a problem of an ‘I know it all attitude’, which is the same problem of his boss, HH.”
Kabimba said it was always a problem when key positions in government were held by cadres.
“If you remember the story about Solochi, he was reported during the count down to the announcement of results of having threatened some PF chaps I think at a polling station. I don’t know if you remember that story? So the guy is an active member of the UPND,” Kabimba said. “And that in itself is a problem because he’s running a government security institution but also his allegiance is to the UPND. And this is the problem that HH has caused in almost all the institutions by creating this culture that everybody at the helm of these institutions must be a member of UPND.”
Kabimba said this is against the era of Michael Sata when he served as minister, saying key positions like that of speaker, judges, and commanders in the security wings were reserved for people who were not identified as PF members.
“The director general for ACC, Wandi we had to get her from retirement. We had to plead with her to come back from retirement. She was not a member of PF,” Kabimba said, saying this was not what the country was seeing now that to head an institution one has to be a member of the ruling party.
“If he thinks he can reduce the price of mealie meal by using ZNS it will not work, given what I have told you,” said Kabimba. “ZNS has farms all over the country which are not less than 1000 hectares. What have they produced? Can you imagine a thousand hectares of land if it were to produce maize in the old 71 districts, we can feed this country without us pleading with anybody to produce more.”
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