{"id":941,"date":"2019-03-10T13:54:27","date_gmt":"2019-03-10T13:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=941"},"modified":"2019-10-21T00:49:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T23:49:24","slug":"the-politics-of-poverty-in-zambia","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/the-politics-of-poverty-in-zambia\/","title":{"rendered":"The politics of poverty in Zambia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article has been reproduced from the Socialist Standard (March \n2001), the monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

We are approaching the 2001 presidential and general elections and \nthe political situation remains tense. Unemployment, poverty and the \nlack of viable education and health care has bred outright social \ndiscontent and resentment throughout Zambia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Frederick Chiluba’s M.M.D. government is still in power and\n commands majority support in Parliament. The opposition parties remain \nweak and unable to capture a national consensus, because political \nallegiance in Zambia is determined by linguistic and tribal \naffiliations. Thus many of the opposition parties are little known in \nother provinces or areas. The only notable opposition parties are the\nU.N.I.P., the Republican Party and the National Party for Democratic \nDevelopment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.N.I.P., after the retirement of Kenneth Kaunda from active \npolitics, is embroiled in a leadership fiasco and stands a slim chance \nto command a large following.\nU.N.I.P. has a strong regional support in the Eastern province. The \nRepublican Party, led by the local tycoon and former\nM.M.D. party stalwart, Ben Muria, has a large following in the \nCopperbelt and Wapula provinces. The National Party for Democratic \nDevelopment is led by former LONRHO group chairman in Zambia, Anderson \nMazoka. This party has managed to scoop a number of parliamentary seats,\n mainly in the Southern and Western provinces. Its regional base is the \nSouthern province.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An analysis of Zambia’s political scene reveals that the opposition \nparties have come to concentrate their election campaigns in the \nCopperbelt Province, especially in Kitwe. This is because historically \nthis province has come to play a dominant role in Zambia’s domestic \npolitics. The mining town of Kitwe is the hub of the copperbelt, \ninhabited by a vocal and politically aligned working class population. \nIn this semi-industrial and mining town political consciousness and \nsocial discontent seem to be expressed more than anywhere else on the \ncopperbelt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The demise of the copper-mining giant Z.C.C.M. has had a marked \nimpact on the commercial and industrial sector in Zambia. Economic \ndevelopment of any kind in Zambia depends upon the export potential of \nZambia’s mono-copper-mining sector. Thus the privatisation of the copper\n mining industry has entailed the loss of revenue to the government. \nThere has occurred a startling decline in overall commercial and \nindustrial production in the copper belt mining towns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The working class on the copper belt have been subjected to untold \nmisery. The public sector has shed its labour force while those who have\n remained in active employment receive salaries in arrears and work \nunder shoddy conditions. Privatisation of the public and commercial \nsector has led to widespread unemployment in Zambia. The surrendering of\n city council housing units to people paying rent to themselves has \ndeprived the city council of revenue and thus led to a decline in \ncommunity welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sale of the council houses was a presidential directive and thus \npolitical. But the future consequences were not taken into \nconsideration; nor could these consequences be corrected by the \ngovernment. Urban cities have been turned into villages overnight, \ncharacterised by social poverty, child malnutrition and squalor. This \nvoluntary creation of slum townships is a new development in Zambia and \nhas led to the frantic manoeuvres of President Chiluba to retain a large\n following.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city townships have been turned in havens of social poverty. \nBecause those who have purchased council houses cannot go back to rural \nareas when they retire, this tends to have a marked pressure on land in \nurban areas. Most of the retrenched working class population remain \nrestricted in the townships, where they engage in household commercial \nactivities of one kind or another. The unpaved roads, unlit streets and \nunmaintained water and sewage systems means that life in these townships\n remains hard and unbearable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an economy characterised by endemic social poverty and \nunemployment the M.M.D.\ngovernment is concentrating on handing out hefty amounts of money \nthrough well-timed presidential donations to needy members of society. \nBut this is a naked political campaign gimmick which has brought rebuke \nupon the\nM.M.D. government and tarnished the charismatic status of President \nChiluba. Recently in Kitwe’s Mindolo township a Catholic priest turned \ndown the presidential donation of K10,000,000 from the\nM.M.D. Member of Parliament for Nkana constituency. It was an incident \nthat shocked and which had never happened before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the M.M.D. government is heavily funded by mining investors \nlike the Anglo-American Corporation, the opposition political fraternity\n stands a little chance to compete with the\nM.M.D. in terms of campaign expenditure. Nor does anyone need to be told\n what purpose the colossal sums of money realised from the sale of \nprivatised para-statal firms has been used for. If the\nM.M.D. government is unable to find funds for expenditure on education \nand health, from where does the president get the money he hands out in \ndonations? The widely publicised calls for a third term of office for \nPresident Chiluba are merely designed to create an image of his \npopularity and thus win the confidence of the overseas private \ninvestors, since, legislatively, Chiluba cannot stand for a third \npresidential term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its political composition the M.M.D. government retains its \nlinguistic and provincial allegiances as a party of the Wapula province.\n Linguistic and provincial allegiances determine the strength and \npopularity of every political party in Zambia. Thus tribalism acts as an\n impediment to multi-party politics in Zambia, and political domination \ncomes to depend upon the entrenched historical pattern of linguistic and\n cultural complexities. Political consciousness is more pronounced among\n the relatively educated and working class in urban areas, more so than \namong the backward and static rural traditional societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the M.M.D. is the ruling party, the large following it can \ncommand must be attributed more to curiosity than to sympathetic support\n as such. A large number of people flock to\nM.M.D. political rallies just to have a glimpse of President Chiluba. \nBut every politically conscious Zambian is aware that the\nM.M.D. government has disastrously failed to resuscitate Zambia’s ailing\n economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author: Kephas Mulenga<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

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This article has been reproduced from the Socialist Standard (March 2001), the monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We are approaching the 2001 presidential and general elections and the political situation remains tense. Unemployment, poverty and the lack of viable education and health care has bred outright social discontent and resentment throughout…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-941","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2616,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/941\/revisions\/2616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}