The Zambia we want – Reclaiming our stake in the governance system of our nation

THE Reflections of a Panafricanist youth

By E.M.KATYOKA

The greatest challenge that faces the African youth today is not unemployment, nor is it the Aids virus, nor the lack of education. For although all these stand among the major issues holding back the latent potential of the youth in Africa, The greatest challenge the youths face today is a threefold challenge that can be reduced to the dysfunctional nature of the political configuration of post colonial African statecraft.

1.It is the challenge of how the youths can reclaim their stake in the governance system of the nation in order to drive the agenda of national development.

2.It is the challenge of how to make the issues affecting the youth a part of the political discourse of the nation

3.Thirdly and most importantly,it is the challenge of how to end the political hegemony of the generations of our fore-fathers who have had the privilege to enjoy the fruits of independence, and have since squandered the dream of Panafricanism, imposing the miserable legacy of poverty, civil war,famine and corruption on post independence Africa.

It is the challenge to end the marriage of convenience that we the post independence sons of Africa have stricken with a generation of African political leaders that continue to use the youths as ladders for the attainment of state power, promoting the ‘horse and rider’relationship and later abandoning us to the common designation of ‘future leaders’.

[pullquote]For while we continue to change Governments we have never changed the way they work[/pullquote].

The Youth- used, abused and left behind when power has changed hands

For although we the youth, the post first, second and third republican citizens of Zambia have the education, the technology, the privilege and power to change governments both through the vote and through the ‘street’ as has been the case in north Africa. We the youths of Zambia, continue to stand transfixed in the no man’s land of deferred hope, as we wait in vain for better days and the dream of an African renaissance.
Having been reduced to mere pedestrians, only to be used, abused and left behind when power has changed hands. An inconsequential statistic
on the agenda of politicians only to be referred to in speeches and reports that are long forgotten before the ink on the paper they are written on even dries.

All this in spite of the fact that we the youths have stood at the for-front of all the major changes in government from independence to 20th September, 2011.

Why? Because we have been ‘changing governments’ and not changing how they work.

It is ironic, would even be funny if it was not so sad that we of all the generations of Africa’s youths, who ought to be the most liberated,the most privileged and the most educated, having been born long after the colonial episode of Africa was closed, still stand captive.

Captive to a history steeped in superstition, captive to the unrealised dreams of economic independence and future affluence;captive to the age old disease of yesterdays Africa; tribalism;Captive to corruption and a bankrupt class of master political kleptomaniacs who continue to loot our nations treasuries, sell our assets for a song and fight each other to the death in order to have the privilege “to serve us,” captive to a political governance system that rewards the politician and not the citizen.

The Challenge

Thus the challenge of our times is the challenge to take back the governance system of our nation from its current captivity to the whims of political patronage and the parochial interest of those who have turned the citizens into slaves rather than masters of their own destinies. To end impunity and make the politician accountable to the citizen. To not only change government but also to change the way government works. To create a government for the people, by the people and of the people.

As a nation we have perfected the art of changing government. From UNIP, to MMD and now to PF; UNIP promised us heaven on earth and an egg for breakfast for every Zambian, MMD promised us democracy,accountability, the rule of law and a Christian nation. PF has promised us Jobs, lower taxes, and more money in the pocket.

Governments have come and gone but when all has been said and done and the rubber has met the road, when it comes to youth participation in matters of governance, government has continued to look, behave and do the same regardless of who stands at the helm.

For the youth it has been a ‘new deal’ turned into a raw deal every five years. For while we continue to change Governments we have never changed the way they work.

On this youth day, we the youths must creatively engage in revolutionizing our political participation and strategise towards ending our self imposed indifference. Because, for as long as we the citizens of this great nation do not see our part in the scheme of things, as long as we continue to nurse the notion of big government,of a ‘father Christmas’ type of government that is taking care of our future, we allow to exist a government that is not only big enough to meet our needs but also one that is big enough to take all our privileges away.

The new and improved Colonialism

By allowing for the continued centralisation of state power, we have created a monstrous political system that is eating away at our sense of initiative making us servants of welfare, rather than masters of our own destinies. A monstrous political system that will continue to impose social and economic inequality on its citizens while advancing the interests of resource greedy international monopoly capital; re-inventing the pre-colonial exclusion of the African from the means of production and economic viability while advancing the interests of the settler and ‘investor’.

[pullquote]we allow to exist a government that is not big enough to meet our needs but also one that is big enough to take all our privileges away[/pullquote]

Meanwhile those who sit at the helm of Government will collect major kick backs from the Resource colonialists in exchange for policy decisions that
facilitate the continued harvesting of Africa’s resource at the expense of those to whom destiny has bequeathed the privilege of mineral rights. As any keen observer of international political economics will see, the interests and appetites of private capital continue to grow and have become so powerful that they can and do influence shifts in political power and social economic policy against the citizens in favour of the ‘investor’.
Thereby imposing inequalities in economic benefits thus taxing the development of an ethical, honest African middle class through corruption.

I believe Big Government is not the solution but the sickness of our modern social political economic dispensation.It is sad that in most African nations citizens, the majority of whom are the youth do not have the privilege to recall, replace or reject a government as most governments in Africa consist of firmly entrenched Elitist cliques built around ethnic, religious and economic interests.

Thankfully, in democracies like Zambia, imperfect as they may be,citizens can at least vote out of government individuals perceived to have failed in the delivery of the citizen’s aspirations. However,privileged as we may be the sad reality of most democracies not only in Africa but in the rest of the world is that they perpetuate the illusion of change, when a new Government or political formation is elected into power. However, the sad reality is that what changes when a new political formation assumes the reins of power is not the system of government but the faces in government and so the illusion of change is perpetuated.

Should it not be a wonder that in nations like Nigeria, the largest producer of oil forecasted to be the leading African economy by 2015, fuel shortages are the order of the day and a hundred million citizens fall below the poverty datum lines while the government bears a large burden in fuel subsidies whose benefits are skimmed away into Swiss accounts as Subsidised Fuel for domestic use is diverted to markets abroad, granting the sellers and fuel cartels significant advantage and thus distorting the economy of that great African nation? Should it not be a wonder that in South Africa, a
nation plagued by inequality for decades, when an uneducated pro poor politician with strong nationalist credentials comes to power on the shoulders of a youth revolution and pro poor sentiment, the poor grow poorer while big business goes on as usual?

Conclusion

This is the type of Africa we the youths must strive to change. This is the Africa our fathers have built for us. I believe that as long as the African citizen continues to nurse the notion of big government,seeks to better his lot from government welfare schemes and the promise of utopia; the lot of the African will continue to be a miserable one. I believe that what we need in our land to create is a Fare not a welfare society. It is a society that liberates the individual from collective enslavement by a failed collectivism founded on a pretentious socialism whose aim is the cowing of the
masses to the machinery of a state craft that benefits the few and punishes the many, a state craft in which the only conceivable role for the citizen the majority being youth, is that of the hose, while that of the politician is the rider.