Zambia’s multi-award-winning Reggae Musician, Performing Artiste, Producer, and Human Rights Activists Maiko Zulu has advised the United Party for National Development (UPND) government to explain to the people what is on the table in the most simple of ways without political rhetoric and without thinking everyone is an economist.
In a post on his Facebook page, Mr. Zulu said that the fact is that the cost of living is getting higher every day and the beneficiaries of the austerity measures are the mines and big corporations who are getting massive tax rebates while the ordinary citizens bear the brunt of gross mismanagement of the economy.
Mr Zulu asked d the government to explain to the people how long the bad times will persist and also why they are sacrificing for the mines which don’t belong to them.
Below is the full post
By Maiko Zulu
THE fact is that the cost of living is getting higher every day and the beneficiaries of the austerity measures are the mines and big corporations who are getting massive tax rebates while the ordinary citizens bear the brunt of gross mismanagement of the economy.
Fuel subsidies and electricity tariff hikes will not hurt the rich but the ordinary people who were told that fuel prices will drop immediately after the change of government. These are the people who were told that we were not going to go the IMF way.
Well, it’s time to tell the people what is on the table in the most simple of ways without political rhetoric and without thinking everyone is an economist. Tell them why it was necessary to change government and show them the benefits of that change.
Tell the people that before things get better, they must get worse and give them a timeframe for the worst period. Tell the people why they are sacrificing for the mines which don’t belong to them. Tell the youth the truth behind fuel subsidies and not those jokes of saying young people don’t drive.
If you are a cader and especially for the party in government, now is the time to go back to the communities and make people understand why subsidies have been removed and what the plan of action for economic recovery is.
As long as the least person in remote rural Zambia does not understand your vision, there will always be the ‘us and them’ syndrome and a great divide among the people. By the way, young people don’t like to be cheated. Ask PF
Bauze banvesese a mambala. They have gotten kickbacks from foreign mining companies which they have now given tax breaks whilst they squeeze their own people they claim to love and lead with higher taxes, removal of fuel and electricity subsidies. One just wonders whether it is IMF or the foreign mining companies that voted for the UPND. How can we end inequality with this unfairness where majority poor Zambians are the ones who bear the brunt of economic recovery whilst a few foreign mining companies are allowed to smile all the way to the foreign banks where they stash the super-profits they make on the backs of majority poor Zambians?
Unfortunately even a simple straight forward question like this one will be messed up because this govt has an incompetent young lady for a Govt Spokesperson.
The best way to answer this question is by stating that the govt has targeted X metric tonnes of copper to mined next year to achieve that we need to incentifise the mines in return we will be able to collect X billion dollars from tax.
Ask them papa. Tarino that woman must have refused your advances. Women like her don’t see or date broke immigrants like you. Don’t take it too personal .move on
Why should mines be exempted from mineral
Tax?We are losing millions when copper prices at its peak.Bally on this you have failed
The Zambians.Cancel it Immediately.
Maiko just keep quiet. There’s nothing wrong with what these guys are doing, you asked for it.
Whoever produces copper in Zambia , whether they be foreigners or indigenous Zambians must repatriate the whole of the Cooper proceeds to Zambia in full, first of all, before they do anything to the Copper sales Proceeds. Period!
Maiko, Pilato, Organized Family, and a posse of other misguided musicians and NGOs were hand in glove with UPND during the election campaign. Please spare us the mea culpa, Maiko. Cry not over spilled milk.
Zambians must also consider that things are happening behind the blinders, all Zambians know that this President is a shareholder in many international companies beyond Zambian borders, these mines you are talking about are neatly connected to the life blood of this President and therefore he has a soft spot for them.
This is the most cruel government Zambia has ever seen , it is just the return of the looting MMD government and this president from no where became a billionaire something every one has a question about .
Now this man who has no heart for the poor Zambians he has again introduced what made him an extraordinary rich man , up on the suffering Zambians to kill thousands of them with the painful poverty as we saw in 1992 .
We had repeatedly advised him not to go back to IMF no he couldn’t listen to the concerned voices he closed his heart tightly until he full filed his diabolical plan .
Moto – Why shouldnt mines pay the same tax as yourself? For starters love it or hate they are the biggest private tax contributors to the national purse and they know that your country is solely dependent on mining. The problem with Zambians is they dont like being told the truth. Zambia by now should have diversified away from mining to other sectors like Agriculture years ago but all previous regimes have been doing is read speeches and that’s excluding the Lazy Lungu wasted years.
nshilimubemba – You want to talk about cruelty..how about procuring 42 fire trucks for an inflated $42 million or awarding an K800 million fertiliser contract to a Dubai company that isn’t even registered in Zambia. What of awarding a drug contract to Honeybee that isnt even registered to supply drugs whose only experience is a pharmacy and to top it off they supply expired drugs. You really want to talk about cruelty eh??
Therefore we should not demean capitalism. Let’s understand it and make it work for us. It is not a perfect system, but so far it is the only system that has proven able to raise living standards of hundreds of millions…in China and South East Asia for example.
The implied message that Zambians stand in line and mining companies hand them survival is an incorrect way to look at things. It takes massive amounts of capital and expertise to develop and run a mine. Without capital, that so sweet copper answer to all woes remains in the ground and no good to poor Zambians.
I really don’t know what’s wrong with us Zambians. We knew Lungu was a Kazolo, we voted for him and he really messed us up. We new HH was also a Kazolo when he stole a hotel by false pretences. We went ahead and voted for him. Now that he’s president he must be planning on something big – may be a whole gold mine. When are we gonna learn. There a lot of candidates in any given election but we always settle for Kazolos. Wake up people!
@Son of the 18 million you have it wrong. China has just embraced aspects of capitalism relatively recently and what they are practicing is not what the likes of Stuart Mills or even current capitalists would call capitalism. Capitalism is both political and economic so China’s political system wouldnt be accepted by the West. In any case capitalism’s success lies in the fact that capitalist nations invaded and robbed huge parts of the globe and stole their wealth. Capitalists never paid for the resources they used to amass wealth. You dont embrace something because you cant come up with an alternative. That is negativism. You should sit down and innovate
Hello @LT
@Steve: The point of independence was to control our own affairs. Problems after independence are mostly of our own making whether aided by clever greedy westerners in the process or not.
Have you stopped to think how disempowering ideas like, “we were robbed”, “they stole from us”, etc. are to Zambians and Africans in general? Essentially, these ideas admit that anyone can walk up to Africa, as one would to a child, and walk away with whatever they want. Our independence is not real.
And @Steve why talk about innovation within economic systems when you can’t make systems (capitalism even in a modified form as practiced in Nordic countries) that are available and working wonders elsewhere work for you?
It is like saying let’s continue using ox-drawn ploughs (human driven tractors being not good enough) until self-driving tractors are invented. In fact you are saying until some unknown better system is innovated. I find that a bit pretentious.
Let’s die of hunger and disease waiting for the unknown because we are too good for what is available now.