Chinese and other Asian mining firms in Zambia are creating “slave labour” conditions in Africa’s top copper producer, with scant regard for safety or local culture, the main opposition leader said on Wednesday.

In a typically blunt assessment of the foreign mining sector, Patriotic Front leader Michael Sata, who has a fair chance of unseating President Rupiah Banda in 2011 elections, said the special tax status and “economic zones” granted to outside investors were a political and racial powder-keg.

“We don’t hate the Chinese. We don’t hate the Malaysians, but when they come here, they should treat us like human beings,” Sata, a gruff 72-year-old nicknamed “King Cobra” for his venomous tongue, told Reuters in an interview.

“The Zambian government, by creating zones for the Chinese, the Malaysians, is sitting on a volcano,” he said.

“This is a landmine because those who have no land will react one day. Why should there be special conditions for the Chinese and Malaysians? Why should they have special treatment?”

Sata, whose long and varied career includes stints in car assembly plants in Britain and with British Rail, lost a closely contested election in 2008 to Banda’s Movement for Multi-party Democracy.

If his two-party opposition coalition hangs together, he has a good chance of ousting Banda next year, many Zambians believe.

It is unclear how his vehement and systematic anti-Chinese rhetoric would sit with the Asian mining firms that now dominate Zambia’s Copper Belt, although he said nationalisation of the mines was not an option.

Mines minister Maxwell Mwale dismissed Sata’s claims that Chinese mine bosses were replicating China’s poor mine safety and “slave labour” conditions in Africa, but he did admit to a difference in approaches.

“The Chinese are operating just as well as any other investor in this country,” he told Reuters. “They have their own home country cultures, and we as a host country have our host country culture.”

Sydney Chileya, spokesman for Luanshya Copper Mines (LCM), a unit of China Nonferrous Metals Mining Corporation (CNMC), said the firm was offering reasonable wages.

“As far as we are concerned, we are operating well within the Zambian labour laws,” Chileya told Reuters.

“Our least paid of the 2,300 employees get 1.2 million kwacha per month and that is way above the stipulated minimum wage of 260,000 kwacha for month.”

The spokesman for the Chinese-owned Chambishi Copper Smelter (CCS), Lewis Mulenga, said the company was not offering slave conditions.

“We are regularly inspected by officials from the government and the government is happy that we are not flouting the Zambian laws,” Mulenga said.

Many Copper Belt miners are grateful to Chinese investors for rescuing their mines that closed last year after a collapse in world copper prices, and talk of a gradual improvement in Chinese attitudes to health and safety.

“In 2004, the Chinese didn’t want to cooperate with the government. They ignored safety,” said Eric Chirwa, a 40-year-old mining occupational health officer in Luanshya.

“This time around, slowly, slowly, they are getting there, but we still need a lot of education about health and safety. They’ve been in mining in Zambia for the last five years and they’re slowly picking up,” he said. (Additional reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by Giles Elgood)

[REUTERS]

Movement for Multy-party Democracy (MMD) National Secretary Katele Kalumba says that speculations by some people that he had intentions of standing for party presidency was completely rubbish.

Speaking in an interview with ZANIS in Monze today, Dr Kalumba said that such speculations were totally rubbish and that he never even wanted to comment on them.

And Dr Kalumba, says the ruling party in Southern Province is still intact. Speaking in the same interview, Dr Kalumba said he had been in Mazabuka and Monze where it was reported that the lower organs of the party had been dissolved and found that there were no confusions.

The National Secretary said the party was waiting for its National Executive Committee (NEC) to make a decision on when to dissolve its lower organs in order to pave way for further electoral activities of the party.

He said that the lower organs would be dissolved to pave way to electoral activities and not because of confusions which did not exist in the party.

ZANIS

By Henry Kyambalesa:

I wish to comment on statements made in recent months by Ronnie Shikapwasha, George Kunda and Rupiah Banda in support of the Declaration of Zambia as a Christian Nation by Dr. Frederick Chiluba at State House on 29th December 1991, which was later incorporated into the Preamble of the 1996 Republican constitution.

It is important for national leaders to guard against the imposition of any particular religion on the entire society. The Republican constitution particularly should be a neutral document that does not discriminate against atheists or pagans, or those who believe in Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Jainism.

In the long run, the Declaration is likely to make non-Christian citizens to feel that they are second-class citizens. And, as Venkatesh Seshamani has argued, a feeling of religious superiority is likely to develop among Christians by virtue of their religion having been accorded constitutional status, which may lead to bigotry that would prompt them to view non-Christians as lost souls.

Clearly, the Declaration was made without consideration of the dangers of dragging religion into politics. Religion is deadly if it is not handled with utmost caution. The precarious problem currently facing Algeria, Nigeria, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and a host of other countries around the world which are beleaguered by religious conflicts should serve as a clear warning to each and every peace-loving Zambian to refrain from creating a similar situation that will dog our beloved country in perpetuity.

We should not be blinded by our having experienced no serious religious conflicts so far, but as our country’s population and the membership of each religious denomination swells, we would be short­sighted not to anticipate and make an effort to forestall the incidence such conflicts. We need to act proactively. To wait until the consequences of our failure to reason are upon us is to leave serious problems for future generations to grapple with. And such failure will eventually prove to us that experience, in relation to this issue, teaches fools, since we have thus far not been able to see beyond our noses.

What Zambia needs is a secular state that genuinely recognizes and safeguards each and every individual’s freedom of worship and the freedom to choose one’s religion. At the same time, we should actively DISCOURAGE the following in a deliberate effort to forestall the potential for disruption of public order and socio-economic activities by cliques of fanatics from any of our country’s religious denominations:

(a) The use of public funds by a local or national government to set up a church or mosque, and/or to provide any form of support to any given religious group, institution or activity;

(b) Official participation by government leaders in the affairs of any given religious group or institution, or official participation by any given religious leader or group in political or governmental affairs;

(c) The use of a religious platform by any individual or group of individuals to form a political party;

(d) The use of a religious platform by any individual to seek a leadership position in any of the three branches of government—that is, the legislature, the judiciary and the executive;

(e) Inclusion of denominational religious subjects in the curricula of schools funded by the government; and

(f) Religious sermons which are contemptuous to, or are designed to slight, other religious groupings or denominations.

In countries where government leaders have not provided for these kinds of safeguards mainly due to lack of foresight, violent clashes among religious groups in their quest to dominate the political sphere, and to impose their religious laws on the citizenry, have become exceedingly difficult to contain. As it is often said, prevention is better than cure! Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammad summed up the perilous nat­ure of religi­ous conf­licts in his address to the World Evangeli­cal Fellow­ship in May 2001 thus: “Once started, reli­gious … [conflicts have] a tenden­cy to go on and on, [and] to become permanent feuds.”

In a country that is already inundated by violence and threats of violence mainly by cadres from the MMD on a regular basis, to add the potential for religious conflicts would be akin to spraying gasoline over burning charcoal.

In all, I am confident that religious institutions in Zambia will conti­nue to provide the moral and spiritual direction to our nation in an era that has been high-jacked by unprece­dent­ed violence and moral decay, and to articulate the people’s demands on the government for a more democratic, more peaceful, more prosperous, and more egalitarian socie­ty.