In the last few articles I discussed why General Miyanda would be a good choice for president of Zambia because of his integrity. I also mentioned that there are a number of other Zambians of high standing in society who have a similar soul to his. Dr. Caleb Fundanga is one such man, and again, I wish to openly implore the current president to think about this man as a good choice for his successor.

Since I committed myself to being realistic when I started this series of articles, I am beginning to think it might be actually unrealistic to expect President Mwanawasa and General Godfrey Miyanda to ever reconcile and work together. There is currently no evidence that this will happen any time before the next elections, and since I believe that the next president will (unfortunately or fortunately) be the one "anointed" by President Mwanawasa (officially or unofficially), I think it would be better to suggest a few other names to president Mwanawasa and to the public consciousness at large, instead of some of the soulless and mindless people we hear are in hot contention for this important position.

Dr. Caleb Fundanga is the Governor of Zambia's central bank, the Bank of Zambia (BOZ). I won't go into his history and things like that, except to briefly describe the mind and soul of the man and why I think he should be seriously considered for the job of president of Zambia. To my knowledge, this is the first time his name will be publicly floated for consideration for this high office.

Zambia is well known for one thing in Africa: somehow this small nation of less than 15 million people, and as small as the American state of Texas, has led the way to many intellectual "revolutions" in Africa. I don't know what the full explanation for this trend is, but it appears to confirm the famous research of some psychologists many years ago whose statistics indicated that Zambia has the highest national IQ in the whole of sub-saharan Africa (surprisingly, I've never met any Zambian who knew this fact before I told them; the statistics were published in a book called "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" and other famous – and infamous - works before it).

Anyway, whatever the reason - IQ or something else - this small country has always been at the head of every wind of intellectual change in Africa. Sometimes such "revolutions" have been wrong, and sometimes they have been right. For example, Zambia was one of the first countries to officially launch a national socialist philosophy (that led to the unfortunate nationalization of private industries, major forms of regulation, high public spending, and so on). The other countries followed suit and this led Africa to become the poorest continent in the world as these newly independent countries destroyed the systems of wealth creation left by their former colonial "masters". The Zambian socialist revolution was guided by a philosophy invented by our first president (Kenneth Kaunda) called "humanism". The man received a lot of academic honours from universities around the world for creating this very original philosophy, and he was one of the first presidents in the world to have his own philosophy taught in the schools as part of official curriculum. (The term ‘humanism' existed before Kaunda, but it had a different meaning from the systematic philosophy Kaunda created; thus Kaunda's philosophy was correctly differentiated as a proper noun: ‘Humanism'). With his close friend President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, who had also come up with his own unique socialist philosophy (Ujamaa), the two provided the strongest intellectual leadership (for the rest of Africa) into one of the biggest economic disasters in the history of the world! This "great achievement" explains why Zambia is still one of the poorest countries in the world, in spite of her high intellect. The damage was greatest where the intellectual leadership was proceeding from.

Years later, it was largely Zambia again which led the intellectual transformation out of this tragic philosophy, through President Chiluba's positive economic and political reforms. Chiluba led the nation through two simultaneous intellectual revolutions that normally go together: political liberalism (or pluralism) and economic liberalization. Again, there was no one in Africa who could match the eloquence of the Zambian leader as he explicated the intellectual underpinnings of this new movement (an eloquence confirmed by none other than Nelson Mandela himself). He also earned academic recognition while in office for some of his innovative approaches to this philosophy, besides actually earning a Masters degree through a thesis he presented to a British university. Unfortunately, the man had many bad anti-intellectual, anti-idealism friends who were only interested in money rather than economic ideas or political visions, and he too became greedy along the way and lost the steam for serious reform or ideology, thus leading the nation back into political and economic chaos as corruption and theft became more entrenched in the national culture. The man even stopped his privatization program when it came to key institutions simply because (in my opinion), he wanted these to continue providing an easy source for his political and personal financing. The biggest opportunity to make Africa's most intelligent nation into its richest nation was missed.

Under Mwanawasa, Zambia has become the first African country to successfully prosecute its former president (Chiluba) for corruption and theft, despite the fact that he came from his party, and despite being virtually handpicked by him as his successor. This has just set another positive precedent for the rest of Africa. The intellectual message of Mwanawasa, perhaps stemming from his illustrious career as a lawyer, is simply and consistently, "respect human rights". Respect for human rights naturally implies respect for the property (and lives) of others, and theft is a direct violation of that intellectual principle. This intellectual ideal is bound to spread to the rest of Africa.

It is because of this ideal that Mwanawasa made his infamous statement against his neighbouring President Robert Mugabe recently, a man who respects neither property nor life. Of course government machinery has since tried to downplay that statement through diplomatic means so that our relations with Zimbabwe may not be too strained, but in this world of the internet, the "damage" has already been done, and it is indeed a good damage. Zimbabwe is emphatically and unapologetically a sinking Titanic under the psychotic Robert Mugabe, period.

Mwanawasa's statement has already been heard by history and it will go down as the first time an African president rose against the dictatorial tendencies of another "democratically" elected president. The tradition among African leaders has been to overdo this brotherhood nonsense to the point where everyone supports everyone else (in the name of African unity) even if they are doing atrociously evil things. A moral man can never put unity or friendship above principle. This is the lesson we have learnt from the life of President Mwanawasa, from the time he resigned from the vice-presidency (I don't know if there has ever been any other African vice-president who resigned from such a powerful position), thus leaving his corrupt MMD friends, to the day he decided that the friend who had anointed him to succeed him should face the law. Both of these remarkable events in his life demonstrate that the man puts principle above friendship, and his remark against president Mugabe is therefore consistent with the man's soul. Let's see if the rest of Africa can learn this lesson as well.

So where does Caleb Fundanga come into all this? As businessman-turned-politician Hakainde Hichilema (HH) has correctly opined, what Zambia needs right now is an economic "revolution". We started it under President Chiluba, and then he messed things up by introducing a corrupt culture that has since shaken the very foundations of the economy. Mwanawasa's job in the economy, therefore, has simply been to undo this mess, starting with restoring the honour of the highest office. I think that Mwanawasa has failed to root corruption out of government and I believe he will fail in this task even by the time he leaves office. What he should realize and accept is that his role in this "fight" is simply to establish a new foundation, a new culture, a new standard, through his message of respect for other people's property, respect for human rights. This is a harder task than the actual job of "stamping out" corruption. It is harder to change the mindsets of people than it is to catch the thieves, and if Mwanawasa achieves the former as he seems to be doing, he should be proud of himself even if he does not actually clean up every corner of the house. When the thinking changes, when people no longer respect a thief – a person who steals property - as they used do to in Chiluba and when they start thinking of earning their wealth honestly, it will then become easy to actually catch all the thieves.

A man like Fundanga could come in and build on the foundation set by the president so far. As an experienced manager of one of the best managed institutions in the nation, Fundanga could take his experience and apply it to the entire system of government so that theft could be completely eradicated. Coming from the world of accounting itself, involving the highest financial institution in the nation for that matter, Fundanga can easily implement systems (both technological and structural) that can make public theft not only systematically punishable, but also virtually impossible.

But this is not the main reason I think Fundanga would be a great choice for president. The main reason I believe Fundanga would make one of Africa's best presidents, and provide the continent with the needed intellectual leadership into prosperity, is simply his understanding of the modern economy. I never knew the extent to which the man understands free market economics until recently when he was brought before a parliamentary committee to comment on the banking sector.

Mr. Fundanga made some statements which can only come from a highly enlightened man, but also from a soul that is very bold and honest, since his statements were not quite agreeable with current government policy. Fundanga bluntly and unequivocally criticized government's tax policy and explained very eloquently how this policy is largely responsible for the failure of the economy to grow as it should.

Of course what he said is really just common sense, but one is baffled by how such simple logic keeps escaping our politicians: if you introduce low taxes, you will inspire more investment and growth. It's that simple and that basic, but for some reason, people can't get it when they become very educated. It is a rare man that can maintain his grasp of basic, commonsense ideas even after becoming highly educated.

Dr. Fundanga revealed that the banking sector is in fact one of the most highly taxed sectors in Zambia. I didn't know that, and quite frankly, I was appalled to learn this. How can the sector that is most responsible for creating businesses be the most highly taxed one? Who came up with such a tax policy and what the hell were they thinking?

All this time government has been talking about reducing interest rates and so on so that banks can lend money cheaply to entrepreneurs and investors, and all along we didn't know that government actually undermines its own rhetoric by taxing these lending institutions highly? How can they reduce interest rates when they have such high taxes to pay? Doesn't government know that banks make money from interest rates and if they need to pay a lot of taxes they will only pass down that cost through the interest? Personally, if I had to choose a sector that should not pay any taxes at all, the lending institutions would come high on my list (followed by the oil and energy sector) – you can imagine how this would affect the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, no politician will accept this.

Dr. Fundanga passionately - though in his usual corporate calmness - explained how government can in fact make more money if they radically lowered the taxes in all sectors, a principle that is so simple that even Michael Sata has understood it (Mr. Sata's only problem is that he also promises to begin by giving a lot of "free" things to people, which would make it logically impossible to reduce taxes, especially if the "free" things begin coming within 90 days!)

I tend to think that Dr. Fundanga truly believes what he was saying to this committee, unlike many politicians whom it is difficult to tell whether they are just trying to be populist with their promises. Dr. Fundanga is genuine because he is speaking while he is employed by a government that does not apparently accept (or understand) his logic (Mr. Sata, on the other hand, NEVER contradicted Dr. Chiluba's tax policy throughout those ten years). Only a true professional can do what Dr. Fundanga did and it's really the only job of a professional: to express his own mind on every matter, no matter what. That, is integrity.

Dr. Fundanga not only understands that taxes should be low; he also understands that the government must not interfere with the economy. This is shown by the way he handled the issue of the Kwacha's fluctuations. At a time when the Kwacha was gaining strength at a remarkable pace, many big businessmen (and "investors") tried hard to make Dr. Fundanga intervene in the trend by falsifying the true strength of the currency. That's not integrity. These are the same people who, as the Post correctly pointed out, had previously sung the song of "leaving market forces alone" when this was in their favour. Now they were asking him to intervene because their exports were suffering.

Fundanga again showed that he is a man of principle by refusing to yield. No matter how many insults were laid on him by some people, he maintained his stand, explaining that the official policy of BOZ is non-interference in the currency market. And he was absolutely right.

I know there are many people who don't like what they call an "idealist". But it is idealists who change the world, not people who change according to the situation, as many "pragmatists" want us to believe. The simple principle is this: if you want to change the world, don't let the world change your stand (and your standards).

A true man must have some immutable principles that guide his life, his work and his mind. His decisions must not be calculated from scratch in every situation; rather, he should stick to his values whenever he is faced with any situation, and the test of his soul is the tenacity with which he sticks to such values under pressure.

Unfortunately, most "intellectuals" in our society think that a person should just agree with them whether or not they can prove their point with facts, but simply because they feel it's true. Thus when a person like Fundanga refuses to listen to them, they just start insulting him (like "blind follower of neoliberal dogma of the imperialists and neocolonialists" etc), as if he can not think for himself, instead of showing why his position is logically wrong. Evidence all around the world shows that the more capitalist a nation becomes, the wealthier it becomes, as the recent example of the Chinese economy has indisputably shown.

Dr. Fundanga is essentially a free market capitalist, and capitalism is logically built on the foundation of respect for individual rights, a foundation that has been ably set by President Mwanawasa. Zambia needs capitalism now more than ever before. Africa needs capitalism now more than ever. Since Zambia has demonstrated an ability to lead (or mislead) the rest of Africa into new paradigms by always providing the solid intellectual foundation, I hope our next president will be an enlightened capitalist idealist, and I think Dr. Fundanga would fit the shoes quite perfectly.

I mean, the man even looks like a president, doesn't he?