By Chanda Chisala
The announcement by government that they would review the modalities of privatisation of ZNCB has been met by many critics of the privatisation process with much relief (except for the apparent equivocation of government on the issue since then). The Minister of Finance was not completely accurate when he said that among the parties debating this issue, there is no one who is against privatisation; I think most people who were opposed to the 49 per cent privatisation of ZNCB are even fundamentally against privatisation per se. After all, isn’t it the exact same people who also have a problem with the privatisation of ZESCO, ZAMTEL, etc even before any particular “modalities” have been announced? Isn’t it the same writers and politicians who think they can strengthen their point by simply claiming that “all the people of Zambia” are against privatisation, as if they have taken a census of all the Zambian people’s views? This writer is a Zambian (last time he checked) and he is in full support of the privatisation of ZNCB – to the highest bidder, local or foreign.
When the minister characterised the critics of privatisation of ZNCB as not being opposed to privatisation in itself, the most vocal among the critics were of course not honest enough to maintain their real stand on the issue. Instead of insisting that they are against privatisation itself as they have always said, because it is part of “the neo-liberal policies imposed on us by the neo-colonialist imperialists”, they accepted that they were in fact not opposed to the policy itself (just as the Minister kindly described them), but only to its “modalities”. Such lack of principle is one of the reasons it is difficult for one to engage in honest debate on this issue. If only they could maintain a principled stand and always say what they really think about an issue, instead of changing according to the most convenient currents, debate on this issue would be much more productive.
Since the Minister made this announcement, the Post newspaper, for example, who have proudly assumed the mantle of being “the leading and most consistent voice in the fight against neo-colonialism”, also seemed to agree with the Minister that they were not in fact against privatisation of ZNCB, and yet one can easily cite many editorials in which they categorically stated that they opposed its privatisation per se and not just the present modalities of the sell. Now they say that what they are against is the way it is being done. In other words, they would not mind privatisation if the company was sold to indigenous Zambians. One wonders what has changed from the time they claimed that privatisation of ZNCB was itself wrong to the time that they thought it was right if it was sold to the locals. But I know that even this is not a new, principled stand and there will soon be another editorial which will state or at least leave the impression that privatisation is wrong in itself.
If they believed that privatising was not wrong if the company was sold to Zambians, then why haven’t they just been saying this all along instead of criticising the entire “philosophy” of privatisation and capitalism, all the way from Adam Smith, liberalism, “mercantilism”, “neo-liberalism”, etc etc? Why was all that philosophising and historicism necessary if all they needed to say was that they believed in privatisation on the condition that a company is sold to Zambians? The problem with intellectual dishonesty is that it cannot possibly maintain consistency in its position since the arguer does not base his own stand on logical facts, but rather on xenophobic emotional sentiments.
Why, for example, would one now emphasise that the problem with privatisation of ZNCB is just that it is being sold to foreigners? Some have even come up with reasons for this new stand. They claim that Zambians do not “externalise” profits, that only foreigners do this. Where did this statistic come from, I wonder? When did anyone produce any statistics that showed that when indigenous Zambians have very profitable businesses they do not externalise their profits? If no one has produced such figures, then how would one just present that as a fact and even proceed to use it as a major reason why a serious decision like privatisation of ZNBC should be reviewed? The government is not serious if they are intimidated by such irrational arguments. A principled leadership should only be moved by facts, not by arguments from intimidation that have no ability to present a position in the context of economic logic or historical reality.
A privatisation policy that puts explicit preference on “indigenous buyers” cannot work and it has never worked anywhere in the world. Even the so-called Western “imperialist” nations, whom we might expect to be very strict on selling their companies only to indigenous people, do not have such a policy because they know just how counter-productive it would be. One does not need to follow all the global financial news to realise that the most common policy in privatisation even in Western nations is simply to award a sell to the highest bidder or at least the most experienced one. At no time do they state that what they want is a local, indigenous buyer. The world does not operate like that any more (if it ever did), and yet there are some people in our nation who surprisingly think that the way backwards is the most progressive way for us.
I do not oppose selling ZNCB to indigenous Zambians if they can afford to outbid the other bidders. In other words, it should not matter who buys ZNCB from government, as long as the natural laws of trade are followed. Politicising the principle of trade has always led to the destruction of economies wherever this has been practiced or institutionalised. Communism, Marxism, socialism, etc are all philosophies that grew from the politicisation of natural trade. Common sense tells us that when someone is selling something, the best situation for him is always to sell it for the highest price and nothing else. Even our intellectuals who believe in the indigenisation of privatisation would never sell their own property to someone just because he is a fellow Zambian, if there is a foreigner offering to buy it at a higher price. A person who truly believed in this senseless “indigenist” principle would never sell his car to a foreigner even if that foreigner is ready to buy it at a high price, as long as there is a fellow Zambian who needs that car but can only afford it at a lower price. But I do not expect that there is any such person who wants to apply this principle in their personal lives. Like all illogical ideas, such a principle only works in theory, never in practice – and yet they want to force government to practice it!
What we often fail to realise is that government is just a representative of the people and everything that government does is being done on behalf of the people. In other words, if the people could do it themselves, they would be the ones to sell their “shares” in ZNCB since they are the ones who actually own the bank. We choose a government to do such things for us only for the sake of convenience since it would be practically impossible for all of us to sell our little fraction of this share to other bidders.
When we understand this simple principle, we should then realise that it is wrong for government to do on our behalf what we would never do if we did it ourselves. As my example above shows, if a Zambian wants to sell his property, he never thinks of selling it to someone just because that person is a fellow Zambian or a fellow tribesman. Every single individual Zambian would simply sell his property to the highest bidder, period. Tribalism and racism ends when it comes to money, except for an insane person. So, if the government is selling ZNCB on behalf of all of us, then it would be wrong for them to do it in a way that we would not do it. In other words, they should sell it as we would sell it: to the highest bidder, period.
The government is just like our property agent in this case, trying to sell a property that belongs to us on our behalf. Would it make sense for my property agent, hired to sell my house, to say to me, “I am not looking for the highest bidder for your house; I am looking for the bidder who is your fellow Zambian or your fellow black man”. You would definitely fire your agent for saying such a thing because it is simply against the natural laws of trade, and yet we propose this nonsense when that agent is the government, simply because we do not realise that there is no fundamental difference in these two situations whatsoever.
The excuse that selling ZNCB to fellow Zambians would keep profits in Zambia is not only naïve; it is also a dishonest lie. Some international reports have already shown that at one time Zambia was one of the top seven or so nations that had the highest rate of people opening Swiss accounts and sending a lot of money into that famous European bank. We got this report from the same newspapers that now claim as a categorical fact that Zambians do not externalise their money because they love their country so much!
One wonders where they come up with such ideas because there is no realistic person that believes that you could define the character of an entire nation in any particular way and predict the way they would behave under any circumstances – including when they have the opportunity to make millions of dollars that they have never made before. That would be like saying “Nigerians would not externalise their profits if they bought parastatals from the Nigerian government”. That statement sounds ridiculous, but it is only an unrealistic person who would think that Zambians would have any special compunction against sending their profits outside, even if it is to Swiss accounts, just because they somehow love their own country more than the citizens of other nations love theirs. When one reads articles or editorials peddling such ideas, one can’t help but ask himself sceptically, “do these guys really believe the things they write?”
But what is much more frightening is that our entire great government can give in to such silly arguments and even apologise for simply pursuing common sense as they were doing before deciding to “review” their “modalities”. Democracy does not mean listening to anyone’s views even if it does not make rational sense just because he claims to have some special access to the views of “all the people of Zambia”. Representative Democracy is doing for the people what the people would do for themselves if they were able to. In short, it is an unbreached commitment to common sense.
End.
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