I am inspired to write part 2 of this important issue by the radio program I listened to today on Radio Phoenix, conducted by the very able Chella Katwishi. The guests on the program were Ms Nonde from the Federation of Trade Unions, the assistant labour commissioner from the ministry of labour, and a gentleman Chella brought in who identified himself as a "victim of casualisation." (‘Casualisation', by the way, is a word that was euphemistically invented in Zambia – as far as I know - to refer to the common corporate trend of hiring and keeping workers on temporary employment rather than permanent employment, even for years, as a cost reduction measure).

The "victim of casualisation" was brought in for emotional effect, obviously, and he did a good job by recounting what he has gone through in the last four years: hoping from company to company, none of them giving him permanent employment until he reached his current age of 29 with no apparent hope of ever getting a permanent job. He still lives with his relatives because of this, and so on. Basically, a sad story.

The labour commissioner was put under some unenviable pressure by Ms Nonde and the phone-in participants as he struggled to explain what government is doing about the "problem" of casualisation.

Before I comment further on the issue, I must just make it very clear that I sympathise with all the "victims" of casualisation, the people who would have wished for a better-paying and more secure job but ended up getting only casual contracts with no extra benefits to go with it. I truly do sympathise with them.

And do I wish the situation was different? Yes, of course. I wish that everyone had more secure jobs that they could be proud of and enjoyed all the benefits of gainful employment. I need to clear this up because some of my readers have wrongly thought that I write what I write simply because I do not understand what the "casualised" workers go through. I do understand, I do feel bad, and I wish it was different. I share everyone's emotions on the issue.

But this does not mean that therefore I must agree with every emotional solution that people give to this problem, even if I find it counter-productive. The quick-fix solution that many Zambians have suggested and which the government has apparently accepted is simply to toughen the penalties against a company that casualises its workers, thus punishing them more severely. I am against this solution, both for moral reasons and for economic reasons. The economic effect is the very opposite of what these policies want to achieve, and the moral effect is simply horrendous. I don't think the moral discussion will be as effective as the economic discussion for this particular subject so I will focus much more on the latter.

You see, I believe that the main reason that Africa never makes much progress compared to the rest of the world is simply that Africa has a very weak and shallow intellectual culture. And by "intellectual" I mean it in the most original sense of the word. There are many people who believe that they should be called intellectuals because they like discussing issues, but obviously the term means more than that. A true intellectual is a master of analyzing CAUSES of things. Aristotle correctly said that the most important people in any society are the ones who are able to analyse the very fundamental causes of all phenomena. Such are the only true intellectuals and they are the ones who change the world everywhere, both now and any time in history. All the Nobel prize winners in natural and economic sciences, for example, have been people who have been able to explain some very complex causes of some very simple phenomena. And it is the knowledge produced by such thoughtful people that leads the world to progress.

So, if we were truly interested in an intellectual discussion on the issue of casualisation, we would have focused on discussing the true causes of casualisation. In an intellectual environment, the solutions are discussed only when the causes are fully analysed and understood. But in our case, I have never ever heard a discussion on this important issue of casualisation that even remotely analysed the causes of the phenomenon in an intelligent way. People just assume things; many people just casually (forgive the pun) say that the investors (or "infestors" as they are now loathingly called in creative Zambia) are just greedy and this is why they don't want to pay people a lot of money, and it is why they even put them on casual employment, etcetera.

First thing to do as one investigates the real cause of this problem is to take a truthful look at who is doing this casualisation. Everyone by now already knows that it is not just the foreign investors, but even the local ones as well. And above all, even the government itself (and its parastatals) has embarrassingly been identified as one of the "culprits".

This simple observation should lead anyone interested in a logical discussion on this issue to question the assumption that the foreign investors are doing it because they are just greedy. Parastatals like ZESCO certainly cannot be accused of greed, just as government departments that engage in this habit cannot be accused of greed. The reason parastatals are kept in government hands in the first place is to prevent them from going to the "greedy" investors, so obviously ZESCO's motivation for casualisation cannot be greed, and yet they engage in it just as much as private companies.

This should lead any intellectually honest person to immediately discard the theory of greed as the fundamental cause or motivation behind the casualisation phenomenon. Whatever we identify as its cause should take into account the fact that casualisation is done by all these other institutions.

The obvious cause of casualisation is the fact of the high cost of operations in Zambia. The other costs are already so high that an organization tries to look for all kinds of means and ways of preventing further rises in costs; otherwise there will be no point in doing business in Zambia. In fact, the labour cost is one of the highest hindrances to investment on the Zambian market and people find ways of getting round this just for them to keep operating. Even ZESCO knows this which is why it also has so many casual workers; when ZESCO is forced to "de-casualise" (I invented that one), they will either have to raise our electricity bills or they will get rid of a lot of people: there is no other way, you can't have your cake and eat it.

As for the private investors, whether local or foreign, this de-casualisation move, coupled with the minimum wage move, will just send them away because they don't have the luxury of raising prices with impunity. As I said in part 1, Zambia always forgets that she is a very poor, fourth world country, and this fact in itself makes it very unattractive for business and investments of any kind. Zambia is therefore in the position of desperation for investment and she should not act like it is the investors who need her, whether foreign or local investors. Instead of trying to punish the investors who are just trying to survive in this very harsh environment, we should be thinking of helping them to survive. The only point we need to understand is that WE NEED THESE INVESTORS much, much more than they need us – and we need many, many, many more of them. This realization will help us shift the direction of our policies and direct our energies to attacking the problem of casualisation from its root causes rather than from the end result stage.

Obviously, Ms Joyce Nonde of the FFTUZ does not understand this point or any tenet of basic economics. On the same radio show, she even had the cheek to say "if investors want to go, let them go; we can survive without them. How did we survive in the old village days before any of these investors came?" If there is anything she does know, it is at least the fact that her policy advice can only lead us back to the pre-modern village age!

When you have people in influential positions expressing such massively dangerous ignorance, you have to get scared. In this globalised world, all countries are aggressively competing to attract capital. Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole (without South Africa) currently attracts less capital than a single American (or Chinese) city attracts! This is a very desperate situation and every thinking human in our country ought to be thinking of ways of changing this trend, not ways of making it worse.

The problem with our African leaders is that they are more concerned about attracting donor aid than they are about attracting capital. The other day, Mr. Tetamashimba came on the same radio phoenix and he kept boasting about how donors are impressed with Zambia (as one of the main achievements of Mwanawasa). He mentioned it every time he summarized the "New Deal" MMD's achievements, and not once did he say the investors are impressed! Because they are not – they are scared.

This ignorance is therefore not just in the trade unionists, it is also in government leaders and it is too depressing to observe. Unfortunately, it is also the same in the general populace, from the lowest drunk in pubs to the highest "intellectuals" in university corridors. Everyone everywhere has this harsh, misguided tone against the "foreign infestors" and it all started when some opposition politicians used this as a populist ploy. Now even the ruling party is using it because they don't want to be on the wrong side of "the people".

The job of a true leader is not to follow the people; it is to lead the people. A true leader will therefore stand his ground even in the face of popular opposition and be able to explicate his principles with logic instead of succumbing to irrational populism. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul, Jesus asked. A real man will not lose his soul just to gain popular support; he will keep his soul at all costs by proclaiming the words of truth in the thick clouds of darkness.

Now, finally. I am not saying that when an investor mistreats a worker, for example, that that person should do nothing about it just because we need investors. No, that would also be a way of losing your soul just for the sake of gaining some money. A person who is physically harmed by his employers must sue them and they must pay heavily. A person who is promised a safe working environment but is denied this by his employers should sue them and justice must be effected. So, this should always be a simple case between employer and employee, a situation of simple breach of contract, a tort in law. There is no self-respecting investor who would mind this because that is how every civilised human society should operate. The employer, after all, has no right to violate the rights of other people.

But when you even start forcing them (the employers) to give certain conditions to their workers or else be punished, you (as government) are now violating their rights. Putting people on casual or temporary work is not a violation of rights and should not be a crime; there is no one who has the right to get permanent employment from another person or company or institution, just as there is no one who has a right to get food from someone else. The other person has to be willing to offer it in either case and the two of you can simply agree on conditions beforehand. It's called trade.

When you offend and violate the rights of these investors as human beings, you will only send a signal to the rest of the business world that you are a worthless investment spot. You might still keep the pretentious support of the donors, but this will only make you more donor dependent, instead of becoming a true magnet of real capital. If, on the other hand, you attract many investors (from inside and outside Zambia), casualisation will eventually stop on its own because they will be competing for the few labourers we have in our population. Wages will rise for the same reason, without effecting any minimum wage laws. That's how societies develop. But when you try to force things by trying to be tough when you are even coming from a position of weakness, you will only chase the little capital that you have away and discourage the rest from ever coming. That's just the bottom line.

Casualisation Of Labour Part 1