When Zambia Online (www.zambia.co.zm) did an opinion poll on whether the president should do some gender balancing in his job appointments, most people thought he should not. They preferred that it should be purely on merit, in spite of the poll question even suggesting a 'good' reason for the gender balancing (the disadvantages that women face). The poll on tribal balancing also produced the same result: most people wanted these to be purely on merit.

This is a good and encouraging result from the opinion polls. I too believe that the president should know that a job is something that is so serious, and our problems are so real, that he cannot afford to be taking anything less than the best team that he can find, no matter how 'unbalanced' it turns out to be. Perhaps they have the luxury of doing such things (like gender balancing) in Europe where they are already developed, but we cannot afford to do that because we are in a very desperate situation where we need some very urgent answers that require the smartest and most efficient people we can find. European donors are the ones who sometimes force us to do such nonsense through their aid: they want us to (ultimately) aim for 50 per cent gender balance and such things. These are the people who are really taking us backwards and unfortunately we just append our signatures to such silly protocols without thinking about them. I wish we had leaders who would simply tell these donors to go to you-know-where instead of just blindly accepting everything they say. I wish we had leaders who could truly engage them on an intellectual platform and explain to them why some of their suggestions are truly irrational (I doubt that the kind of people that are making it to important government positions these days – after regional and gender balancing - have that capacity, but that's a different issue). Now, as much as I am happy that there are many Zambians who agree with me that jobs should be purely on merit and not by some government intervention in balancing advantages and disadvantages, what I find disappointing in many of my fellow Zambians is that they are usually unable to INTEGRATE these opinions with other aspects of political and economic life so that they can now arrive at a PRINCIPLE that can be used to determine their opinion in ALL such situations. The function of a principle is to store all your rational opinions in a simple concept that you can refer to whenever your opinion is asked of you on a new situation. The ability to form such principles is what makes a person truly educated. There are many people who even have PhDs but they still have not mastered the art of forming their own principles; they have just academically memorized other people's principles and apply these randomly to different situations.

A principle is like a mathematical equation. You have a situation where 'x' is true no matter which number you substitute for x. Instead of writing all these infinitely many different numbers and answers, you just put 'x' in an equation to represent all of them so that you can simply STORE the principle that determines your answer in every such situation rather than storing all the individual answers separately. Thus, you achieve mental efficiency by summarizing your computations in a simple formula or principle.

It's the same way principles work in every other aspect of life and knowledge. So, instead of determining your opinions from scratch on every aspect of life, you can instead determine your formula for finding 'x'. And you do this by integration, which means, finding what is common among all those opinions that you arrive at logically. If integration is not possible, then the opinions you have are self-contradicting and you should correct them by thinking more about them, until you arrive at a consistent set of ideas.

Okay, let me get back to normal talk and simply say this: if you believe government should not intervene in job distribution between the genders or the tribes, in spite of the disadvantages that some people might face as a result of their gender or tribe, then on what basis would you support government intervention in any other aspect of life where one group (or individual) is disadvantaged over another in their aspirations?

If you believe government should not intervene in this area where one side is truly disadvantaged, then you should logically believe they should not intervene in any other area where one side or group is disadvantaged. If, on the other hand, you believe that there are areas that government should step in and other areas that they should not step in, then YOU should tell us how you determine which areas require intervention and which areas do not. If you do not have a principle that determines how you choose which area, then your position is RANDOM, it is not based on reason. If your position is not based on reason, then HOW do you expect to convince other people that you are right and why should they EVER accept your position? Using emotions?

This is my position: government should not intervene in any situation where different parties are competing for something, even if one party is disadvantaged. This is my equation and I can easily substitute any situation into it, including cabinet appointments, ambassadorial appointments, national soccer team selection (can you imagine what would happen if government decided to apply tribal balancing or something like that in selecting the zambia national soccer team?), business tenders, and so on.

But it goes even further than this. By the same principle, I do not believe government should intervene in the issue of selection to university, for example. They should not ever force a university to accept pupils who have performed worse than other pupils just because the former are from a disadvantaged tribe or gender or school or town, etc. Neither should the university ever be forced to accept pupils based on their region of origin in order to "balance regional representation" at university.

Thus I do not even support those states in America that want to reserve some university places for blacks who have performed worse than whites; if they had a disadvantage growing up, that's unfortunate, but you cannot just grant them a place that belongs to someone who earned her place just because she is white. Government intervention just makes things worse: now you will have many people who genuinely will not want to be treated by a black doctor because they do not know if the man is really an intelligent doctor or he just got his education through this affirmative action program! This principle can be applied even to economics. Some people justify government intervention in pricing (price controls) because they believe the customers have a disadvantage over the sellers. Others believe government should intervene in the wages of workers because of the disadvantage these workers have against the employers.

But how can you say that if you are the same person who does not believe government should appoint certain people because they are from a disadvantaged gender or tribe? You have to be consistent. Actually, the people in Europe who believe in gender balancing in parliament and cabinet happen to also believe in government intervention in pricing of goods, in wages, in selection to university places, and so on. The difference between Europeans and Africans on this score is that Europe is a more intellectual society so they know that they should apply their principles across board, in every aspect of policy decision. Many 'educated' Africans, on the other hand, have random opinions which usually do not work on any consistent principle. This is not an insult to my fellow Africans; it is simply a recognition of an undeniable fact (as I will show in a moment). And I put the blame on the lack of proper educational investment in Africa (which in turn is a result of bad socialistic policies).

You see, this is the very reason why in Europe, you can easily identify what a politician stands for and you will even know how they will vote when a certain issue comes up in parliament. This is because they work by principles (or equations, if you like) and if you know the principle someone holds on a certain issue, you will know how he will vote whenever a particular situation comes up: you can predict him by simply substituting for the 'x' in his formula. This is why it is not common for a politician to cross from one political party that holds a certain fundamental principle to another party with a contradicting set of principles. And it is all a result of proper education.

In Africa, on the other hand, we hear of politicians changing from one party to another on a daily basis. We hear of all kinds of parties merging before elections, and de-merging after elections before re-merging with other former enemies, and so on. The fights among them are always personal, never ever philosophical, whereas among European and American political leaders their fights are almost always along philosophical lines – it's a war of principles. I do not believe, therefore, that it is an insult to charge that we do not yet have a serious intellectual culture, a culture that is built on formation and upholding of principles.

Even the voting in parliament has nothing to do with principles. We do not know what principles guide one political party (or politician) in the opposition, which is why it is easy for their presidents to say beforehand that their MPs should just OPPOSE everything the ruling party says! When Tony Blair tabled the issue of war before his parliament, the public knew that he would have the support of the opposition (the Tories) and that many of his own people would not support him on this one. That can never happen in Africa. Tony Blair counted on the vote of the opposition because he knows their principles and he knew they would stick to their principles even if the man presenting the issue was from the 'enemy' party.

What I am asking my fellow Zambians to do is to simply think about this issue of principle formation. Before we criticize our leaders, we must ensure that we are not just like them. We must know how to integrate our own rational positions and come up with principles that can make us predictable in any situation rather than choosing our opinion randomly as every situation presents itself. Principles make you intellectually efficient. Instead of wasting time thinking over every issue that is related, you can simply apply your principle in that area since you know that you thought long and hard before establishing that principle.

It is my hope that when you do this, you will arrive at my principle of laissez-faire capitalism. You will oppose government intervention in competition for anything, no matter how disadvantaged some parties might be. You will recognize that life is just like that: that we can't all be the same, and everyone can simply find some area where they have an advantage instead of asking government to make them 'equal' to other people in any area they choose. There are areas where the educated will have an advantage over the uneducated, the strong over the weak, the rich over the poor, the men over the women, the women over the men, the old over the young, the young over the old (e.g sport), and so on. You will recognize that government is not there to "fix" all these situations (of disadvantaged parties) by giving them a fake advantage over other competitors and that the more they try to do this, the more they just make things worse for everyone. You will therefore realize that government is there to simply protect people from those who want to apply force (and its derivatives) on them: murderers, rapists, thieves, terrorists, fraudsters, drunk drivers, managers or companies that disregard established safety procedures, dangerous polluters, etc: i.e. people who harm you without your consent. Government is not there to intervene in competing companies, competing students, competing workers, etc, no matter who possesses advantages or disadvantages over another. You will thus be opposed to all price controls, all wage controls, all anti-trust laws, all affirmative action laws (including black empowerment or whatever), and so on.

In my view, this is the most rational philosophy you can hold to without contradicting yourself on any issue. But the choice is yours whether to become a consistent person through conceptualization of simple, logical principles or to remain a totally random human that only knows how to criticize people who actually make the effort of being thusly consistent.

So, make the choice. Your mind is the only hope that Africa has.