The Syrian Conundrum (Guest Blog)

The first of a series of articles from our resident geo-politics expert Dr Mpundu Mukanga focusing on the current Syrian crisis.
The Syrian Conundrum Part 1

Previous Contributions:
Prisoners of Regime Change - Part 2
Prisoners of Regime Change - Part 1

Opportunity Cost of FRA

Brian Tembo helpfully reminds us that the money being spent on the current agricultural regime is not "free":

"According to research, there is also no impact on poverty reduction. This should tell the government that if you are not getting anything, then there is something wrong. What us Zambians and the new government need to understand is that for a lot of money being spent on maize, there is a school that hasn't been built; drugs that haven't been built and many more...The government spends about US $500 million to purchase maize from the farmers which they do not even have capacity to store. There is no return on the investments made in the manner that the government has made on maize. About 40 per cent of budget on agriculture spent on input support."

We have previously touched on Zambia's broken maize marketing policies. Our prayer must surely be that this madness started by the previous Government is brought to a quick end sooner rather than later. 

Blind Women of Kang'onga

The excellent Gethsemane Mwizabi returns with another piece on how the women of Kang'onga are defying blindness to engage in agriculture entrepreneurship through the Twashuka Women’s Club in Ndola. The women have been involved in various entrepreneur activity from selling Munkoyo to common ownership of a piece of land where they grow maize. Along the way, they have also received financial support of K10 million from the Ministry of Gender, which they have used to hammer mill. More detail via Times of Zambia.

Is Zambia Intellectually Blind?

Apparently so, according to George Chisanga :

"The intellectuals in this country have gone to sleep. Some of the problems that we are facing now would have been avoided had our intellectuals stepped up to help the country. There is need for people who have been educated using taxpayers money to step up and plough back to the governance of the country"

These attacks are not new and were recently echoed by a clever (fictional?) article by Field Ruwe.  In 2008, Nkwanzi Mahongo made similar arguments where he argued that the failure of African leaders to write and engage in intelligent debate, even after they leave office is symptomatic of a wider problem facing Africa - a lack of ideas. The problem with the "intellectual bystander" argument as espoused by Chisanga and others is two-fold.

First, it presumes the existence of high quality intellectual debate among Zambians. Sceptics would say that the problem is not that intellectuals are not helping, but rather their existence is falsely presumed! A question here must surely be asked what we mean by intellectuals and how we go about verifying their existence. There's a general presumption that intellectuals equals more degrees. But that is a poor metric. Surely the nature of the intellect is found in the tangible ideas it produces. In Zambia sadly, we have a deficit of ideas - potentially suggesting an equal deficit of intellectual capacity in many areas. Rather than assume that we have intellectuals, perhaps the question should turn to how we can produce such?

Secondly, the Chisanga critique is based on a political vacuum. The reality of life is that development and governance arrangements are an outworking of power relations in society. Those that hold power shape debate. In our country we have on one side the majority - helpless and poor. On the other side are the minority - rich and corrupt Zambians that hold the nation in the palm of their hand. Intellectual power alone will not shift the dynamics. Many nations have produced intellectuals and continued to wallow in poverty. Producing ideas is meaningless unless a policy space exists to debate them freely and incorporate them in national policy making. It follows that eliminating poverty will  only come about once the majority secure sufficient power to shift the policy direction in their favour. It wont arrive with intellectual blows, or any shaking off of non-existent, but erroneously presumed intellectual laziness.

So once again we find that the question of development and the role of the intellectuals (if they exist) is a rather complex one, like many of he challenges we are facing. 

The Case for A Stronger House of Chiefs

This month's short essay argues for a stronger house of chiefs as part of an alternative vision to move towards an explicit Zambian definition of national development. The essay is embedded below (PDF downloadable) and the HTML version can be found via our Facebook page for those using handheld devices. 

The Case for a Stronger House of Chiefs