I REMEMBER with Alfred Mulenga –
Most Zambians must have been delighted to learn that a team of prospective investors from the United Kingdom (UK) arrived in the country led by the Lord Mayor of London, Jeffrey Mountevans to strengthen bilateral trade between Zambia and her former colonial power.
Lord Mayor Mountevans, who heads the City of London’s authority, had been quoted in a prelude to the tour as saying that the main objective of his visit was ‘to build a partnership between our two countries.’
“I want to make sure that the City of London and the rest of the UK are Zambia’s first thought when they want to do business. Bilateral trade between Zambia and the UK, which has reached record levels, is expected to continue with its strong growth,” he said.
That is excellent news indeed especially if the tour results in new British industries being set up in various parts of Zambia under the Patriotic Front (PF) administration, which has since coming to power in 2011, laced the entire country with a network of first-class infrastructure, including tarred roads and bridges.
The projects have been severely criticized in certain quarters, but it goes without saying that these facilities are some of the major considerations any investor looking for a quick return on investment takes into account. With a good road network in place the investor is assured he will be able to received the necessary raw materials and machinery in good time and then transport his manufactured goods to the various markets within the country, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and beyond.
In the past foreign and local investors alike were reluctant to venture outside the line of rail from Livingstone to Bancroft (Chililabombwe) to the hinterland because the absence of such facilities acted as a disincentive with the unfortunate result that the countryside has remained largely underdeveloped despite the fact that Zambia gained its political independence from Britain some 51 years back.
Against this backdrop, one would say that Lord Mayor Moutevans and his delegation’s visit to Zambia is also opportune in sense that it will go along way in helping to bridge even further the wide gulf that developed between Zambia and the UK after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by Ian Smith in November 1965; and the failure by Britain to crush the ‘rebellion against the British crown’ in ‘weeks rather than months’, as former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson had initially promised.
It must be recalled that UDI created insurmountable economic problems for Zambia, which had just celebrated its first independence anniversary (only 12 months) before Smith and his Rhodesia Front (RF) gang defied world opinion and seized power in Salisbury (now Harare), the capital of the breakaway former British colony.
As a result of this unexpected development on the other side of the Zambezi River, Zambia was compelled to divert her precious but limited financial resources to finding alternative routes to the sea and setting up import-substitution industries because most of her essential supplies, including food, fuel and machinery for her thriving copper mining industry, used to come from South Rhodesia where 90 percent of manufacturing industries were deliberately concentrated by Sir Roy Welensky’s Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland administration.
The situation was desperate for one-year-old Zambian nation, but President Kenneth Kaunda and his Cabinet, determined to prove to the doubting Thomases that Africans were just as capable of managing the affairs of their newly independent states – adopted far-reaching contingency measures.
In the process of doing this, it must be said, they alienated private investors by introducing and implementing socialist policies that entailed, among other things, ‘nationalisation’ of foreign-owned companies (that would not willingly cooperate), commercial banks, industrial plants and other assets, with disastrous consequences in terms of bilateral relations between Zambia and the UK, as most of the taken-over enterprises, including retail and transport operations, were British-owned.
When President Kenneth Kaunda announced the watershed Mulungushi Economic Reforms in 1968, for example, the fledgling Industrial Development Corporation (Indeco) – which has been revived as the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) with President Edgar Lungu as its first chairman, took over Campbell Booker Carter (CBC) in which the British Booker Group retained 49 per cent of its original 100 per cent shareholding.
The former British retail chain was renamed Zambia Consumer Buying Corporation (ZCBC) with branches throughout the country.
Under the Mulungushi reforms, the State acquired 51 percent ownership of all shortlisted foreign-owned enterprises deemed necessary to ensure the country’s survival.
The 51 per cent list also included two British road transport companies, one of which enjoyed unfettered monopoly of passenger road transport and one freight business. The formerly British-owned Central African Road Services (CARS) – a subsidiary of the British United Transport group – was taken over and renamed as the United Bus Company of Zambia (UBZ).
Smith and Youngson, a British freight company, too, came under Zambian government control, handling all cargo transport inside the country while the nearly established Zam-Tan (Zambia-Tanzania Road Services) with its head offices in Kitwe and Zambia Railways (which had been part of the disbanded Rhodesia Railways (RR) before the 1963 dissolution of the Federation) were responsible for the import-export side.
But what caused the loudest uproar both at home and abroad was the 51 percent take-over of the two major copper mining groups – Roan Selection Trust (RST) and Anglo-American Corporation (AAC) – which became known as Roan Consolidated Copper Mines (RCM) and Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines (NCCM).
The takeover of the mines, as far as I can remember, sparked an unprecedented exodus of expatriate skilled manpower, particularly of British and South African stock who held most of the senior managerial positions in the mining industry. The Copperbelt’s white population also dropped so drastically that expatriate-dominated sports like cricket, rugby, equestrian (show jumping), softball and boat racing (regattas that used to attract tourists) were the immediate casualties.
Although the Zambian mining industry did not totally collapse (which conspiracy theorists believe was at the heart of UDI and the subsequent mass exodus of ‘disgruntled’ white expatriate workers and their bosses) their departure, as indicated above, had a telling effect on mining operations and social life in the country in general and on the Copperbelt in particular.
Until fairly recently, most towns on the Copperbelt, like Chingola, Luanshya, Mufulira and even the former Fort Roseberry (now Mansa) – which were designed and planned (and over the years grew) as garden cities, lost the lustre they were previously renowned for. This is because life-threatening potholes caused by soil erosion coupled with years of poor maintenance or lack of it by the relevant authorities like district councils, littered and still litter the once smooth and well-kept tree-lined streets (avenues) that made driving and walking pleasurable.
Most of us who were there – and experienced it all – often look back to those ‘green’ days with a trace of nostalgia. I believe many other impartial and objective people of all races do agree that if it weren’t for Smith’s disruptive UDI, which rocked Zambia’s economic boat, this country would have developed into a paradise, given its abundant natural resources that include, among others, fine weather conditions, minerals, perennial rivers, lakes, fertile soils, panoramic landscapes and wildlife, all waiting to be exploited by the ambitious and starry-eyed investor.
The Zambian government has liberalised the economy and has openly declared that it has no intention of reintroducing foreign exchange controls and other laws that characterized the 1973-1991 One-party ‘participatory’ democracy, and which acted as a disincentive to foreign direct investment (FDI). So Zambia is now open to full-scale industrialization and reconstruction.
Import-substitution industries established to counter the ill-effects of UDI went under soon after the fall of Ian Smith and the birth of Zimbabwe as an independent sovereign state within the Commonwealth in April 1980. (Zimbabwe has since left the Commonwealth due to disputes that arose between Harare and London after President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party controversially ‘nationalised’ formerly white-owned farmlands in 2000).
Ndola, the provincial capital of the Copperbelt, which felt the fullest impact of second Republican President Frederick Chiluba’s wholesale privatisation of parastatal enterprises after the 1991 multiparty elections that ousted Kaunda and UNIP from power, is still in crying need of fresh investments. Its Industrial Area on the Kabwe-Lusaka road where most manufacturing plants were sited, was left looking like a ghost city after multinational companies such as Colgate Palmolive and Dunlop decamped. Some industries have since been revived, however, but most factory shells and modern office buildings are still empty.
In the light of the above, one hopes that Lord Mayor Mountevans’ team of entrepreneurs, most of them – if not all – members of the Confederation of British Industries (CBI) will at the end of their visit return to the UK with a clearer picture of the investment climate in Zambia. Investment opportunities in sectors like tourism, touted as the new engine of economic growth, are plainly boundless.
Above all, qualified local manpower, unlike in the post-independence years when the country had less than a hundred university graduates, is no longer a major hindrance because Zambian institutions of higher learning such as the University of Zambia (UNZA) in Lusaka and colleges of education and technical colleges like the Northern Technical College (Nortec) in Ndola have been producing graduates: engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers, tutors, and technocrats of international repute.
So the stage is, as it were, set for the often intrepid British investor to return to Africa and jump on board the Zambian investment boat that is at the front of the new struggle to combat widespread poverty, hunger and disease.
That would go down in Zambia’s history as Lord Mayor Jeffrey Mountevans’ finest hour.
Comments: alfredmulenga777@gmail.com