By Cecil Mbao
Zambia being a Christian nation should be familiar with the biblical verse of “death and life are in the power of the tongue; and those to whom it is dear will have its fruit for their food”, Proverbs 18:21.
Clearly its quite evident that to be a human being is to be endowed with the intellect (knowledge) and will (choice). From gate go, choice is a blessing and a curse. It’s the discerning and gathering of good information to make good choices that makes individual and national stories become lenses by which human actions engage in activities that promote economic and political development in ways both beneficial to everyone.
In short stories whether true or false define reality and influence thoughts and choices of those who hear them.
2016 as an election year is around the corner, and for political junkies like myself political stories are framing fast both in USA and Zambia.
This time around next year, there will be so many stories out there that a nation that will get the story wrong, we get its future wrong. To put it mildly (Proverbs 18:21), right stories based on truth (reality of what is going in the nation) will provide tremendous benefits to the nation.
However, wrong stories (denying the reality of what is going on in the nation) will once again yield destructive results. Load shedding, lack of good jobs for youth-who are future of the country, economic inequality and inability to balance the nation fiscal budget through export earnings, is not simply a product of the incumbent Patriotic Party.
The Zambia we have today is a result of the political and economic stories and lies from UNIP and MMD, we have believed over many decades, and have become the very fabric of politics.
Zambia has become a nation of inept career politicians who tell us wrongs stories during the campaign, but never produce results after elections, because their stories are faulty from the very beginning.
Our inept career politicians are very good at confusing facts with opinions, and frankly most of our voters don’t even see the difference between opinions and truth/facts. Let’s face it whether you agree with me or not, is irrelevant, but the truth is the political and economic stories politicians have been selling haven’t worked, and Zambia is in deep trouble.
To change the future of Zambia, we need to confess and get away from the moral sin of making ‘excuses’. Politicians who like to commit the mortal sin of making excuses, don’t take responsibility for their actions.
I personally believe that if politicians ceased making excuses for failing to fix the nation’s problems, and if the voters ceased making excuses for inept career politicians they love, Zambia’s deadly sins of load shedding, youth unemployment, unending loan borrowings, economic inequality and the attitude of procrastination would have been sins of the past.
The more we invest our time and energies learning about the choices that has brought the country to where it is today, the more likely we are going to replace the mortal sin of making ‘excuses’ with the virtue of ‘honesty’. It is time we admitted that load shedding is just a tip of the ice berg, meaning Zambia is sitting on a bubble of wrong choices that are now surfacing one by one. The truth is load shedding is a consenquency of what happens when the nation’s collective story to problem solving and innovation is trampled by political leaders whose intent is to instill fear and control those who are intellectually gifted to chart the national path to problem solving and innovation.
In the light of the 2016 elections it might be helpful those on the ground, social media and academia to start framing the nation’s story using these four conceptual models I once used in my business research:
1. Mission-Who are we and why does Zambia exist? All successful nations and fortune 500 companies have vision statement which is at the heart of the country or business. The raison d’etre of our existence should be fundamental decision making criterion or point of reference for allocating resources and crafting strategies. Kaunda came up with One Zambia One Nation and that worked for the older Zambians. With lack of job opportunities, the current younger generation are more concerned about the ‘where are jobs’, ‘why don’t you empower us’ One Zambia On Nation, than its political slogan. 2. Values-What do we believe in and what do we hold dear? In philosophy referred to as primitive, you continue probing the question with ‘why’ in all its forms and variations, the end result should be the answer ‘Because.” Well defined values and beliefs based on time outcomes, to which both citizens and politicians are willing to be held accountable for always motivates the nation to prosper and be patriotic. 3. Vision-Where do we want to be and what do we need to look like at a specific point in future? A country or a business can never flourish if it has no idea what it needs to accomplish by a certain point. Mostly, it is pragmatic political and business leaders who unleashes initiatives and problem solving systems that have gone to transform the world. If a leader has no vision, it means he/she has no sense of what path to take the nation to prosper. 4. Strategy-What do we need to do to get where we need to be? Where is Zambia now relative to where Zambia should be? How big is the gap from where we are to where we should be? What is hindering us from getting there? China is not in Zambia by accident. Its leaders knew decades ago to invest in Zambia to benefit China. This means that as long as Zambia continue to elect inept career politicians who agenda is to survive elections, Zambia will never stand a chance to prosper later on combat external global forces. In summary, politicians with power to frame stories control Zambia’s future. If we limit the potential of our country to prosper, to the story that is politically convenient during the elections, we in effect declaring that Zambia doesn’t have a bright future, and problem solving and innovation will never triumph as the nation’s future prevailing political and economic system. In 2016, we get the political and economic story right, we will get the institutions to act right. If we get the institutions to act right, we will bequeath our future right.