How to Create Weatlh: Blood, Sweat, and Tears for Zambians Living in Foreign Lands

It is not unusual to find a group of Zambians who describe Zambia in glowing terms. That is not to say you would have to go to the ends of the world to find those that are totally divorced from her. Divorce Zambia?

They may have reasons. It is not for anyone of us to judge. For when somebody has a stone in their shoe, only they would know it and they would walk funny as long as it remains there. That group is not my concern. I am interested in the team of Zambians living in foreign lands who have been dealt a hard punch many a times but have refused to stay down. This is the team whose trials and tribulations I am familiar with.

Many Zambians living in foreign lands work hard for their money. Whatever it its that they get to keep is rescued from the talons of competing uses. It takes immense self discipline to resist the temptation to splurge. More so when you see the locals spending like there is no tomorrow.

The difference between the locals and the Zambians is that the locals do not have a flimsy background in terms of wealth like most Zambians do. As though that is not enough, the Zambians have a lot of responsibilities, to their immediate families and the families they left behind. They have elderly parents to support, brothers to feed, nieces and nephews to put through school, in addition to their own wives and acculturated belligerent children, not to mention bills. It is good enough that they have the courage to remember Zambia because some of their compatriots don't. Not even the illness and subsequent death of their parents would move them to want to visit the land the where their umbilical cord is buried.

As one would imagine, these two groups are not differentiated by skin color, hair style, mascara, the cars they drive or the homes they live in. The difference, however, is the method by which they choose to end the cycle of poverty. By this I mean creating wealth.

Some of them may be rich by all standards but they are not wealthy. The distinction between wealth and riches can be understood by examining the definition of the two terms. Being rich, in my view, is having substantial disposable income that exceeds one's spending needs, while wealth is a collection of assets that yield to its owner a flow of income without requiring the owner's presence. This portfolio of assets is usually under the watchful eye of somebody who is not the owner. Meaning, the owner has found and enlisted the helping hand of an enthusiastic, willing and able trustworthy person. Let's call this the third dimension.

The third dimension usually comes in the form of a relative, a friend, a lawyer or simply an employee. It is this element that bleeds almost every Zambian living in foreign land who attempts to create wealth in Zambia. The people forming this dimension have this misconception that Zambians living in foreign lands have too much money so much so that after signing all the nifty agreements, they see an opportunity to spend foolishly the money they don't know how it was raised.

What the third dimension of Zambians doesn't realize is that the Zambian living in foreign lands, upon recognizing the great opportunities to multiply a penny, may have borrowed to augment their small savings - that which they rescued from the demands of their children and spouses. Now, no banks in foreign lands lend the kind of money brought into Zambia by these patriotic Zambians without collateral. So then, if they didn't put up their car and draw out equity in their home, it is credit cards to the rescue. Anyone who has bothered to find out even a little about life in foreign lands would know that credit card interests have no mercy. But the Zambian living in foreign land, who hails from a humble background, realizes that akamuti ukwete, eko bominako imbwa. They brave it!

This is the money that the third dimension spends like they were Rockefeller children. One would be hard-pressed to find an enterprising Zambian in foreign land without a long and winding war story. Given an opportunity they would want to share with you the depth of the cuts and how much blood they have lost, how much they have sweated and how many tracks of tears on their faces one can find as they attempt to break free from the chains of poverty.

Zambia, the place we call home, has become unnavigable terrain in a business sense. We have, over the years, tried to find people to work with to create a portfolio of assets that can generate a steady flow of income for the benefit of all involved. We have drawn contracts with siblings, lawyers and employees but we end up losing our investments. I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars are lost every year because the lawyer did not do his job, your sibling got stupid, your employee took you for a ride and yet at the end, everyone but you wants to get paid.

Some people have argued that the mistake we make is that we place so much money in the hands of people who don't have much to start with. They further suggest that in order for such an undertaking to work, you need to start by bringing them up the economic ladder first and then give them the responsibility. A few things are wrong with that line of thouhgt.

First, it is made by people who themselves have never been involved in any business undertaking at all, so they would be arguing from a blind spot. In America, they call them Monday Morning Quarterbacks!

Second, it is made by people who don't want to hear the full story. They are locked in their own misunderstanding and whatever it is you try to say does not add up.

Third, their suggestion is in fact one cause of failure. Raising one a couple of notches on an economic ladder solidifies the misconception that you have a fountain of cash in the back yard in foreign land and that when they waste it, you will easily replenish it.

Fourth, they think that when you share your experience with them, you are trashing innocent Zambians because you have grown big headed, because you are in or are from a foreign land.

I am mounting a defense for Zambians living in foreign lands because in all situations, it is only their chickens that die, their houses that get built, or their intended get sold to two other people, their certificate of title that take six years to secure, their trucks that get sold for pennies on the dollar, their residential plots that get squatted on by political cadres, their floor plans that get rejected, their inquiries that get responded to, their proposals that get sucked up by bureaucratic black holes, and the list goes on. The Zambia that foreigners go to and make money hand over fist is somehow impossible for Zambians living in foreign lands. One would be forced to ask: What is it that the foreigners know about doing business in Zambia that we Zambians don't? How come they experience immense success after sowing so little and we end up with blood, sweat and tears in similar undertakings?

I think I know the cause; it has several faces. First, the people we interact with don't have respect for themselves. They only begin to gain some when they get themselves associated with someone they feel is superior to them. And a foreigner, to most Zambians, no matter how ugly, is seen as a superior being. Second, most Zambians may not admit to this but they would not want to see another Zambia succeed. They suffer from the crab bucket syndrome. In an effort to get themselves out of poverty they have to pull someone else down even if it means ukucilika uko buleswa. Third, many Zambians are impatient; they seem not to have the time to let the goose grow into a layer so they can pick a golden egg every morning. They are not satisfied with an egg a day, so they reach into the goose to get all the eggs now and in doing so they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. In essence,they have a tendency to violate the law of the harvest. Fourth and most important; they refuse to learn to do business the business way. In other words, they get stuck in the comfort zone that ignorance provides. They take pride in being part owner but fail to embrace the spirit of work.

Zambians living in foreign lands on the other hand are stuck on the horns of dilemma; to find a good team of fellow Zambians on the ground who would put in as much work into the venture as if they were the owner, or quit their jobs and return to Zambia to try their prowess. This would create a gap in the financing equations - who would pay back the loans? They need fellow Zambians on the ground who would share in the vision and protect the assets from internal as well as external elements while the assets produce income for mutual benefit.

Foreign lands are replete with business models that be easily implemented when one has people one can work with without sacrificing the current source of income. Zambia's rate of unemployment can be reduced in no time if the third dimension did not unwittingly open the jugular, stub you in the back and put unnecessary financial burden on you.

So, we can conclude that a Zambian living in foreign land would do well to spend time to find constitute a group of reliable people to work with. It is better to miss an opportunity than to try and lose through ignorance, incompetence and spite.

Role of Government

Edited by Mwata Chisha

There is a set of good reasons why nations have government. Such reasons are as varied as the limitless needs and wants of nations. Imagining what one’s country would look like without a government conjures in one’s mind an image of a failed state. Human history is replete with examples of failed states. What has eluded many scholars is the point separates failed nations and those that have not. Researchers have created failed states indices. The interesting feature of indices is that they keep evolving, which makes tracking them a daunting task. Longitudinal studies that deal with changing combinations of variables requires that data be normalized to make between period comparisons possible. That leaves inquiring minds with one reasonable option; to find out if governments are performing according to expectations. If not, what are they doing instead.

It is important to understand why people opt to organize governments in the first place, it is important to go back in time to when societies began to notice their own inadequacies and therefore the need to have a small group of people to act as a governing body. How this body has taken shape in different societies is not the focus of this paper but whether the shapes they have taken has helped them perform according to expectations.

The Origin of the Concept of Government
For many thousands of centuries when people were hunter-gatherers and small scale farmers, humans lived in very small communities. The development of agriculture resulted in ever increasing population densities. David Christian explains how this helped result in states with laws and governments:

As farming populations gathered in denser and larger communities, interactions between different groups increased and the social pressure rose until, in a striking parallel with star formation, new structures suddenly appeared, together with a new level of complexity. Like stars, cities and states reorganize and energize the smaller objects within their gravitational field.

The exact moment and place that the erectional phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time. However, history does record the formations of very early governments. About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared. By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas: Sumer, Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization, and the Yellow River Civilization.

As in David Christian’s analogy of star formation, there must have been a force or forces that made it necessary for people to congregate and organize government. David Christian further suggests that:

States formed as the results of a positive feedback loop where population growth results in increased information exchange which results in innovation which results in increased resources which results in further population growth. The role of cities in the feedback loop is important. Cities became the primary conduits for the dramatic increases in information exchange that allowed for large and densely packed populations to form, and because cities concentrated knowledge, they also ended up concentrating power. "Increasing population density in farming regions provided the demographic and physical raw materials used to construct the first cities and states, and increasing congestion provided much of the motivation for creating states.

It is fair to have expected David Christian to be specific about the incentives people perceived to cede power and control to a small group of people called government. Thomas Hobbes began to fill in for him with a somewhat specific reason when he stated:

...the fundamental purpose of government is the maintenance of basic security and public order...people were rational animals and thus saw submission to a government dominated by a sovereign as preferable to anarchy...people in a community create and submit to government for the purpose of establishing for themselves, safety and public order.

Hobbes, seems to be suggesting that safety and public order in the absence of a government would be difficult to maintain. What this means is that individuals in society are unable to maintain order and safety by themselves. Stated differently, there is a set of services that people cannot provide to themselves and public order and safety are among them.

In view of the foregoing, it is within reason to conclude that societies chose to form government to do for them what individuals could not do for themselves. On that basis, one would expect to see identical forms of government in every society. But that was not what happened. There were as many forms of government as there were societies. The known forms include:

• Anarchism - a political philosophy which considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful, or otherwise undesirable, and favors instead a stateless society
• Authoritarian – Authoritarian governments are characterized by an emphasis on the authority of the state in a republic or union. It is a political system controlled by nonelected rulers who usually permit some degree of individual freedom.
• Communism - Communism is a sociopolitical structure that aims for a classless and stateless society with the communal ownership of property.
• Constitutional monarchy – A government that has a monarch, but one whose powers are limited by law or by a formal constitution. Example: United Kingdom
• Constitutional republic – A government whose powers are limited by law or a formal constitution, and which is chosen by a vote amongst at least some sections of the populace (Ancient Sparta was in its own terms a republic, though most inhabitants were disenfranchised; The early United States was a republic, but the large numbers of slaves did not have the vote). Republics which exclude sections of the populace from participation will typically claim to represent all citizens (by defining people without the vote as "non-citizens").
• Democracy – Rule by a government (usually a Constitutional Republic or Constitutional Monarchy) chosen by election where most of the populace are enfranchised. The key distinction between a democracy and other forms of constitutional government is usually taken to be that the right to vote is not limited by a person's wealth or race (the main qualification for enfranchisement is usually having reached a certain age). A Democratic government is therefore one supported (at least at the time of the election) by a majority of the populace (provided the election was held fairly). A "majority" may be defined in different ways. There are many "power-sharing" (usually in countries where people mainly identify themselves by race or religion) or "electoral-college" or "constituency" systems where the government is not chosen by a simple one-vote-per-person headcount.
• Dictatorship – Rule by an individual who has full power over the country. The term may refer to a system where the Dictator came to power, and holds it, purely by force - but it also includes systems where the Dictator first came to power legitimately but then was able to amend the constitution so as to, in effect, gather all power for themselves. See also Autocracy and Stratocracy.
• Monarchy – Rule by an individual who has inherited the role and expects to bequeath it to their heir.
• Oligarchy – Rule by a small group of people who share similar interests or family relations.
• Plutocracy – A government composed of the wealthy class. Any of the forms of government listed here can be plutocracy. For instance, if all of the voted representatives in a republic are wealthy, then it is a republic and a plutocracy.
• Theocracy – Rule by a religious elite.
• Totalitarian – Totalitarian governments regulate nearly every aspect of public and private life.
• Legalism - A legalistic government enforces the law with rewards to those who obey the laws and harsh punishments to people who go against the law.
Some of the types seem more favorable than others. Yet, they are all formed by people from human societies. As reasonable and rational individuals, we would expect the favorable type of government to live up to its expectations; do for individual people in society that which they would be unable to do for themselves. But do they?

The heads of government are human beings, and given the human nature, what constitutes good governance has been a subject written about since the earliest known books. In the western tradition Plato wrote extensively on the question, most notably in The Republic. He (in the voice of Socrates) asked if the purpose of government was to help one's friends and hurt one's enemies, for example. Aristotle, Plato's student picked up the subject in his treatise on Politics. Many centuries later, John Locke addressed the question of abuse of power by writing on the importance of checks and balances to prevent or at least constrain abuse. It is believed that Thomas Jefferson was influenced by John Locke.

Most of the greatest atrocities committed against humans were planned and executed by or under the auspices of government. The most common ones include:

War
In the most basic sense, people of one nation will see the government of another nation as the enemy when the two nations are at war. For example, the people of Carthage saw the Roman government as the enemy during the Punic wars.

Enslavement
In early human history, the outcome of war for the vanquished was often enslavement. The enslaved people would not find it easy to see the conquering government as a friend. However, this is not true in every case.

Religious opposition
People with religious views opposed to the official state religion will have a greater tendency to view that government as their enemy. An example would be the condition of Roman Catholicism in England before the Catholic Emancipation. Protestants—who were politically dominant in England—used political, economic and social means to reduce the size and strength of Catholicism in England over the 16th to 18th centuries, and as a result, Catholics in England felt that their religion was being oppressed. North Korea provides a good contemporary example.

Class oppression
Whereas capitalists in a capitalist country may tend to see that nation's government positively, a class-conscious group of industrial workers—a proletariat—may see things very differently. If the proletariat wishes to take control of the nation's productive resources, and they are blocked in their endeavors by continuing adjustments in the law made by capitalists in the government, then the proletariat will come to see the government as their enemy—especially if the conflicts become violent.

The same situation can occur among peasants. The peasants in a country, e.g. Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great, may revolt against their landlords, only to find that their revolution is put down by government.

These are some of the things individuals in society would like to be protected from by the sophisticated thinking of those in government. Apparently individuals lack the wherewithal to maintain safety and order. Such maintenance of safety and public order should then require society to subscribe to certain values in order for it to produce a group of people who would do for the masses what individual members of society cannot do for themselves.

Common Thread
It is becoming increasingly apparent that people in government have forgotten why nations have adopted the concept government. Before they become part of the governing group, they speak forcefully about the issues that irk the masses. However, shortly after they occupy office, that voice of reason loses energy. It begins to sound like that of those that came before them; peddling empty promises during campaign rallies yet maintaining the status quo once re-elected. One cannot help but wonder what happens between the time speeches are delivered and when winners are handed keys to the office. It seems the planks begin to fall off the campaign platform in rapid succession. It seems also that people have become used to being lied to; they re-elect the same liars over and over. People who promised to solve their most pressing problems but did not deliver. These people are busy promoting the same ills that they are meant to protect the masses from. War, enslavement, religious opposition, class oppression, tribalism, racism, etc., are but a few avenues through which the government keep people veiled while they take for themselves.

Personally, I would not blame the government. Instead, I blame the people. I blame the public. I hip all blame on society. People in society are responsible for the ills they experience. By adopting the concept of government with a loose method of managing it, it has created a self-sustaining self-serving group of people called the government. Government is now perceived as the means to enrich oneself and in doing so, one shields those with whom one has joined hands to fleece the nation. This is not a western phenomenon neither is it eastern. Simply put, it is a human weakness that has rendered government a liability to nations. That being the case, the idea of government needs rethinking.