ZAMBIA NEEDS TO BORROW THE BAFOKENG MODEL OF INVESTMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

By Gershom Ndhlovu 

After problems at the Chinese-owned Collum Coal Mine in Sinazongwe in Zambia’s Southern Province in which one of the Chinese supervisors died at the hands of the striking workers who were demanding a minimum wage which had recently been announced by government, internet-based Crossfire BlogTalk Radio invited the area chief, Sinazongwe, to discuss the issue. In the course of the show, the chief was asked if he sat on the board of directors of the mine, the question to which he, unfortunately, said no. I realised then the reason why there were problems at the mine and by extension, why there were, if not problems, at least lack of development in most of the rural areas with huge investment infrastructure. I also realised the reason why the rural parts of the Copperbelt such as Mwelushi, Mukutuma and such places from which some of the world’s best emeralds are extracted are poor and are only left with gaping holes of the pits from which the precious stones are dug out like ugly scars of violent injuries. There are other areas where only a few people have benefitted while the majority have remained impoverished. After Chief Sinazongwe’s interview on the show, my mind raced to the model that Royal Bafokeng Kingdom of north-western South Africa has employed to harness the platinum resources that are abundant in the area. The king holds the resources in trust on behalf of the Bafokeng people and the developments that come out of the profits are there for all to see. In fact, Rustenburg, one of the towns is home to one of the stadia that hosted the word cup 2010. According to the Royal Bafokeng Holdings (Pty) Limited website, RBH is responsible for the management and development of the commercial assets of the Royal Bafokeng Nation (RBN), with the overall business objective of maximising returns to enable the RBN to deliver sustainable benefits to the community. Chief Sinazongwe himself lamented that chiefs, or at least he himself, was not paid any royalties by Collum Coal Mine and other companies operating in his area. Talking about empowerment, this is where the Zambian government needs to work out good policies that will not only benefit citizens through partnering with foreign investors, but enabling chiefs and there representatives to sit on boards of these companies and contributing money to trusts that would spearhead development in those areas. In 2010, Lumwana Mining Company (LMC) in the North-Western Province projected to spend up to K1.2 billion on community projects that included building classrooms and adding maternity wards to health centres that had not had adequate facilities for decades. “This year we are looking at a total of 19 projects in local communities aimed at uplifting the lives of the people here,” Sustainability Manager Brenda Liswaniso was quoted as saying in the company’s publication, Lumwana News. Not to put LMC’s corporate social responsibility into question, the issue as stated from the outset, is the inclusion of traditional leaders on boards of directors if only they can play the role of conveyor belt in terms of sharing profits from the companies operating in their chiefdoms to development projects for the benefit of all subjects and even job and entrepreneurial creation. Similarly, all investors should not only incorporate CSR like LMC but they sould go a step further and incorporate the Royal Bafokeng model which the Zambian government should take time to study and implement it especially in areas where new investment is taking place. It is a well-known fact that Zambia has a lot of natural resources in most parts of the country from which all citizens ought to benefit not just through minimum-wage paying jobs but through infrastructure and entrepreneurial development.

WHY WE NEED "BAREFOOT JOURNALISTS"

FOR years, Africa’s dire situations especially hunger, has been defined by what has been reported by western media. Where the media has not gone, those situations have remained unreported. Africans who have found themselves in situations that needed reporting have always asked, and I know this from my career as a journalist, “when are you sending a reporter here to write a story about our need for relief food—or about the lack of water?” Sometimes I picked it up from there—or as was usually the case due to circumstances beyond my control—never pursued the story. Most poignant of the stories I picked up in this way was during my visit to a village near Chirundu in south eastern Zambia in the early 2000s when a headmen told of how hunger had ravaged his village and one person resorted to eating mud if only to kill her hunger pangs. People have hungered for journalists to report stories of child marriages in their areas and people have hungered to tell stories of how relief food, yes the much needed relief food, has been abused by officials in charge and even how a group of villagers were experimenting with food storage. In the absence of reporters or even the absence of interest by the reporters, these stories have not been told. After attending the fifth Global Voices Online 2012 summit in Nairobi both as a blogger and contributing author and hearing great stories of how citizens out of sheer determination, are harnessing new media technologies in other parts of the world, I realised that people in most African villages, and certainly Zambian ones, can tell their own stories sans reporters, but through blogging. The notion obviously is that you can only blog in English or even French or Portuguese, but, nay. You can blog in your own language, be it Tumbuka, Lunda, Lozi, Bemba, Lamba and, indeed, any language for Zambia. Be assured that there are a lot other people online who understand your language with some of them even willing to translate them.

Africans, Zambians especially, in areas where they do not see journalists with their pens and cameras, need to start blogging as a way of telling their own stories. The impact of these stories will go beyond the MP or minister for whom a hunger story will become news because he has visited an area, or an NGO that has paid for a reporter to accompany it to cover a child marriage story.

Africans, Zambians especially, in areas where they do not see journalists with their pens and cameras, need to start blogging as a way of telling their own stories. The impact of these stories will go beyond the MP or minister for whom a hunger story will become news because he has visited an area, or an NGO that has paid for a reporter to accompany it to cover a child marriage story. Obviously, accessibility to not only computers but the internet as well, is challenging but these days things are better than they used to be particularly with the phenomenal growth in the usage of mobile technology such as smart phones and internet dongles. Enlightened community leaders in these villages can take the lead by being the “barefoot reporters” telling the stories which have the soul of the people rather than stories that are only written for the number of people who have died or have suffered catastrophe as a result of their circumstances. If anything, the stories told by the victims themselves would even prevent such catastrophes if the authors recognise a problem that may exacerbate in the future—a bridge with missing bolts and nuts, lack of fertiliser in an area and so on and so forth. Who knows, these stories would even start questioning some decisions imposed on them by outsiders.