By MUBANGA LUCHEMBE
SPEAKING during a joint press briefing with Home affairs and Internal Security Minister Jack Mwiimbu, Defence Minister Ambrose Lufuma announced the government’s cross-cutting measures to curb the smuggling of mealie-meal and maize.
He said among the measures that Government had put in place was the heightened security and patrols on the Copperbelt and the Northern circuit.
Mr. Lufuma fadded that anti-smuggling teams have been formed in the affected districts. He had since directed the Zambia National Service and Zambia Correctional Services to deliver more mealie-meal to the affected areas to stabilise prices.
He disclosed that the government would carry out an audit exercise to ascertain the maize stock in the country.
Mr. Mwiimbu on his part added that the government would not allow the export of maize or mealie-meal due to the deficit being experienced.
Not only that, Finance and National Planning Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane also signed a statutory instrument to provide for suspension of duty on mealie-meal imports.
In response to the mealie-meal shortage, President Hakainde Hichilema convened multiple consultative meetings with both government and private sector officials at a high level.
Dealing with the unknown is always precarious. Accordingly, the Zambia Air Force (ZAF) was reportedly planning to use aerial surveillance to track individuals who were smuggling mealie-meal into neighbouring countries.
Apparently, ZAF officers were aware that smugglers had found other routes away from the established border posts to smuggle mealie-meal.
By the look of things, soon the war against smuggling of mealie-meal and maize will be ending. As a senior citizen, I have lived through a lot of our country’s political history and I find myself living through events that closely align with what I had experienced in the past.
I vividly remember, when rioters rampaged through Lusaka in 1990 to protest against government-ordered increases in mealie-meal prices, one of the first targets of their rage was a little brick-house located in Chilenje.
Dozens of rioters stormed it, prying open a steel-fence, shattering windows and dishes and setting furniture and cars ablaze. The building was not a grocery or departmental store prime for looting as was witnessed elsewhere countrywide, but the former pre-independence home of President Kenneth Kaunda.
A national monument, it was where the nation’s first president, helped lead the struggle for Zambian independence from Britain in 1964.
Twenty-six years later, the smouldering ruins at 34 Burma Road testified to the sharp conflict and discontent many Zambians felt over the leadership of a man fondly known as “KK” and considered one of the founding fathers of modern Africa.
Those were some of the darkest and most trying days in KK’s long political life, whose decision to more than double prices of mealie-meal and other consumer commodities in an effort to restructure Zambia’s woeful economy led to riots in which at least 23 people died.
The crisis inspired an army lieutenant to take over then-Radio Zambia for several hours and announce – inaccurately – that KK had been overthrown. Whilst the coup-attempt was easily crushed by then-Zambian security forces, it triggered a stunning response in the streets. Upon hearing that the military had overthrown KK, hundreds of people marched downtown and cheered.
In the 1991 general elections that followed the food riots, President Frederick Chiluba of the MMD was ushered into office when we all tasted the yellow maize which was imported from America in the aftermath of regime-change and period of severe drought.
In 2002, the then-MMD government allowed millers to import maize and mealie-meal duty-free to ensure sufficient supplies at affordable prices.
The Ministry of Finance was requested to facilitate the inclusion of non-members of the Millers Association of Zambia (MAZ) to bring in maize and mealie-meal.
The millers were asked to bring in 300, 000 metric tonnes of maize to meet the shortfall the country was facing but they did not meet the target.
Timing is everything. Back in 2005, the then-Zambian government extended its commercial maize import programme by three months in a bid to ensure adequate tonnages to feed 1.7 million food insecure people.
MAZ welcomed the extension of the import programme, originally scheduled to end on December 31, because it would allow millers enough time to bring in much needed stocks.
According to then Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) officials, of the 200, 000 metric tonnes of duty-free maize that the then government had allowed millers to import from then Africa’s largest maize grower, South Africa, only about 7, 000 metric tonnes had been trucked-in by December 6, leaving a shortfall of about 193, 000 metric tonnes.
ZNFU officials attributed the delay to government’s “red tape,” logistical problems and the fact that other countries faced with shortages, such as Zimbabwe and Malawi, had placed orders for maize long before Zambia admitted it had a food problem.
The then President Levy Mwanawasa declared a national food crisis on November 21 and appealed for international assistance.
A 15 percent duty on imported maize was also scrapped to encourage commercial imports. Hoping to speed up the importation process, the then-government removed a requirement that imported maize be tested for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on December 13, and asked the Zambia Revenue Authority at border posts to give clearance priority to trucks carrying maize.
Although the food crisis had hit rural southern Zambia hard, it had remained unnoticeable in the capital, Lusaka, where fast-food shops were packed with diners and supermarkets were buzzing with big-spending Christmas shoppers. The announcement of commercial imports occurred less than a year before the 2006 Election Day. I am sure historians would agree that if this announcement was not actualised prior to the Election Day, it would have not given the then-incumbent President the momentum needed for a significant difference in his re-election.
The media writes the news and eventually writes the historical accounts, and they know how to produce their desired results. History is the darnedest thing. Live long enough and you get to see everything, sometimes repeating itself several times.
