By Nkandu Mwenge
As we edge towards the first 100 days of Michael Sata’s reign as president, I can’t help but notice how rigorously his government is fighting corruption. But in all this there is one impending decision that has many people feeling nervous, the possible reversal of the sale of Zamtel.
Many analysts saw the reversal of the sale of Finance Bank by the Zambian government as a highlight of the political hazards of investing in an African country, particularly after a change of government. Faizal Moolla, a banking analyst at Avior, commenting on the reversal of the sale of Finance Bank in the South African publication Business Day said, “This is the risk of doing business in Africa and if certain political parties are not happy there is the chance they can reverse a deal.”
The likely reversal of the alleged corrupt sale of Zamtel will, if you believe the analysts, scare off Foreign Private Investors. But not reversing the sale could have far-reaching consequences. According to the Bank of Zambia (BoZ) 2010 report on Foreign Private Investment and Investor perception in Zambia, corruption, bureaucracy, electricity supply efficiency and cost continued to affect foreign private investor decisions. This report shows that there is a correlation between Corruption and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and that graft is a tax on the Zambian economy. So reversing the sale of Zamtel will send a strong message to corrupt individuals and organisation, improve investor perception of Zambia and reduce the massive inefficiency that takes place when corruption is rife.
I do understand what Mr. Moolla and many other people are afraid of but as a cold-hearted conservative I was angered by the previous government’s frustratingly lackadaisical fight against corruption. And I feel a short-term fall in Foreign Private Investment is a price Zambians should be willing to pay to get rid of corruption.
Ba mangeni bonse ba mambala.
The main reasons for reversing the sale of ZAMTEL is that this company is the single most important glue that holds the nation together in terms of service delivery efforts and tasks. How do we ensure that our schools, colleges, and universities can have affordable links to the outside world if all the systems are owned by foreign entities whose presence in Zambia is to make profit, while ZAMTEL is to enable development? How do our medical specialists communicate disease images to their counterparts if links are via foreign entities whose charges are controlled by foreigners?
Lest we forget, in times of war, how could we defend ourselves if our links are controlled by the foreign entities whose ownership could be in enemy hands? ZAMTEL should have never been sold. How do we ensure that
Banda and fellow thieves made on this sale. If foreign investors are going to be scared off, they shouldn’t do dodgy deals in the first instance. Sata is cleaning up MMD’s mess.
microwave links used in air traffic control tasks are kept to the best functional levels to ensure effective communications with aviators on our enroute traffic routes if these facilities are managed by a foreign firm? How can we expect foreign firms to operate our communications needs to a lever that beats their own home nations if doing so makes our nation a winner?
How do we ensure that our military communications are secure when their communications are done and controlled by foreign owned firms? How can we be said to be independent when our national communications systems – radio, tv, telephone, medical, educational, etc are managed by foreign firms? What independence is there when we have reduced ourselves to cheap cash-cows for foreign communications companies? RB was crazy!!
You mean we need to wholly accept that Kangaroo court’s findings? Whether the commission was right or not, the composition and purported aim made the conclusion very suspect and forgone. There will be those who will always feel that the commissioners had to do the necessary, rendering the whole exercise with question marks. The best is to leave it as is, with some re-negotiations for the true value and attendant remedial action, and take the ‘culprits’ to the courts of law for the trial.
Many analysts saw the reversal of the sale of Finance Bank by the Zambian government as a highlight of the political hazards of investing in an African country, particularly after a change of government. Faizal Moolla, a banking analyst at Avior, commenting on the reversal of the sale of Finance Bank in the South African publication Business Day said, “This is the risk of doing business in Africa and if certain political parties are not happy there is the chance they can reverse a deal.”
THIS IS WISHFUL THINKING. FIRST RAND NATIONAL BANK IN SOUTH AFRICA SAID THEY WILL CONTINUE TO GROW ORGANICALLY EVEN AFTER FINANCE BANK SALE WAS REVERSED. NOMBA IMWE MWE MA ZAMBIANS, WHERE DO YOU GET THIS NARROW EDUCATION TO MISANALYSE ISSUES LIKE THE ABOVE QUOTE. MWALILWALA.
Where will our kids get jobs in telecommunications if there is no Zambian telephone company that is ours? If ZAMTEL’s problems were to do with operational efficiency, we should have fired all the its managers and recruit new ones from the whole world. If the problem was financial, we should have been presented with a good business proposal and as citizens, I would not mind putting an extra Kwacha for a better ZAMTEL. After all, we have been made to sponsor ZNBC by the same MMD who saw to it that ZAMTEL was sold off for financial problems. We should have put money into ZAMTEL instead because we do make forex in telecoms while ZNBC is only used to insult the opposition!! RB should be jailed, and AZAMTEL brought back to Zambia as ours!!
BTC makes money, so does TELKOM. All these are the siblings of ZAMTEL. All we need to do is do a better business model for ZAMTEL and ensure that we put in place the best managers that Zambia has got from anywhere on earth. We must not treat ZAMTEL as a beerhall!!
Both the buyers (i.e. gadaffi’s soverieng wealth fund) and the sellers (i.e. Dor, henry band, MMD govt) are all dodgy!!! Let Zamtel sale be reversed and sold in a transparent manner.
There is no need to sell ZAMTEL when our needs in the use of telecommunications is still in its infancy. We need ZAMTEL to grow services in public sector services delivery. How do we set up network computers for those that must enter their CVs in employment centres for jobs being advertised in several locations? What we needed for this is the Labour minister to set up networked computers with all employers and his offices spread natiowide so that all unemployed youth could see all vacancies and apply when they have qualified.
Zamtel was very behind in telecomms. It never moved with the world as it operated as a parastal with no profit motive. That business model is for the KK era, mediocre and led to a failed state(zambia). We can not go back there. Workers need to be rewarded for the value they bring to a company and not sitting, chatting and just putting a jacket on a chair.
Awe kwena pa Zed ubu fontini bwali fulisha , how on earch can you sell your central intelligence unit ( the main telecommunications compnay to foreign investors).
selling ZAMTEL was ok,ichankalipa fye ni chinyohh chakwe dora na musata nyina henry banda uku gavula amahafu nokushita amayanda mu randburg joburg whilst here the majority are wallowing in poverty
Honestly how can Band and his colleagues sell ZAMTEL? Dora she’s a very useless person, cause she doesn’t no how to make decision and she was not even capable of holding a ministerial position. Honestly to God, how can someone sell Mwembeshi satellite which holds all the information about this country of ours? That was totally joking to the plunders of the previous government.
#10 Dziko Langa; get your facts right, BTC and TELKOM are private companies (privatised) just like ZAMTEL, affordable links? ZAMTEL charges are more or less the same as other private service providers (development of the telecommunications sector? that is ZICTAs and GRZ mandate and not one company alone, Military use of communications? any country that is serious about security would ensure that the security services have their own tecnology (thats why the internet was invented) and not depend completly on Airtel or MTN. If coruption can be proved in the ZAMTEL sale (i.e. through the courts of law and not COI/Cabinet meeting) then justice must prevail. However, privatisation was probably the best option for ZAMTEL looking at its history and how it has been turned arround today
Zed man, I like your reasoning. It’s not a question of being emotional or what, but a question of accepting defeat and map a GOOD way foward. Let us accept the inefficiency that are and were in our parastatals let alone the stupidity of our technocrats and politians entrusted with the sale of Zamtel. Ther was complete incompetence in the running of Zamtel that made it not perform. There was also an element of greediness of the side of Rupiah family and relatives and so to pile the blame on Lap Green is not fair. Firstly let us punish Banda and Co to serve as a warning and then rengotiate with Lap Green for both sides’ benefit. It was our fault as a govt and our reps must get the blame( jailed) and come up with clear policies for the future leaders.
Selling Zamtel is like having all communications with the wife and family going through a third party. The concern is not just business but also national security. It is very stupid to have your main communications system in foreign hands. The issue can not be non-profitability either, because if it were so, how come the so-called foreign investors even wish to buy these things in the first place.. I see Zambians doing very good work in other countries, as well as in Zambia itself, also in the private sector,so one cannot say we are not capable of running these institutions profitably. The problem could be the issue of incentives. A competitive enterprise must have competitive staff to maximise its competitive capacity.
An enterprise with good brains and a sound business philosophy and work ethic will definitely make profit and therefore afford to pay the workers contributing to its success competitive incentives like elsewhere in the same field, which in turns leads to workers being motivated to work harder voluntarily and gladly, knowing there is a reward. I’d say we keep these institutions like Zamtel and Zanaco under government ownership, but we leave the running to professionals with no political interference in the day to day runnings.
That is what is needed. Not tit for tat
We need action not just talks. When are they going to be jailed.
Correct. there is a price to be paid for fighting corruption. In the short term it is costly but in the long term, it pays. Investors conduct research on political/ economic/ corruption aspects before investing in any country and organisation and therefore LAP Green knew very well that the Zamtel offer was very dubiously given to them. Moreover all opposition parties warned them of reversing the sale once in power but they opted to work with a few MMD elite against the masses. My fear is that prosecutions will only be for those that are political threats and nothing more. You can see that the government is already growing cold feet over the Katele Kalumba case- birds of the same feathers. Actually only expect some prosecutions towards the end of Satas first term to justify a second term.
Mu Zambia I don’t really know what some of you chaps want. What is there to reason if so called investor comes in the country dubiously acquires an asset and you start arguing whether or not to reposses it. This applies to ZANACO. In europe people there still hunt for Nazis and have been claiming compensation. HE MCS GRZ is free to query anything and time as to when such an incident happened does not matter. No one restrained LPM or) to investigate anything so leave MCS alone
Such nonsense would never happen in countries like South Africa, Botswana and other progressive states. Public assets and resources are placed in good management hands instead of individuals whose main achievement in life is being born related to some ruling class thugs and being appointed to head some parastatal. We must employ only the best that our hard earned money can buy so that these guys can ensure that our companies are working to meet their strategic goals for Zambia. Zamtel’s weaknesses were tied to the ruling class which only valued money in their personal bank accounts. These thugs were happy to link up with foreign buyers in order to share the spoils from the sale. In addition, these leaders were working hard to weaken the same parastatals so that all citizens become
misguided into thinking that privatisation would cure the company’s problems when the reality was that the leaders had worked to undermine the company. The scenario where the GRZ never paid its bills to parastatals should have been taken to courts so that citizens learn how cunning their leaders were in their efforts to weaken public enterprises so that their foreign friends would be able to buy a well established firm for peanuts!
Reversing ZAMTEL’s sale is right and proper if the PF are a serious party for a better Zambia.
Isnt it ironic that you chaps shunned the Zamtel services and yet criticised its inevitable sale. Typical of Zambians! if Govt had continued to debate zamtel with you chaps, we would have been just talking and talking by now. Thanks to the privatisation you can seee the improvements and people are steadily subscribing to zamtel. I am sure as people who argue without facts you didnt know the at the time Zain registered the 3,000,000th subscriber, cell Z had about 150,000 subscribers.
You must be a typical critic! The reason was plain simple! This idea of not having policies in place to run the country was what we wanted ridden of. It was one way of telling our leaders that let us get competent people to run our organisations, not friends and relatives. Zamtel had workers but the mangement was not there. Just look the way lap green has amassed customers. We wanted them to appreciate professionalism, not politics.
Hi, I think your website might be having browser compatibility issues. When I look at your blog in Chrome, it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up! Other then that, excellent blog!
My brother recommended I would possibly like this web site. He used to be entirely right. This publish truly made my day. You can not consider simply how so much time I had spent for this info! Thanks!
I like the valuable information you provide in your articles. I’ll bookmark your weblog and check again here frequently. I am quite sure I’ll learn a lot of new stuff right here! Best of luck for the next!|
Greetings! Very helpful advice in this particular post! It is the little changes that will make the most important changes.
Thanks for sharing!
my homepage :: samsung phablet reviews (Verena)