Chishala Kateka for President: her economic concept

Female presidential candidate pledges to marry Zambia’s wealth to its people

Chishala Kateka

VICTOR KALALANDA, Lusaka June 9, 2021

From the clarity in the way she articulates her ideas to the way she dresses, corporate but elaborately African, she lives up to what one would imagine as the most ambitious woman in Zambia today. And arguably that’s what she is.

And when one visits her party’s secretariat in Lusaka’s Woodlands area, the apparent sense of order, seen from the types of refreshments visitors are served to the tilt in the posture of her aides when they walk in on her, it is easy tell that the woman around exudes tact and commands authority.

Such are the makings of the New Heritage Party leader, Chishala Kateka, who—after an illustrious career as a business leader, economist, accountant and bank executive—has morphed into a fervent politician, throwing down the gauntlet to an all-male pack of 15 other presidential candidates this August.

In her political orientation, as she touts what she refers to as the “Zambian Agenda,” her message for the country is loosely reminiscent of the America First policy promoted by former US President Donald J. Trump.

According to her party’s manifesto, the Zambian Agenda is about putting Zambia first by “introducing programmes that deliberately favour Zambians whilst not disadvantaging foreign investment, [and] getting the country back to work by raising the capacity of Zambians to become productive.”

”We haven’t come to do politics, so to speak,” she says. “We have coined that phrase, Zambian Agenda, so that people understand that what really matters is not the party you belong to or the president that you’re supporting, but what matters is the progress of the country towards becoming what God has called us to be or to become, as a people, as a nation, as an economy and in every way that is possible.”

To put her point into perspective, she adds that “most parties at the moment are talking about development. Now, development in and of itself is not really what the Zambian people need. Yes, we may want it but it’s not what we need per se . . . in 1964 what we needed was independence, in 1991 what we needed was democracy. [But] there is something that we need that is lacking in Zambia and that is ‘heritage’. Heritage is what God has left the Zambian people, the wealth that God has left the Zambian people. When you look at Zambia, we’ve never had a leadership that takes the wealth of this country and the people of this country and puts them together . . . . So we’re saying the time has come for Zambians to start partaking of their heritage.”

Though couched in different terms with implied indifference to the unprecedented infrastructure development rolled out all over the country by the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) government, MS Kateka’s message is not entirely new because what she seems to re-echo is that she wants to see a notable nexus between economic development and poverty reduction at personal and household levels in Zambia.

She seems to put forward an argument central to the complex and unending debate about the true measure of national development and human happiness—whether it is infrastructure or people’s incomes—and she strongly feels her party has the answers.

But the PF media director himself, Antonio Mwanza, takes a swipe at Kateka’s stance on development: “What’s the mismatch here is not the issue of the infrastructure and the economy. What’s a mismatch here is her knowledge of the role infrastructure plays in economic development and the office that she’s seeking to become a leader of . . . . There’s no economic development that can take place in the absence of infrastructure development.”

Her ringing words about God, heritage and wealth tend to say a lot about her own background and life experiences as an accomplished 64-year-old woman who through the years had put her skills at the service of the Zambian government and institutions like Deloitte, the Bank of Botswana, Kafue Textiles, Barclays/ABSA and Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, to mention but a few.

A devout Christian, who can sometimes be heard speaking in tongues almost playfully as she interfaces with party officials at the party secretariat, Ms Kateka joined what she has since transformed into the New Heritage Party as a founding member under the leadership of Brigadier General Godfrey Miyanda, who she had always voted for since 2001 and who unsuccessfully run for president four times.

Besides, this is how this woman, the fourth one to lead a political party in Zambia, has reformed the meaning of Gen Miyanda’s Village Concept: “When the Heritage Party was first formed, [Miyanda’s] vision was based on the Village Concept and we’ve decided not to go the route of the Village Concept because a lot of people were confused by it and a lot of people were using it to de-campaign the Heritage Party because they were saying, ‘Oh, he is saying go back to the land,’ which was not the case.  What he was saying is that, let us use the principles of the way we were brought up, the way we led life before, but we didn’t want to get into that space where people are saying, oh, yeah, they’re back with the Village Concept . . . [But Zambians] need to walk in their heritage, so that is now our message.”

Accordingly, the reimagined party logo says “our land, our prosperity,” and it shows a healthy maize crop growing against the background of bright sunlight. It conjures up the image of a happy existence which declares that Zambia should be owned by Zambians, and the people ought to be the principal beneficiaries of all that the land has to offer in terms of agriculture and mineral resources.

Briefly, her party’s manifesto seeks to tackle the economic balance of power by tilting it towards Zambians, helping Zambians to recover the sense of self-worth and dignity¸ promote a new breed of leadership, address the debt overhang and high taxes and cost of living in the face of COVID-19, and root out corruption and abuse of power.

Though born of itinerant middle class parents, the 1979 University of Zambia economics graduate and chartered accountant is a populism firebrand passionate about the man or woman on the street

“As I became a Christian,” says the author of the book Let Us Pray for Zambia, “I became more interested in people and that’s how I developed my passion . . . to see their well-being, to see what their potential should be and realise that we’re very far from our potential, so that’s the one thing that has informed my worldview, it is my Christianity.”

Her passion for people is probably unquestionable since her many years of professional service within and at the head of some callous capitalist institutions must have given her insights into the frustrations of the working class and the families that depend on them.

When asked about whether the notion of politics being a dirty game intimidates her as a woman, she shrugs off the perception with laugher and says, “They know the type of female that they exploit, you know,” adding that Zambian women so far are receptive to her campaigns.

“The women are very supportive,” Ms Kateka says. “They’re saying they’re tired of being lied to by the men, so they want to try a woman.”

And a female voter, Loretta Ching’andu, says of Ms Kateka’s candidature: “It’s a good move. This should be the trend. It’s an inspiration to see women take up such a challenge. And the space we cry for in decision making as females will never be fulfilled if we don’t support our fellow women.”

As a woman who all her life has operated in male dominated fields like the financial sector, she feels the best way to make it in Zambia’s deeply patriarchal political system is by being knowledgeable and professional, an approach which, to her, wins one respect.

In this particular election, she relies on funding from within and outside her party, though she hesitates to disclose just how much money has been set aside for her party’s campaigns.

Though her party has fielded relatively few candidates at councillor and parliamentary levels and may not have as many branches as other competitors, she is bent on winning the presidency in August this year.

And if she doesn’t, what she says is that her party would be going through a normal curve and would hope to reach the highest point of its distribution soon.