Why a new president really matters

• Can we link personal success to the new dawn government?

"The presidency is the most powerful office in the Free World. Through its leadership can come a more vital life for our people. In it are centred the hopes of the globe around us for freedom and a more secure life." - John F. Kennedy, January 1960

Can a new president like Hichilema help improve chances of personal success for the majority of Zambians? Picture by UPND Media Team

FROM RIGHT: President Hakainde Hichilema, Minister of Youth and Sport Elvis Nkandu and Vice President Mutale Nalumango - Picture by Zambia Daily Mail

By VICTOR KALALANDA, Illinois, USA, Friday, September 10, 2021*

I write this article hunched over a computer in what is called the Student Success Centre at my university, in the United States of America, where I took up postgraduate studies two weeks ago.

Zambia’s new president, Hakainde Hichilema (HH), was announced winner of the last presidential polls moments after my arrival in the United States and while, with the onset of jet lag, I was warming towards a good night’s sleep.

As you might predict, my interest in the news was instant, so I couldn’t go to sleep under such historic circumstances—historic because at once I could identify with President Hichilema’s underdog background, which turned glorious after he won the election with a striking landslide at his sixth attempt.

Of course, being abroad, my principal interest at the time was to know what Zambians were saying about our new leader.

And understandably the major talking point in the country has been the economy and whether President Hichilema has the mettle necessary to make living conditions bearable for the majority of Zambians.

Let me state that this isn’t an economics treatise.

But I have been disappointed by a number of Zambians who argue that so long as you are not hard working, the new government still will not translate into any meaningful change for you.

Popular sentiment in some quarters is that, as far as success of individual citizens is concerned, presidents don’t matter altogether. It’s all about personal grit and determination. It’s all about self, an argument that seems to suggest that success is an inherent thing—either you have it or you don’t.

People might say something like:

“I don’t care. I’ve always worked hard, for me, and I don’t care who’s in power.”

But that is not entirely true.

And to me such a perspective defies logic and what one would expect when many things are considered.

It brings me to the point of this write-up.

Can a new president like Hichilema help improve chances of personal success for the majority of Zambians?

Let’s consider the following.

An objective experience of life and the underpinnings of science themselves prove that success and poverty, including greatness, are not always direct results of personal effort. But it occurs in a context: who’s the president at a particular period of time? What opportunities are there for education and jobs? What support systems exist to ensure your dreams are achieved?

Indeed, it’s not always about the person but the greater structure in which one exists, and the president is important because he helps control the structure, which often determines the fate of much of the underprivileged population.

For this reason, the earth-shattering American thinker, sociologist and journalist, Charles Wright Mills, said:

“You can never really understand an individual unless you also understand the society, historical time period, personal troubles, and personal issues.”

Mills had gone on to develop a seminal sociological concept applicable to Zambia today, the sociological imagination, which is understood as the ability to find the linkage between personal challenges and issues in the larger society.

Prof Charles Wright Mills

And coming to Zambia, for a long time now people have yearned for a break from economic struggle, compounded by widespread corruption, double digit inflation and burgeoning debt.

With such a restrictive economic environment, many Zambians remain unemployed or have lost jobs, or divorced, while many others cannot afford good education and quality healthcare.

With such objectionable conditions, personal success is highly unlikely to happen.

When there is a structural problem like a debt overhang, as in the case of Zambia, no matter your excellent qualifications or work ethic, sometimes you can hardly get a job because the government will not employ you and your own bid for personal success might turn into a personal nightmare.

Personal success is thus sometimes dependent, and clearly at this stage in Zambian life, on the prudent economic management exhibited by the president himself.

And I understand that it is important, like US President John F. Kennedy said, that we ask what we can do for our country and not what our country can do for us. But this is only truly possible when the president himself acts responsibly and leads with inspiration to an economic turnaround, like in the case of Kennedy himself, when he was president of the United States.

John F. Kennedy

When the president isn’t good enough, or, to use a scenario, when you clean a room and someone else makes it dirty every other second, the direct consequence is demotivation. And that’s what happens to individuals in the economy, when leadership seems to offer no auspicious direction.

Accordingly, renowned Zambian-born global economist and thought leader, Dambisa Moyo, in her book—Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth—states that:

“I completed my PhD at Oxford University in economics, not in politics. And while I continue to be fascinated by economic questions—including growth, inequality, and development—it is increasingly evident to me that politics, and not economics, will be the key driver of human progress and prosperity in years to come.”

Dr Dambisa Moyo

So if the politics are right, economic development of the personal type does become a feasible goal.

While the Patriotic Front (PF) government did roll out commendable infrastructure development, former President Edgar Lungu as a leader had approved some policies that were detrimental to the success of many young Zambians.

No wonder his one-time Minister of Higher education, Nkandu Luo, sparked national outrage when her ministry arbitrarily stopped disbursing meal allowances to Zambia’s fundamental source of human resource— university students.

In a hard-hitting column, renowned Zambian academic and public intellectual, Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa, made a heart-wrenching observation about how such a move would make upward social mobility difficult for many young Zambians.

He wrote: 

“I make an earnest appeal to the government and the wider public to prevail upon Luo to reverse the decision to withdraw the payment of students’ living allowances. Her action is ill-advised and likely to condemn generations of Zambians, especially the poor and mostly those in rural areas, to a subhuman and wretched existence underpinned by poverty, disease, superstition, ignorance, hunger, squalor, want, and ill health. Removing the living allowance that enabled so many Zambians to escape that fate through determination, chance and effort provides a guaranteed way of hoisting more numbers onto the already existing heap or mass of wasted talent.”

Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa

By reintroducing living allowances for university students, as a structural change, for instance, many young people will have a sustainable source of income and make the most of their studies in public universities.

So the system and structure ought to be right in order for individuals to succeed. And since the president helps in making this possible, using his executive functions and orders, he really matters in the personal development of any people, Zambians included.

And this had been the experience of so many black people in America because many colleges and universities, for 100 years after 1865, denied them admission. So black children were excluded from a fair run for the decencies of American  life. But the situation has since improved with the advent of equality, through the instrumental role of governments and presidents.

So President Hichilema matters in the personal lives of Zambians, especially that as a new leader his electioneering promises centred on increasing economic opportunities for marginalized Zambians.

With a good and enabling economic structure in place, many Zambians should succeed.

*Original copy was first published in the Zambia Daily Mail on stated date.