Why Some People (countries) are Richer than Others!!

By Mubita C. Nawa
“We cannot afford to pretend that all is well. This ship may not be sinking. But this ship is leaking and way off course. If we do not change direction, our children will not write our history. They will erase it.” Mubita C. Nawa
I am on vacation. But it does not hurt to open a laptop and jot down a thought or two. My family and I arrived in Sesheke yesterday. We left Lusaka three days ago and have already spent a night in Choma, went to Pemba, Livingstone and today even had a chance to cross into Namibia.
Yet as you visit all these places, one can’t help notice vivid differences between or among the places we visited and continue to visit. The Katima border post which is the border between Zambia and Namibia here in western province is contrasted in sight, worth, positioning and even aesthetics. On the Zambian side it is hard to tell which is a border post and which is a shade for currency dealers. There are no signs, and though the people are wonderful and welcoming, the processes on the Zambian side are so behind compared to the Namibian side.
To be fare to the Zambian side, the Sesheke border as a whole is a wonderful development. Just six years ago when I last visited this place, we had no bridge and we relied on pontoons to ferry vehicles. Six years ago the journey from Livingstone to Sesheke took 8 hours owing to the poor state of the road. Today the journey takes two hours if you are driving at 100kilometers per hour. And a new border post is being constructed just a few meters from the current one. But even that will still be many years behind what is supposed to be new today.
My biggest problem with Africa is that the moment you start pointing out what is wrong or what could be right, people immediately demonize you and suggest you do not appreciate nor recognize history.
I am not a historian but I know that we are too far behind compared to even our neighbors who recently attained their independence. Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Angola all got their independence after Zambia got hers. Yet Zambia by all accounts and purposes looks like it just got independent yesterday.
“We must not compare ourselves to the successes of our past. We must instead courageously look into the future and ask the tough question; where did we go wrong?” Mubita C. Nawa
We have a great country. We have wonderful people if not the most hospitable in the world. So much land and so much potential. But what goes wrong? Why are we defending mediocrity? Why are we partners with failure when we can very easily partner with success? Who is to blame for all this?
LACK OF VISION
We had options to lodge on the Namibian side or on the Zambian side. As you can imagine, we would prefer lodging on the Zambian side for patriotic reasons as well as for the support of the local team if you know what I mean. Yesterday we visited two lodges. Both owned by fellow Zambians. Today we visited two lodges. One owned by a Zambian and the other by a South African. All four are on the Zambian side. You can guess which was the most splendiferous of them all.
It is a lack of vision. In my column in The Post I once articulated and registered my dismay at the lack of development in Western province. I know it is a taboo to talk about such matters. With all due respect to the authorities of our nation as well as our traditional rulers, something is terribly wrong with our developmental vision. Western province is endowed with so much water, land, sand, wind and above all wonderful and intelligent people. It is no secret (and UNZA can even back me up on this one), that the most degreed people per capital in our nation are the ones from this province. But how come it is somewhat inept of these great minds to translate this class genius into reality (into community change).
Is this just a problem of one province or that of all the nine provinces in our country? Or could we be naive to suggest that other parts of Africa are not affected by it?
We can do it. Others have come and done it right underneath our noses. Some with less money than us. Does it really require money more than it requires vision?
As we left the South African owned and ran lodge in Mwandi, I turned and looked at my wife and children and I said to them, “Next year it is my goal to turn that farm (our farm) into a magnificent conferencing facility with this kind of excellence.” My family was sad. They were sad because we could not get a room at this memorable lodge as it was fully booked. We had to go back to our lodge where the workers where lazy, sleeping in the hall way, detached from service and just carefree.
“I love my nation. Yet it makes me sad. It makes me sad because I feel like I am trapped in a timeless capsule. Unfortunately this capsule seems to be in reverse gear and no one knows where the gear lever is.” Mubita C Nawa
We have copper, water, people, land, timber, all kinds of minerals plus much more. What we lack the most, is vision. HIV AIDS may have threatened us in the eighties and nineties; today our greatest threat is this factory line that continues to give us visionless citizens.
LACK OF MONEY
On the other hand and of course looking at the bigger picture, we lack capital. Our people have little access to cheap and affordable capital. And by capital I am not referring to K50,000,000.00 capital or just $10,000.00 United States Dollars. I agree and respect the fact that that kind of money can change a life or two. But the kind of change we need is not for two people. We need national change.
We need strong capital injections. I am fully aware of programs that are giving indigenous Zambians moneys here and there and we commend them all. We do not need capital to buy five twenty litter cans of paint. We need capital to build strong foundations and strong businesses.
Allow me to refer to my mentor T D Jakes. When Bishop T D Jakes came to Dallas Texas in 1996 he put a down payment on his new church of $1.6 million . Within six months, he had finished paying for the old church. When he decided to build the new multimillion dollar church, the estimate was around $35million. By the time we finished building that new church, we (I say we because I was there too) had spent $43million. Guess what, that was paid off in three years. A year before that mortgage was paid off, another one of $10million was accessed to build the international school Clay Academy. That is what I call capital.
Always remember, the more the money the higher the responsibility to pay back. I know that the culture of repayment would have to be checked as well or else we will just dry our wells.
CONCLUSION
No matter how hard things get, we cannot fold our arms expecting change to just come. We must engage each other and critically assess where we went wrong and how we can come out of that mess.
“We cannot afford to pretend that all is well. This ship may not be sinking. But this ship is leaking and way off course. If we do not change direction, our children will not write our history. They will erase it.” Mubita C. Nawa
Remember, we do not have yesterday. We may not even have today as we are so late in the game. But we have tomorrow. And the only way we can guarantee change is by challenging the very challenges we face. We must courageously walk in the midnights of our time hoping against all hope to find any glimmer of light. We must seek any chance we find to be better today than we were yesterday. We are a great people. We must graduate from this level to the next.
So why are some people richer than others? Success is a result of how one handles their resources and how clear and inspiring your vision is. Whatever you see, you can achieve it.

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