up and, for a brief period in 1994, ZCCM actually increased production. With the return of multi-party democracy, it appeared that many new ideas for governance and business enterprise were also in the offing. More goods in local shops appeared and investors began coming in from South Africa and elsewhere."
2.3.2 A change for the mines
The increased production, however, appeared unsustainable. After a couple of bad years, the World Bank began pressing Zambia to do something different.
[The World BankJ...used to come regularly like once a year or once every other—they would bring out a technical team to audit the mines...This was about 1994...And they picked up—we had just initiated something that had never happened before and this was to lease machines because we didn't have capital. So we went into a lease-purchase arrangement with...Tamrock. And once we got into that arrangement we were always on target...We went about 30 months back to back making target every month.
But...when [the World Bank] came 'round...they...recommended that certain of our general managers should be relieved of their positions....They visited each mine. They spoke to the general managers. They spoke to management.
In some cases, they went underground. They looked at performance of the division. But they went and made a decision that now, because now we were looking for money from them and all that, they were going to be instrumental in lending us money. So they said, "If you want money from us you've got to make these changes..."
And the Chief Executive had very little time—probably only had a month.
And the best therefore that he could do was get an expatriate who was a consulting mining engineer...He went for a guy that had retired from ZCCM—an expatriate. Pulled him from retirement and made him general manager here. To suit the World Bank requirements. And, upon that, the World Bank released the funds.209
" Interview with independent technieal consultant assigned to ZCCM privatization project, 2005.
209 Interview with former ZCCM general manager and current senior executive, Copperbelt mining company, 2004.
By this time, the Bank's interventions were also more extensive than previously.
They focused upon a three-pronged "strategy for renewed growth." The three prongs were trade liberalization, economic diversification particularly through agricultural development and privatization of the country's parastatal industries.2" This last step was to involve selling controlling interests in over 200 state-owned enterprises ranging from travel companies to drilling firms to stores, banks, and utilities. Privatization was not the only possibility in theory. But for Zambia, it was said to be the only realistic option.
Commercialization would involve re-outfitting the mines' infrastructure. But government had 60% of the shares and no money. Liquidation would have cut over 50,000 jobs—
91 9
equivalent to disbanding the nation's army.
Additionally, from Chiluba's vantage point, privatization was not something new but a return to familiar territory.
Before independence the Zambian economy was not a command economy.
That's what you've got to understand. It was a free market economy. There was no such thing as ZCCM in 1964 and before. You had Roan Selection Trust controlling a certain number of mines including Luanshya and Mufulira.
And then you had Anglo-American running Nchanga, Konkola, and Rokana.
Then you had, I cannot remember how many private companies which were working for the mines, supplying to the mines, and contracting to help the mines in one way or the other....And so we didn't have a command economy at the start of it all. And at the peak of economic boom in Zambia it was a private economy which was running. So the private sector was there even before independence.
210 "Zambia Country Assistance Review," Operations Evaluation Department Report no. 15675 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1996), 18.
211 Ferguson severely criticizes the early work of Jeffrey Sachs who was highly influential in developing the types of Bank policies Zambia had to implement at this stage. Ferguson specifically mentions that agricultural programs designed to turn retrenched miners into agronomists were poorly thought out in terms of land and disease conditions. Expectations of Modernity, 240. "Zambia Country Assistance Review," 18; Situmbeko and Zulu, Zambia: Condemned to Debt, 23-26.
212 "Mining Industry Under New Era" (Photocopy, Chamber of Mines of Zambia, Kalulushi, 2004), 10;
Interview with ZCCM-IH administrator, 2005; Interview with former ZCCM senior executive and current ZCCM-IH manager, 2005.
When we got into independence, there was this one very common approach by African states after defeating colonialism we believed strongly and we thought it was not coming, but it has come, after defeating colonialists we knew that they were no longer going to come with their colonial heads in politics. They would come as neo-colonialists trying to control us by using resources. Our own resources. And we have seen it today. What Nkrumah said in 1958 has come true today.21 So every African government, not only in Southern Africa but in many parts...the majority of them felt the best way to fight colonialists was not only to win political independence but also turn the economy from the market to the office. From being market economies to being centrally planned economies where government could control the planning every single day. That way we could say, "Let's stop that bus which is run by Western imperialists and only set up...set up a company run by comrades who were freedom fighters. We are sure they will not overcharge the passengers."
And so we had in Zambia, before it came to its peak the intentions were good...And so here we tried to swing because we were reacting to imperialist and colonial forces that had oppressed us. So we tried to swing not only politically but also economically by introducing economic systems which were contrary to what the West believed.
But we over did it. We over nationalized. We went up to 80% of the economy totally nationalized. And the results were catastrophic. The results were catastrophic. So when you talk to me about privatization, it is not as if we were dreaming about something that had never happened. In fact returning to the status quo before independence. The status quo that proved extremely successful...I remember in 1964 when Dr. Kaunda and UNIP came to government they were able to build roads, they were able to build schools, universities. They were able to do all the infrastructural layout foundation work. Why? Because the economy was strong and the economy began tottering also at the height of the freedom struggle in Southern Africa—in Zimbabwe, in South Africa, in Angola, in Mozambique. So we paid a high price partly because of our commitment to the liberation struggles. But also partly because of mismanagement.214
The World Bank and IMF also buttressed their arguments for privatization by repeatedly criticizing the country's lack of economic diversification and over dependence on
213 Kaunda, a loyal admirer of Nkrumah, foresaw the development of neo-colonialism, writing at length and in terms that are startlingly prescient of the global situations of the mid-2000s. See Kaunda, Humanist in Africa,
115-117.
214 Interview with President Chiluba, 2005.
the mines.215 It was squandered opportunity, the Bank contended, that came from the new government's failure to anticipate worldwide market developments; too much internal change; and a general "enthrallment" with copper. Still, there must have been something of value to all those "wasting assets" on the Copperbelt, for the World Bank also pronounced that, out of Zambia's entire privatization process, the mines represented, "the biggest prize."217