The Enlightenment which we all yearn for is delayed by the unwillingness of most of our intellectuals to come to grips with Zambia's historical and cultural reality: that Zambia is made up of a small corrupt western world of Government and business elite - both in bed with the donors, a recently constructed world afloat in a sea of traditional Zambia (95% of the land), which is itself undergoing a Neolithic revolution from hunter-gatherer to more settled agriculture, their only problem being that the changes being wrought by their own Government and the donors - walking fully into the Malthusian trap, is making their lives more difficult, not easier. And to blame foreign investors for an assault on natural resources is a travesty. The destruction of the Ila cattle and grazing lands, the illegal alienation of national parks and national forests, the imposition of a .6% royalty on mining companies, the failure to place very strict environmental controls on their mining operations, are just a few of the impacts of Government, donors and capitalism on true Zambians.
The genius of Zambia is being trampled on, because the elite - searching desperately for a plot and a Pajero, don't look where they are going.
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