Zambia, Policy Ideas

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 What is the most urgent type of leadership Zambia needs? The most critical kind of political leadership Zambia needs is a BRIDGE-GAP LEADERSHIP (a short-term goal leadership to usher in a leadership with a long-term mandate). In 5 years, this leadership should enact policies and systems that are meant to first change the national mindset towards things like responsibility, diligence, care for nature and environment, investment, order, a mentality that rejects the current poverty state (policies that make poverty a crime against human rights), and etc. Then the next 5 years, set up an agenda that empowers every Zambian to gain a responsible free, basic education that is quality enough to enable them to read, write and solve basic social problems; create a competitive economic environment that enables employment creation and business incentivised support system that forces everyone to obtain gainful employment or sustainable businesses; healthcare that is relatively accessible or free for the most killer but preventable diseases like malaria, AIDS, and etc.; and a government with zero-tolerance policy on corruption, lethargy, tribalism and nepotism. 

 Power, by its design, has four major weaknesses. Any leader, whether in politics, religion, social or any other persuasion of life, will have to guard against these four pitfalls:

1. NOT LISTENING: This is the first weakness of Power. It is also the first sign that a leader has started to be corrupted by Power. They are not there yet, but they have entered the path to self-destruction, autocratic tendencies, and self-belief. When a leader stops to listen to advisers, spouse, colleagues and the people, they have begun on a road to corruption.

2. FLATTERY: This is the second stage to corruption. It is the sign that you are moving from responsible Power into absolute or autocratic Power. It begins by looking for, and sometimes, soliciting flattery. Such leaders will like to hear only what they want. The trouble begins when they can’t or don’t hear what they want to hear. Everyone else not sharing their opinions or point of view is an enemy, and must be isolated or ostracized.

3. PRIDE: Pride and flattery are related, only that Pride is deeper and more ruthless. Pride is the third stage to Power corruption. When power becomes Pride, it closes all opportunities to other points of view and only considers its own as legitimate. At this stage, it eliminates opposition, refuses to listen to reason and becomes conceited. When Power is Pride, people are nothing but things to be used to reach the leader’s ends. Power, at this stage, believes it is always right. Usually, at this stage, Power has corrupted a leader to the point of killing anyone who stands in their way.

4. CORRUPTION: The final stage of Power corruption. The regime, order, rule, church, and so on, at this stage, is ruined; it’s rotten to the core, usually irreversibly. Power, at this stage uses everything, including law, to reprise opponents (usually, at this stage, opposition is none-existent). Law becomes tyranny. Democratic or religious institutions become weapons of mass corruption. Common-sense becomes avaricious. Power doesn’t just kill, it kills at will, and sometimes, just on sheer speculation. The only way to reverse an absolute corrupt Power is to use mutiny, revolution or democratic mass protest that paralyses absolute Power.