By Chanda Chisala, Article published at LusakaTimes.com
Think about it. The biggest economy in the world, the USA, does not give universal free healthcare to its people because they say it’s too expensive for the economy to handle. As great as its economy is, there is not enough wealth to provide free healthcare without incurring a monumental cost. If they did this, it would bring their economy down to its knees because their taxes would have to become too high.
Zambia and many other African countries, on the other hand, promise free healthcare (including free drugs) to their citizens, despite being the poorest countries in the world. How do they manage to do that? The only way is by begging other countries to send them the drugs for free, and even to pay the salaries of their healthcare workers. Besides this, they also have to keep their taxes very high, which makes it even harder for them to create jobs, thus continuing the need for them to remain dependent on aid.
Unfortunately, many African elites who are now saying that Africa should stop receiving this aid and become “self-dependent,” are also the same people who support the costly system of our poor government giving out free things. But if you want free things, where do you expect the money to come from since the taxable productive sector is so small? This is the question that people never think about. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
The argument that there are European countries that manage to do this only betrays ignorance. These European countries first became very wealthy, with a large productive sector, before they started giving out free things to their people, which is why they do not beg other countries for their drugs. On top of this, these countries also spend a lot of money to try to ensure that there is no theft in such systems – money that African countries just don’t have. It is no wonder that even these European countries have been complaining that this system is unsustainable and could push their countries to bankruptcy.
African countries are the least able to survive the destructive costs of this expensive socialist system, but they are the ones who are the most enthusiastic about embracing it. Politicians in government boast about expanding this system, and opposition politicians promise to spend even more. None of them seem to really realize just how poor Zambia is!
The reason I don’t support America ending aid to Zambia is simply because they are the ones who have encouraged and supported this self-destructive system for a long time and they are only walking away after they have helped entrench it into the very DNA of Zambia and other poor countries that they have made dependent on aid.
For Zambia to survive without this aid, it would have to make a radical change both structurally and intellectually. Even the people who are saying we should just stop receiving aid are not prepared to accept that we cannot afford free healthcare or free education or any of these other expensive subsidies.
Neither can we ever manage to stop the thefts happening in these government ministries because the same socialist system keeps increasing poverty, which makes any donated (or tax-collected) money an obvious target for the wide network of thefts. The cost of monitoring and prosecuting these thefts will likely be even higher than the thefts themselves. And even if the US donated money to help our government monitor this aid, that money will also be stolen!
The UPND government should realize that the thefts won’t stop. They may have replaced PF people with their own people, but they can’t replace human nature with angelic nature. If even Mwanawasa himself, the most serious anti-corruption president, failed to stop these thefts, it’s a joke to think that anyone else will stop them. What has to be uprooted is the system itself: stop giving anything for free and turn these hospitals into privately managed for-profit entities. At the same time, radically cut the taxes for all businesses and employees in the country (to single digits), so that true productivity may grow quickly enough for people to have enough money to pay for their own healthcare and education.
Recent Articles from the Author:
The US is Wrong to Withdraw Aid
Are UPND and Opposition Both Trying to Lose Elections?
Who Was the Worst President of Zambia?
Hichilema Should Have Implemented Sata’s Idea
President Hichilema is a Good Man, But His Policies Can’t Fix the Economy
Should Zambia Really Return to Socialism?
The author, Chanda Chisala, is the Founder of Zambia Online and Khama Institute. He is formerly a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University and Visiting Scholar to the Hoover Institution, a policy think tank at Stanford. You can follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/chandachisala.
