Washington, DC — The Zambian ambassador to the United States, Dr. Inonge Mbikusita-Lewanika, 64, has had a wide-ranging and high-powered career. She studied at California Polytechnic University and earned a PhD from New York University. She served as Professor of Education and Teacher Training at the University of Zambia before spending the decade of the 1980s as senior programme officer in Eastern and Southern Africa for Unicef. In the 1990s, she entered politics, won election to Parliament, headed a political party and, in 2001, ran for president. She was named special envoy by President Levy Mwanawasa, after he won the 2001 contest, and in 2003 was tapped for the important posting to Washington. This month, she is embarking on a new quest - campaigning to become chair of the African Union. In an interview, she discussed current developments in Zambia and her reasons for wanting to lead the AU. Excerpts:
As a copper producer, Zambia is benefiting from the rising price of cooper. How is the economy responding to it?
For the past six years that the economy has been growing by 5%. I think it will be 6% this year. Before we had one province producing copper. We now have a second province now that is producing cooper and gold. We have cobalt, we have uranium, and we have precious stones. So Zambia is really loaded with minerals and we are calling for investors to come. Many have come and, as a result, the economy is growing and more and more people getting employed. There is very good news on the economy and the World Bank and IMF are very happy at the moment.
Accompanying economic growth is an increased need to control corruption. What is happening on that front?
Part of the economic growth came from better management of financial resources. This brought Zambia to the completion point for HIPC [Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative for Debt Relief], because of more transparency with the ministry of finance, and their better management of budget allocation and spending.
The first issue that our president [Levy Mwanawasa] brought to the table when he was elected in 2002 was zero tolerance for corruption. He has waged this war and enlisted more people to fight this war, and I think the biggest benefit has been to deter people from corruption. We have legal cases against leaders who plundered resources. The court process is very slow, but our government stores [that were] almost empty six years ago are full of stuff because people think many times before they engage in corrupt practices. Even present leaders have been prosecuted for corruption, so the war goes on. And it has been very beneficial in promoting Zambia. You can now register a business in Zambia in three days or so. It used to take three weeks or more. When you bring goods across the borders, you can clear them in one day. You save a lot of money in that process. Fighting corruption saves a lot of money.
As ambassador, you have worked to attract investment to your country. How is that going?
Our president was just in Seattle at a business forum calling for Americans to come and invest. We have been saying this in Washington, as well. We have been wooing them, giving incentives, improving the business climate. We are doing all this, and we have a few - about 20 - small American companies in Zambia. But we hope more will come.
Every time I look around my country I wish Americans were there because I have spent so many years here. You never colonized us. Your attitude towards us is very positive, so I don't know why you don't come. Its very profitable. You make more money investing in Africa than elsewhere, but you still are not coming!
Is tourism an important way to stimulate African development?
Yes, tourism is one of the fastest ways to employ people. Zambia has 19 game parks. We even sell lions! Tourism cements relationships and makes friendships. Some tourists end up as investors.
With malaria being such a significant problem for Zambia, can you tell us about the steps the government has been taking to tackle the disease?
Yes, malaria kills more people than HIV/Aids. Too many people die from malaria. But the good news now in Zambia is [the number of deaths] has been cut by close to fifty percent using nets. With… support from different partners I understand that by March, three million Zambians will be sleeping under nets. The other preventative measure is spraying, both indoor spraying and outdoor spraying. So really, most of tackling malaria is through prevention - so that mosquitoes do not bite.
Two cities in Zambia have not reported a death in the last two years. You know, people are sick but people have not died in [those] two cities. That is dramatic and has excited the private sector to join in the mosquito net distribution. The petroleum companies are joining in. The banks and everybody is getting there to distribute the nets. Laura Bush was there in June to add her voice and support. She kicked-off one of the distributions of the nets.
People have understandable, historically-based concerns about the use of DDT, which of course is part of the indoor residue spray. Would you address that?
What the experts have told us is that it is harmful if it goes directly on plants but if you do it inside - on the wall or around the house - it is okay. They have been saying that for a few years. Because you remember some years ago there was an alarm to stop it altogether and it was stopped for a long time and so they have been working on it. So the experts tell us it is okay to use it.
And it is an important part of the combined arsenal against malaria?
It is very very important. It adds actually to the fifty percent reduction of of mosquito bites [provided by] mosquito nets. We have what is called the Keep Zambia Clean Campaign. Which means cutting the grass, collecting water, no water around, things like that. And everybody is participating - children, men, women, private sector, public sector, council, city councils. It is also going to help in the prevention of malaria.
We look forward to being malaria-free in Zambia, but also in our neighbors. Mosquitoes don't need passports and visas - they move around. So even if we did it in Zambia alone, we wouldn't get far. One of the programs, which is called Macepa is going to be tried also in Tanzania and Malawi because it has been very successful in Zambia.
You said you were encouraged by what you saw in Zambia recently. Why is that?
One is the fight against HIV/Aids. Zambia is a leader in that area. The government is playing a key leadership role and has made awareness a priority. We have seven languages in Zambia and all of the messages are broadcasted in these seven languages. We have lots of posters, a lot of drama, and everyone is involved in it.
Every ministry has a committee on HIV/Aids as do all of the embassies. We talk about prevention; we talk about getting treatment. The administration has enlisted the traditional rulers - they are people of influence.
Again the partnership and support has been very helpful. Support from the Global Fund as well as from the Pepfar has really made a difference in the treatment getting out to the people, even in the rural areas. I think we started at like 15,000 people being treated and now it is over 100,000. With people being treated and getting well, it minimizes the stigma and people are encouraged to go for testing because they will know that they will get some treatment. More people are going for testing. The list is still long and we still need more resources.
As you know, a problem across Africa in improving health is the lack of health workers, and we read that in Zambia less than half of the medical doctors and nurses who have been trained with Zambian tax-paper money are still in the country. How does Zambia supposed to address this shortage?
The brain drain is a major problem. The government is very concerned and the Ministry of Health has a package now to give incentives to health workers. They gave doctors who work in the rural areas improved their housing, car loans and a school allowance. They started with 15 doctors, and last year they had 85 doctors working in rural areas. What the minister would like to do now is expand that to the other health workers, not only to the medical doctors, but that really calls for resources.
Most of development starting from colonial times was in capital cities, and these continue to attract a lot of people. The reasons for coming to the capital city are no longer there, but the perception is that if you get to the city your life is better. It is usually worse. But once upon a time it was so, and people keep doing that. I think the Ministry of Health has done a good job with these packages for doctors to be in the rural areas and we hope the Ministry of Education will do the same.
Could you give us some background on the constitutional review process, which President Mwanawasa initiated.
We have four kingdoms in Zambia. Like Britain, they didn't have written constitutions, but they certainly did have rules and regulations. The first constitution we had was written by the British government. While the first president [Kenneth Kaunda] was in office for 27 years, this constitution was changed by piecemeal - little here and a little there, until towards the end it gave a lot of powers to the president. Then the second president [Frederick Chiluba] ran on the platform that we needed a new constitution. That was November/December 1991, but that administration didn't work on the constitution as they promised until 1996. That was an election year, and if I may use diplomatic language, it was really a mess. The process was not objective and people noticed that.
When finally the constitution was submitted in 1996, 80% of the submission were not considered, and that raised a lot of animosities, a lot of suspicion. So when new administration came in 2001, the president (who was a lawyer) initiated a process to sort out this mess. Reaction from civil society, the church groups and others was that we don't want to hear anything about the constitution. In fact, reaction to what had happened in the past, some civil society groups went around the country telling people not to submit [ideas]. But fortunately, more people submitted to that constitutional review than any other. When that process what finished, the question was: how do we adopt it.
There was a suggestion that it be adopted by a constituents assembly. That can take months or even a year. First of all, you change the law in parliament, you hold a referendum, then you hold a census, which in our current constitution is done every five years, just before an election. After that, you have a two thirds majority to vote. When the government looked at the cost for that, they said we really don't have this kind of money. How else can we do it? There was a long debate, and what was agreed was what they called a national constitutional review conference. It is similar to a constituent assembly except that you don't have to change the law and you don't have to go through parliament, but you do have a cross section of Zambians studying the constitution. That is what is going on.
And hope that past suspicions will be overcome and sufficient support will emerge from this process to do a conference directed to parliament instead of a more costly and time-consuming constituent assembly?
That's the idea. It's a shortcut on time, on money, on procedures, on having a referendum. That debate is still going on.. Many people have accepted the conference, but some people still are not happy, they want a constituent assembly.
How is the situation in Zimbabwe effecting Zambia?
We are neighbors. The boundaries of Africa were divided in Berlin in 1840, so the people on the border really are the same people. Many Zimbabweans are coming to Zambia for shopping, for selling. Some come to use health facilities. The inflation in Zimbabwe is such that it really effects trade in a negative sense.
Zambia took a leadership role in decolonizing Southern Africa because without your neighbors being free you can't really be free, especially if you are land locked. So if Zimbabwe has a problem then Zambia has a problem. That's' why we try to work on these problems together and that's why we have SADC - the Southern African Development Community - to try to work on problems so all of us can develop and flourish.
How does the Zambian government respond to the critique of the SADC as having been ineffectual in dealing with the Zimbabwe crisis?
It is a sovereign state. You really can't walk in as a neighbor and say 'you vote for this one and you don't vote for that one'. The challenges of Zimbabwe have been discussed within SADC. When the world community does not get the result they want, the assumption is that you are not talking. But we are really talking. The political issues are very difficult to solve from the outside.
My own observation as someone very close to Zimbabwe is that the land issue is the easiest to solve. There is enough land for everybody. But some people have more land than others. Some people have so much land they don't even use it. Some people have resources to utilize the land, and some don't have the resources
Do you see Zimbabwe as an issue that could divide SADC?
I don't think so. I think SADC is doing more than it has ever done, and I think we will be making a mistake if one problem over shadows the achievements that SADC has made.
Look at the gender declaration of SADC. It was the first region to come out with a gender policy for 30% of women to be in decision making and then 50%. And if you go to look at the women in parliament and women in government, there are more women in the SADC region than in many parts of Africa and even in the world. SADC may now be second to Scandinavia. If you look at ambassadors in most capital cities, the trend is half of the women ambassadors will be African, three-quarters will be from SADC. The president from the Pan-African parliament at the moment is a women, and she is from SADC.
In communications, in infrastructure, in Interpol, in corruption fighting, SADC is really leading. Its really unfortunate when people are unhappy with one issue and they want to label that SADC is no good.
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What future do you see for Zimbabwe?
It depends on the Zimbabwe people themselves. In Zambia we had our first president stay for 27 years. His first 10 years were the best. As time went on he abolished political parties, he went back to a one party state and Zambians were unhappy, but we were also afraid because we had a state of emergency for over 17 years in Zambia. In Zambia, we didn't blame the neighbors, we didn't go and say you are not helping me with the administration that has put us in a state of emergency for 17 years. We sat down as Zambians and asked what is the way forward. It started with small group saying 'we want to go back to multi-party politics'.
Professional people comfortable in their jobs left what they were doing and went into politics. We were threatened, but we did it. Wherever we have a problem, the people there need to do something about it themselves to contribute to the solution.
To turn to you for a minute, you have had a diverse career – in politics, at Unicef and now as ambassador. Why do you want to head the African Union at this time?
The Government of Zambia has nominated me to run for the chair of the African Union Commission. So Zambia and myself are campaigning to take that chair during the next election in January. I have been associated with Organization for African Unity for over 30 years. I participated very actively in the work on the Charter of the African Child, which actually came before the international convention on children's rights. I have been in teaching. I have had the opportunity of working in over 42 countries with UNICEF with governments and the people of Africa. I am very comfortable and am familiar with a cross section of Africa, and I really feel that since Africa is in transition we really need someone who has broad-based Africa experience.
If you get the job, what would you like to do at the AU? What would be your priorities?
We need to recognize our heroes and 'sheroes' of the past. I think in many African countries they don't even know there are heroes and 'sheroes' from 20 years ago. They are always celebrating other people's heroes and that is fine. But we need to appreciate the people who have brought Africa this far, and that includes the founding fathers and mothers of the Organization for African Unity.
My motto is 'uniting Africans to Africa'. As you know the African Union includes Africans who are outside Africa - Africans in the diaspora. I really look forward to the day when Africans or people of African descent will proudly say I am an American-African or an African-American, so that is my motto.
Among the other things we need to do is to pick up where my predecessors have begun. Economic development of Africa is very important. More and more countries are improving their economic state, and we need to keep that going.
We need to improve the image of Africa, and unfortunately many Africans have a very negative image of Africa. Many [are influenced by] the media, which only covers Africa when it has a problem. Africa is a beautiful place. It is a land of promise. Many don't realize how Africa has contributed to the development of industrialized nations. Even today many countries are benefiting from the resources of Africa - oil and minerals.
We also need to continue working with the Organization of American States, working with the European Union, with China and others.
