By November 1991 Zambia had 126 school and college students per 100,000 population and the literacy rate was below 70%. There was one medical doctor for every 5,000 Zambians. According to statistics recorded then, there were 32 beds for every ten thousand patients. The infant mortality rate was 127 deaths per 1000 children under the age of 5. The backbone of housing, transportation and telecom was dilapidated, at best. These statistics do not even mention that Zambia had accumulated USD 7.8 billion of debt without a revenue structure in place to repay. The numbers also ignore the total absence of economic, social and political freedoms; encompassing freedom of press, of association, let alone basic human rights hitherto. Instead, the political distortion of liberalisation has manufactured an illusion that suggests that a nation of shared values and prosperity existed before 1991. That with democracy came unrepentant corruption. Yet, in a political system that repressed shared resources […]
DISTORTED LIBERALISATION
