HICHILEMA IS FOLLOWING THE CORRUPT PATH OF RHODES, OPPENHEIMER
We have consistently and repeatedly talked about President Hakainde Hichilema as a continuation of the businessmen and politicians who colonised, exploited, brutalised and dehumanised us for decades. His admiration for Cecil Rhodes and the Oppenheimers has inspired him to follow their corrupt path of combining business with political leadership at the highest possible levels. Cecil John Rhodes was a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896.
Like Mr Hichilema, who is the 7th President of the Republic of Zambia, Rhodes was the 7th Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and was in office from July 17, 1890, until January 12, 1896. An ardent believer in British imperialism, Rhodes and his British South Africa Company colonised the southern African territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), which the company named after him in 1895. The son of a vicar, Rhodes was born at Netteswell House, Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. As a sickly child, he was sent to South Africa by his family when he was 17 years old in the hope that the climate might improve his health. He entered the diamond trade at Kimberley in 1871 when he was 18, and, thanks to funding from Rothschild & Co, began to systematically buy out and consolidate diamond mines. Over the next two decades, he gained near-complete domination of the world diamond market, forming a massive monopoly. His diamond company, De Beers, formed in 1888, still retains its prominence into the 21st century under Anglo and the Oppenheimers.
Rhodes entered the Cape Parliament at the age of 27 in 1881, and in 1890, he became Prime Minister. During his time as Prime Minister, Rhodes used his political power to expropriate land from black Africans through the Glen Grey Act, while also tripling the wealth requirement for voting under the Franchise and Ballot Act, effectively barring black people from taking part in elections. After overseeing the formation of Rhodesia during the early 1890s, he was forced to resign in 1896 after the disastrous Jameson Raid, an unauthorised attack on Paul Kruger’s South African Republic (or Transvaal). Kruger was Rhodes’s main business competitor.
Rhodes’s career never recovered; his heart was weak, and after years of poor health he died in 1902. He was buried in what is now Zimbabwe – his grave has been a controversial site.
Rhodes’s racial views are a subject of scrutiny and debate. He believed the natives of the Cape to have existed in a state of barbarism.
Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, (born May 22, 1880, Friedberg, Hesse-Nassau, Germany – died November 25, 1957, Johannesburg, South Africa) was an industrialist, financier, and one of the most successful leaders in the mining industry in South Africa and Rhodesia.
Oppenheimer became a junior clerk at the age of 16 with Dunkelsbuhler & Company, London diamond brokers. In 1902 he moved to Kimberley, South Africa, where he served as a Dunkelsbuhler’s representative. In 1917, with considerable backing from the financier J.P. Morgan, he formed the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa Ltd, to exploit the east Witwatersrand goldfield. Two years later he formed Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa Ltd (reformed as the Namdeb Diamond Corporation in 1994). This diamond-prospecting corporation was so successful that he gained control of De Beers Consolidated Mines, which once dominated the world diamond market, and in 1930 he established The Diamond Corporation Ltd.
In 1929, Oppenheimer formed the Rhodesian Anglo American Corporation to exploit the rich copper deposits in Northern Rhodesia. His last project was the pioneering of new goldfields in the Orange Free State, South Africa. Oppenheimer served as mayor of Kimberley from 1912 to 1915 and was a member of the Union of South Africa Parliament from 1924 to 1938. Oppenheimer used his positions as mayor and member of parliament to expand and consolidate his business empire. He was involved in a number of controversies; including price fixing, antitrust behaviour, and an allegation of failing to release industrial diamonds for the United States war effort during World War II.
Mr Hichilema, in a new time and new way, is following in the footsteps of Rhodes and Oppenheimer by using his political position of President of the Republic of Zambia to expand and consolidate his business empire. But we all know that using political office to advance personal or associates’ business interests amounts to grand corruption.
Following this path of businessman/politician, Mr Hichilema may turn out to be the most corrupt President of our country. It is not a secret that Mr Hichilema’s businesses, like those of Rhodes and Oppenheimer, are doing business with the government he controls and directs. This is a very primitive, crude form of insider dealings. Mr Hichilema is without shame or restraint directing government business to businesses he is associated with or is in one way or another gaining a benefit from.
Today, civil servants are in a very serious and painful debt trap that is benefiting their political leaders, who are connected to Bayport and other companies that are mercilessly exploiting them. And because of this, attempts at debt swaps to bail out civil servants have been frustrated or reversed. Today, civil servants are forced into medical insurance schemes with Madison, whose books they are acquiring. There is no doubt that the key leadership of this government is also associated with companies getting government tenders to supply fertilisers.
They are really following in the footsteps of Rhodes and Oppenheimer, who ruled and did business with the governments they controlled and directed. But whereas Rhodes and the Oppenheimers got away with it, Mr Hichilema and his league will find it very difficult to do so, no matter what schemes of concealment of business interests they deploy. Times have changed. The Zambian people will certainly demand the highest levels of transparency and accountability of Mr Hichilema’s business dealings.
Fred M'membe
President of the Socialist Party
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