One of the most fascinating realizations I had some years ago was that we are all living in the past, despite our assumption of being in the present.

50 years after independence, we are still struggling with basic issues like water and sanitation facilities at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH), the nation’s largest health facility. The situation is very sad, especially at A05, an isolation ward where children with contagious diseases such as typhoid are kept.

I examine the biggest claims of the anti-privatization pundits who say privatization destroyed the once vibrant Zambian economy. I explain why it is just a myth not supported by empirical or logical evidence.

I have seen everything from wrong diagnosis, overdose prescriptions to deaths caused by pure negligence. How can a doctor who has spent 7 years in medical school, done a year of internship, been mentored by senior doctors with decades of experience and has worked for several years fail to know basic things like what dosage of a drug to give?

Back to the topic of electricity / energy, I visited one of the companies selling solar solutions in the Show grounds during the Agricultural and Commercial Show last weekend. I asked the sales man the question of how much it would cost me in total to unplug from the “The Matrix” of ZESCO.

The very simple answer to load shedding is to increase prices of electricity. More precisely, to stop government price controls in the energy sector by completely removing the power of the Energy Regulation Board (ERB) to approve changes in prices of electricity and leaving pricing completely and totally to market forces.

This obsession to keep the Euro/Eurozone together no matter the cost is total madness. Greece shot itself in the foot by fixing its books to join the Euro and then going on a spending binge financed by cheap credit from Europe. The European banks are just as much to blame for this as Greece.

30 years ago, the Zambian public education system was something to talk about. We had quality expatriate teachers from all over the world in addition to our own wonderful locally bred educators.

Our ZESCO, which art in Zambia
Damned be thy name
Thy monopoly go
Thy incompetence be undone on earth as it is not done in heaven

Imagine living to a thousand years. What would you do? How would you live your life? How many different careers spanning 20 years each would you try out? How many degrees could you get? How many countries would you visit? How many kids would you have? Sounds like science fiction but it is about to become reality in the next 5 to 10 years.