M’membe rejects UPND ‘you can’t share poverty’ economics
By George Zulu
SOCIALIST Party president Dr Fred M’membe has rejected the United Party for National Development (UPND) economic philosophy of ‘You Can’t Share Poverty’.
Dr M’membe said the philosophy was repackaged trickle-down economics that promotes corporate exploitation and austerity enforced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“They advocate for national sovereignty, food security, and democratic Zambian control of strategic resources to combat structural inequality. You can read more about their economic critique,” Dr M’membe said in his write-up called the illusion of unbridled growth: a critique of ‘you can’t share poverty’ economics.
He said the intellectual landscape of Zambia was currently being held captive to a dangerous myth masquerading as pragmatic economics.
“Under the banner of the phrase ‘You Can’t Share Poverty,’ the current administration attempts to elevate a shallow truism into a grand economic philosophy. They look into the eyes of our hungry children, our unemployed youth, and our struggling mothers, and they tell them that before we can discuss equity, fairness, or social welfare, we must first grow the pie,” he said.
Dr M’membe said the argument by government that the focus of governance must strictly be on wealth creation, deregulation, and attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), while dismissing any demand for immediate economic relief, affordable food, or state intervention, should be a source of concern for all.
“We must pierce through this rhetorical fog. We must expose the philosophical, ideological, and political foundations of this outlook for what they truly are: a cruel repackaging of trickle-down economics, a justification for neo-colonial exploitation, and an absolute surrender to global financial forces. You cannot solve the misery of our people by expanding an economic system that is fundamentally structured to keep them at the margins,” he said.
Dr M’membe said the philosophical foundation of ‘you can’t share poverty’ economics rests on an idealised view of production where it views poverty as an abstract, naturally occurring state of lack, a mere mathematical deficit of capital and goods.
Dr M’membe said poverty was not a natural condition but a direct material consequence of a system that separates working people from the wealth they generate.
“In a country as rich as Zambia, endowed with vast tracts of fertile land, immense water bodies, and world-class reserves of copper, cobalt, gold, lithium, emeralds, and manganese, poverty is an absurdity. It is a political crime.
When the proponents of this philosophy claim we cannot ‘share poverty,’ they deliberately confuse the distribution of scarcity with the reclaiming of stolen wealth,” he said.
