By Cecilia Nayame
THE Socialist Party (SP) says the cooperative system in Zambia has collapsed and therefore failed to mitigate the high cost of living among citizens.
General secretary Dr Cosmas Musumali said true cooperatives no longer existed in Zambia, which was putting the country’s food security at risk.
He said this when he featured on a live programme on Hot FMs radio in Lusaka during the week.
“The moment government comes in to say ‘go and make a cooperative’, it’s just a way of distributing monies to the cadres because they are not making true cooperatives. It’s just a big joke,” he said.
Dr Musumali said there was a need for government to take the plight of farmers seriously if the country was to develop.
“So, again there is no country that develops without genuine self-help cooperatives. If we don’t do that [form cooperatives] then farmers will always be dependent on handouts from government,” he said.
Dr Musumali said if the issues to do with farmers could be handled properly, the country could benefit a lot.
“Farmers can generate their own resources. They can be facilitated and learn a lot with research and training programmes. They can begin to take care of themselves if properly organised,” he said.
Dr Musumali said it was sad to note that the agriculture market was skewed against small-scale farmers.
The bias towards commercial farmers was undermining the sector.
“The market today is skewed against small-scale farmers. For example, if we say the maize is being sold at K300, or maybe we put it at K400 per bag and the government is getting that maize and selling it maybe at K700 or K800 to Congo [Democratic Republic of Congo], Angola or any other countries. In that case who is making money? Who is working for it? Definitely, it’s the small-scale farmers being turned into slaves and the government is definitely stripping off money from them [small scale farmers],” he said.
Dr Musumali said government was making more profit than the small-scale farmers by virtue of being a seed buyer.
“When you talk of free market, you don’t force people to grow a crop. You don’t force them to sell at a certain price. The people who are labouring to put inputs are not even remembered when they [government] make more profit out of what they are getting from the farmers,” he said.
Dr Musumali said SP was aiming at changing many things once it formed government.
“The socialist Party has explained so many things of agriculture. Otherwise, we do not see poverty going down if agriculture is not dealt with. The government don’t have a heart for small-scale famers.
“As a party, we are walking the talk. We have a literacy programme, we also have a health programme and an agro-echological programme. We have got a good number of groups of peasant farmers that are benefiting from our programmes.
“Under the Socialist Party, there will be no starvation. Under the Socialist Party, agriculture is going to be a big item in Zambia,” he said.
