No hope from Mfuwe

President Lungu

By Patrick Sikana

If you were waiting for evidence that President Lungu has run out of ideas, then you got it yesterday. His announcement to create a new ministry of Religious Affairs flew in the face of all common, economic and religious sense. At a time, he should be sealing all the existing fiscal holes, he’s drilling more. At a time he should be re-affirming religious liberty by releasing that space, he wants to regulate it. And right here, let me mention that this is the same man who wanted to introduce a national airline last year, in the middle of a fiscal crisis. That’s been the hallmark of President Lungu’s  leadership: Preaching austerity, practicing waste.

Everyone who knows a civil servant in Zambia, has heard that the state coffers are empty. The International Monetary Fund has slashed Zambia’s projected GDP growth from 5% percent to a modest 3.9 percent this year — warning grimly that even this might prove too optimistic due to worsening market conditions, a crippling debt and energy crisis. So, if the country is broke, and if the economic pie is not growing fast enough, where will the money to fund the ministry of religious affairs come from? “Of course God will provide,” some cadre is thinking.  No. Things don’t work like that.

Let me give you a hint as to where the money will come from. Between the 2015 and the 2016 National Budgets, the health budget was reduced by 1% while the education budget went down by a gaping 3%. The two reductions (potentially) mean more deaths and more illiteracy respectively. You dig a hole to fill another. It’s called robbing Peter to pay Paul. The difference is that in Zambia we publicly cheer on as travesty is taking place.

Zambia, a relatively small ($61 billion GDP) economy, with a population of just about 15 million, currently has 20 ministries (read: ministers), which will translate into about 27 deputy ministers. Then add the 10 provincial deputy ministers.  Then consider the fact that our public service wage bill consumes more than 60 percent of the national budget. How, in our right senses can we celebrate the addition of one more ministry with all the costs that attend it? Remember – the 2016 National budget address promised one more ministry (Livestock and Fisheries).

I strongly believe that, as Zambians, we are over-governed. When you look at the size of our government relative to our population and relative to our economy, and compare this with countries with similar ratios in the region, there is scope for us to reduce government expenditure, or at least, avoid bloating it, so that we begin to create fiscal space.

Then there is the religious liberty argument.  Firstly let me just mention that I am a practising Christian (or more appropriately, a sinner saved by grace). Admittedly, I am one of the people who have actually considered whether it might not be a good idea to somewhat regulate the mushrooming of churches in Zambia or at the very least, audit them. But to establish a whole ministry of religious affairs is stretching state mandate. The state is installed to govern how human beings interact with human beings, not how human beings interact with God.

We should not mix religion with the affairs of government which are primarily secular. Thomas Jefferson, once said, “the legitimate powers of governments is to reach people’s actions and reactions only, and not their beliefs and opinions.” The state thus, has no right to promulgate religion or to interfere with private beliefs (even when they mean well!). How, if, when and who I worship is a matter of personal conscience and the state has no business in that space.

Jesus endorsed the principle of separation of power between the state and religion when He said “render unto Caesar the things of Caesar; and render unto God the things of God,” Mt 22.21.  We must resist the temptation for excessive entanglement of church and state and recognise that it is, in fact, that separate that has