Zambia: Beleaguered Host

While delegates to the Commonwealth Conference in Lusaka enjoyed the best of everything, police in Livingstone, 200 miles to the southwest, were dispersing rioting crowds with tear gas and baton charges after lines of people waiting to buy soap and cooking oil got out of hand. In Lusaka itself, laundry soap and detergents were in short supply; toilet paper and cheese were unavailable; and milk chocolate had become a rare luxury. A Lusaka car rental firm is in danger of closing because it cannot get spare parts. The nation's inflation rate is running at about 25%.

The depressed condition of the country's economy is in part a result of President Kenneth Kaunda's adherence to principles: Zambia is a front-line state in the southern Africa conflict. But the embarrassing truth is that white-ruled South Africa is now Zambia's main lifeline to the world. The red carpet used to greet vips at Lusaka International Airport was made in the hated land of apartheid; many of the delicacies served at the Commonwealth banquets also came from there. For Zambia, the Tazara Railway, built by the Chinese to open up a land link from Zambia through Tanzania to the Indian Ocean, is almost a writeoff. The railway works, but the port of Bares Salaam cannot cope with the tonnage of copper that Zambia would like to export by that route. The result is that to export its copper Zambia has been paying heavy transport and port costs to Tanzania. At one point, Zambia claimed that 70,000 tons of copper were waiting for shipment at Dar. Shipping delays and subsequent storage charges have seriously hurt Zambia's mining industry, which is already suffering from the effects of low copper prices. Unless it can get government-allocated foreign exchange to buy new mining equipment, the industry may suffer a loss of up to $100 million this year.

In addition, the industry is suffering from a scarcity of white technicians.

The mines need about 5,200 expatriate workers and are presently running about 1,000 short. Unfortunately, there is little inducement for whites to seek jobs in the country. While Kaunda rightly deplores the racism of his enemies to the south, whites in Lusaka are subjected to a host of snubs and hostilities.

Agriculture is in even worse shape than the mining industry. In southern Zambia, farming has been disrupted by guerrilla warfare. In the Gwembe Valley, crops are rotting in local cooperative stores because nobody wants to collect them. Most of the preindependence white farmers have left Zambia, and agricultural output has dropped accordingly. Zambia's farmers no longer grow tobacco, once a flourishing crop, nor do they produce as much corn as the country needs.

A severe drought in the past two years has made the situation even worse.

If Zambia is to avoid widespread famine, it will need 300,000 tons of corn by the end of the year. Kenya has offered 100,000 tons, but this would have to be transported--inefficiently, and perhaps tardily--by road from Kenya and then along the Tazara Railway. Thus Zambia is relying on South Africa for corn and on Zimbabwe-Rhodesia to deliver the food shipments by rail.

Amid all this economic gloom, there is at least one bit of good news: the reopening of the southern rail route through Zimbabwe-Rhodesia is clearing at least 1,000 tons of Zambian copper a day. The huge stocks of copper at the mines, which earlier this year amounted to 145,000 tons, are dwindling at last. Zambia has also been helped by a firmer trend in copper prices and has hopes of increasing its earnings from cobalt. At present, Zambia produces 1,750 tons of cobalt a year, or about one-tenth of world output (excluding the Soviet Union). If all goes well, Zambia will boost its annual production to 9,500 tons by next year.

With all its troubles, the beleaguered host can ill afford to pay the lion's share of the $20 million cost of the Commonwealth Conference. Yet if that meeting should lead to a settlement of the impasse over Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, to which so many of Zambia's problems are linked, it will be worth every penny.

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