By DAVIES CHIBESA –
A HUNGRY man is an angry man, so postulates the old English adage. Thus, hunger has the ultimate to drive a hungry one to extremes of vexation.
In this context, Zambians well-versed with local history recall the 1986 food riots in the second Republic with nostalgia…
Since then; too much water has gone under the bridge to drum home the message that on the local front, mealie-meal is a dicy issue!
Todate, the country seems to have relapsed into mealie-meal politicking in the midst of grumbles about its availability to the populace.
At the core of this development dwells a legion of detractors aided by some print media charlatans and other pretenders to the throne.
This clique is hell bent on trumpeting ‘the give a black dog a bad name and hang it’ truism.
Thus these mavericks certainly are up to no good and by design wish to defame the now popularly nicknamed ‘Edgar mealie-meal bags’ eagerly awaited every week in townships.
A Chawama resident Osten Daka deplored the tendency by critics of President Edgar Lungu’s administration who militate against the supply of cheaper mealie-meal to consumers.
“It is all nonsense, these people are creating the impression that mealie-meal is in short supply when they are ‘rebuying’ supplies in bulk for reselling elsewhere,” he said.
Another woman who preferred to be anonymous said in recent times, the supply of mealie-meal had been good save for the prices until now when sometimes one goes round searching for it  to a point of becoming a gamble.
On a typical day, one would walk the breadth of the township and only find very expensive brands of mealie-meal supplied by various millers.
Already some of these millers have been banned “But what would you do if you are retailer and you are approached by someone who wants to buy all the bags at once?  Would you decline the offer?,” asked another man seemingly supporting what in yesteryear parlance was known as ‘hoarders’.
A crisp check of synonyms indicates that a ‘hoarder’ can also be defined as a ‘collector’ or one who ‘accumulates’.
In the foregone context, an accumulator hoards bags of mealie-meal for resell at a higher price and mostly beyond the frontiers.
In recent times, the media has been replete with reports of trucks being intercepted in transit to border points leading to Malawi and Democratic Republic of Congo for example.
In this light, it is inevitable for authorities to institute stringent measures to curb the vice as recent episodes merely show a tip of an iceberg.
Still, the past being a major reference point notes that the mealie-meal saga perpetrators earned thet tag of ‘economic saboteurs’.
This is exactly what is presently doing the rounds in these parts with overtones of the past.
One is inclined to agree with a recent call in the Times of Zambia on the need to bring back restraining institutions like the Special Investigation Team on Economy and Trade (SITET).
There is always a hanging thread of relevance protruding from the past! The establishment may take the form of another name but its necessity looms large with the emergence of scams like ‘money laundering’ now under the ambit of the Drug Enforcement Commision (DEC).
The handling of economic fiddling under the  latter may seem somewhat outlandish if viewed in their classification prism.
However, the war against smuggling still rages on with impunity with bicycles involved ferrying mealie-meal bags through footpath outlets across the borders.
The buck stops at the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) doorstep whose cheap maize is taken advantage of by unscrupulous businessmen.
It contends that it is irrational for these traders or millers to inflate the prices of mealie-meal borne out of its cheap raw input.
A delve into the maize supply chain would impel one to liken it to the marketing of electric power.
For instance, the national electricity supplier Zesco provides its commodity via a three-tier system comprising generation, transmission and distribution under one roof.
In contrast, the FRA provides maize grain while the millers collect, grind the maize meal then distribute it on the premise of an added cost.
In this vein, one may deduce that they appear to have leeway in justifying their inflated prices basing this on the capital intensive format they claim to operate under.
However, there should not be no acceptable justification for profit margins that border on heartless exploitation.
For the past six weeks or so, the Kwacha’s rating to the dollar seems to have been stuck at K11 with the cents column mainly fluctuating.
An empirical survey would indicate that this seems to have not even
the slightest change of attitude.
An observer told this writer that most Zambians seemed less inclined to monitor these exchange rate fluctuations seriously and depended on hearsay.
The only ones that seem alert mostly were money changers and some cross border traders while another cross section only worries about the cost of local lager!
On the overall, the mealie-meal fiasco appears to have become another perennial political instigator.
However, this can be controlled especially with the ongoing installation of solar milling plants countrywide.
This appears to have practically demonstrated the cutting down to the minimum costs related to transportation of mealie-meal to points of sale.
A pointer to this factor is the trader recently caught in Lusaka with 700 bags of mealie-meal which he claimed was destined for the Eastern Province.
But at this rate the mealie saga is raging, it is imperative border controls were further tightened to ensure that smuggling was curbed to the possible barest minimum.
To underscore, the seriousness the State attaches to smuggling the State recently issued a stinging warning to unscrupulous millers who may face a blacklisting embargo in their dealings with the FRA for a period of two years.
Thus, it is clear that ‘politics of the belly’ was once extolled as a ‘necessity’ by one renowned politician who once justified his conviction of being in office ‘for the belly’.