Victor Mapani must the loneliest person at the moment after the ZESCO board decided against renewing his contract when it expires in December—something he says he did not ask for.
Being a public servant can be a poisoned chalice in Zambia —no wonder most professionals shun appointments to serve this country because let’s face it, we can be an extremely toxic people!
Virtually everywhere you turn, every prominent appointment is met with two kinds of reactions: those who are happy because of one’s appointment and those who spanner you all the way, waiting for someone to be fired so that they rejoice!
So, it was hardly surprising to see Mapani’s departure met with joy, sadly, even by people in the ruling party and media platforms aligned with those in power.
And just like that, we forgot about all of Mapani’s achievements. And just in a flash, we went for the kill —scandalizing and brutally assaulting a professional whose tenure would have ordinarily recorded more positives than negatives had the gods not denied us rain, thereby crucifying us with crippling power shortages.
Yet we forgot that Mapani is neither a God nor a rain maker — he is a human being like you and I without the power to command God on how much rain he should allocate to Zambia at any given time.
Don’t get us wrong, Mapani definitely had his own shortcomings as a human being. He was no angel.
But when you look at what Mapani had control over — things that were humanly possible to turn around — when the world comes back to its senses, we hope sane people will remember that actually, he has been one of the best managing directors to hold the echelons of power at the power utility.
How many MDs, especially given the cash cow that the heavily indebted ZESCO has been, would manage to reduce the company’s $1.7 billion IPP liability to under $400million in under three years?
Given how Zambians have been spoiled with subsidies, how many MDs can boldly tell staff that they will no longer get free units but buy, just like any other citizen? Or how many MDs can boldly show party cadres the exit door so that the entity is left to run professionally, efficiently with lean staff?
We can go on and on listing Mapani’s achievements but for now, let’s have this conversation again in the next two to five years —Zambians would have started, truly started, enjoying the fruits of Mapani’s sweat because the solar projects, the open access, the increase in Independent Power Producers, the multi-year tariff framework and many others would have been in full swing.
We can only wish Mapani the best of luck in his next chapter in life, believing that even he would have picked lessons from his mistakes while at ZESCO’s helm.
