Maravi

We are doing it for all of Africa

We are doing it for all of Africa
By Editor
Thursday May 17, 2007 [04:00]

The support and solidarity which our country is receiving in its fight against corruption is highly welcome and well deserved. This is a war which our people cannot win all by themselves. They need the support of all their friends the world over. And it is therefore not wrong to mobilise not only our people but the whole world to help this poor country of ours fight corruption and ensure that its very limited resources are efficiently, effectively and in an orderly manner utilised for the benefit of all its people.

When a nation undertakes a job like the one Zambia has undertaken, when a poor country like Zambia is fighting people who have stolen millions or billions from it, all the possibilities should be foreseen, and the people should know what it is they have to do. What they have to do, above all, is to know that they should never be manipulated by the propaganda and lies of thieves who have stolen from them. The reaction of our people should always be to close their ranks.

When a poor country like ours takes upon its shoulders a job like the one that we have taken upon our shoulders, they must always know what to do. And if we conduct ourselves well, it doesn't matter that we are poor. If we know what to do, we will win because victory always goes to those whose cause is right, to those who know how to uphold their rightful cause, and know how to fight for their rightful cause. We can be sure that if we do what we have to do, we will win, we will triumph over corruption in our country.

So, with the London High Court judgment against Frederick Chiluba and his tandem of thieves in our hands, what remains for us to do is reaffirm that purpose, that purpose of all of us - to continue to fulfil our duty to our country, in whatever we do, in our positions, and to ask that everybody else do the same.

To express our faith in the destiny of our country, our faith in the solidarity of other nations. We shouldn't forget that whatever we are doing here in our fight against corruption, we are fighting for all our sister countries of this continent. We are fighting for all of them because they will learn from our experience. They will learn from the successes that we have, and they will learn even from the errors that we make.

So, our mistakes as well as our successes will be useful to our sister nations. We have faith in the solidarity of many countries in the world and faith in the solidarity of all the peoples of the world.

What we are doing in our fight against corruption is what Africa expects of us. That is what the world expects of us. And we will know how to respond to the friendship and the solidarity that we have received and are continuing to receive.

The joint pledge by Denmark, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States to continue actively supporting our country's fight against corruption is highly welcome. If Chiluba and those opportunists in the political sphere who support him think we are alone in this fight and they can use their criminal deep pockets to destabilise the nation politically or otherwise in order for them to escape liability or being made to account for their thefts, they are deceiving themselves.

With these countries, with these nations supporting our fight, which force on this planet can defeat this very legitimate cause we have undertaken as a nation? With their pledge to help us bring those who have stolen from the people of Zambia to justice, how will Chiluba escape, where will he hide?

It is no wonder Chiluba today is making noises about imperialism because he knows that the whole world is with us against him. Chiluba cannot claim to be a patriot because a patriot never steals from his people, never abuses his people and can never misuse the resources of his country for personal aggrandisement.

It is not surprising that Chiluba's first reaction or instinct to the London judgment is to smear it with the filth of imperialism or racism - however greedy, corrupt he himself may be. The problems Chiluba is facing today have nothing to do with imperialism but his sticky fingers, his greed and vanity.

We hope our people have learnt something from this about the need to have critics in the nation. When we published stories and comments calling Chiluba a thief in 2001, we received a lot of criticism, we were called all sorts of names and the state media was unleashed on us. But today we can see that a society that doesn't take pride in its critics is a human hell where leaders indulge their anarchical instincts without moral compunction. They will siphon the wealth of the land and deposit it in European or other foreign banks and squander it there. We should never allow ourselves to be stuck in a culture of overzealous worship of leaders, a culture which would look primitive in the eyes of our ancestors.

And as the governments of Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States have correctly observed, it is courageous that the government of Zambia has pursued the case of Chiluba's thefts and obtained a favourable judgment. It deserves credit because this is not an easy undertaking for any individual or government. But things shouldn't end here; there should be no pulling punches.

Chiluba should be pursued to the very end until everything that belongs to the people whom he stole from is given back to the people; until what belongs to Caesar is given back to Caesar. And in this regard, all his benefits should be stopped even if this may call for Parliament to legislate to that effect. There's no way the Zambian people should continue to pay and look after Chiluba after all that he has done to them. As we stated before, the only place where the Zambian people should have an obligation to look after Chiluba is in prison. Outside that, he has lost the right of being looked after by the Zambian people.

We are grateful for the support, financial and otherwise, that our country has received from these countries in its fight against corruption. This fight is just starting; there's still a lot of it going on, and when we are done with Chiluba, we'll have to pursue these others until our country is rid of this scourge that is subjecting our people to unbearable hardships, poverty, disease, ignorance and early deaths.

Labels: CORRUPTION, EDITORIAL

posted by MrK @ 4:13 AM