We wish Chiluba a quick recovery

We wish Chiluba a quick recovery
By Editor
Saturday May 26, 2007 [03:00]

Although we want Frederick Chiluba to be made to account and be punished for his thefts of public funds and other abuses, news of his collapsing does not yield us any pleasure. Poor health is not something we wish any fellow citizen or indeed any human being to suffer. And this is why we are opposed to the theft and abuse of public funds that could be used to improve our health facilities for the benefit of all our people.

If Chiluba and his friends did not steal and abuse public resources, our University Teaching Hospital today would be in a far better state than it is and Chiluba wouldn’t need to go to Johannesburg for treatment. We have not forgotten what Chiluba did to our medical doctors who had gone on strike demanding better conditions for their patients - he sacked all of them. And some of these doctors today are working outside the country.

More than ever before, we today need to use the very limited financial resources of our country prudently. And we should never allow anybody to steal or misuse public funds. We now have to administer the affairs of the nation in which the extraordinary growth of population has been outstripped by the growth of wealth and the growth in complex interests.

The material problems that face us today are not such as they were in the early years of our independence, but the underlying facts of human nature are the same as they were then. Under altered external form, we war with the same tendencies towards evil that were evident in those years, and are helped by the same tendencies for good.

What Chiluba’s thefts and abuses have shown us is that there are, in the body politic, economic and social, many grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or businessman or otherwise, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life or otherwise.

We hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in a book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he, in his turn, remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. The liar is no whit better than the thief, and his mendacity takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery to untruthfully attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. We should always be aware that an epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does not good, but very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed.

Our plea is not for immunity to, but for the most unsparing exposure of the politician who betrays his trust, of the big businessman who makes his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced. Let’s expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but we should always remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in a lurid and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself.

It is because we feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil wherever they may hide - whether in hospitals or in self-exile - that we ask that the war against the thefts and abuses of Chiluba be conducted with sanity as well as with resolution.

It is said that at many stages in the advance of humanity, conflict between men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possessed is the central condition of progress.

The Zambian people are right in demanding honesty and integrity in public life because without that, we cannot hope to deal efficiently and effectively with the problems our country faces today. There’s need to put the national need before personal advantage. And it is right for us to regard those in power as having a stewardship responsibility of the public welfare. We say this because the object of government is the welfare of the people and not the amassment of wealth by the leaders.

The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all citizens. Just in proportion as the average man or woman are honest, capable of sound judgment and higher ideals, active in public affairs - but, first of all, sound in their home life, and the father and mother of healthy children whom they bring up well - just so far, and no further, we may count what we are doing a success. We must have a genuine and permanent moral awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything; and, on the other hand we must safeguard the limited resources we have from being stolen, squandered or abused by scoundrels and senseless people.

This is the way we look at things. And it is on this basis that we have been merciless in exposing and attacking Chiluba’s crimes against our people, especially the poor. It is also on this basis that we wish him a quick recovery so that he can come back and start to attend the criminal court sessions so that he is nailed to the cross for his thefts. As we have said before, we have never had any doubt that Chiluba has stolen public funds; that Chiluba is a shameless thief who should as quickly as possible be put behind bars.

And we have no doubt that there is no independent tribunal that will ever find Chiluba not to have stolen from the Zambian people. There is however, something that appears to be a trend. Whenever Chiluba is about to appear before medical doctors to ascertain his fitness for trial, all of a sudden the vocal man crumbles. A medical friend of ours suggested that probably this man stops taking his medication and eating a few days before facing the doctors and comes to them in a very weak state. We can’t pass this before Chiluba because the man is a crook who can do anything to escape being made to account for his crimes.

Chiluba didn’t want to appear before the London High Court and ran away from it after realising that the truth had been fully dug out. There is no doubt that Chiluba doesn’t want to attend the criminal trial against him in our magistrate courts and would do anything to avoid going to court. He would even stop eating and taking medication if that can temporarily stop him from attending court.

But this is not to say Chiluba is well. We know very well that he is not well; he is a victim of the life he lived. And we can only hope that he will not blame his illness on us for our attacks on him or anybody else who has tried to make him account for his thefts. We never sent him to steal. In fact, if one reads the many editorial comments we wrote in the past, we were always advising him against corruption; we were repeatedly reminding him that he would not be able to get away with his criminal conduct after leaving office. We were not misfortune tellers; we were merely interpreting the consequences of what we saw.

Anyway, there’s nothing that is going to save Chiluba from prosecution - only death can halt this process. As long as he lives jail is waiting, he may even be taken on a stretcher to jail. After all, there are so many of our fellow poor citizens who have been sent to jail while they are ill. And the courts have always said ‘why did you commit a crime if you knew you were not well?’