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Electoral corruption is Africa's greatest sabotage, says Nevers

Electoral corruption is Africa's greatest sabotage, says Nevers
By Speedwell Mupuchi
Friday January 11, 2008 [03:00]

ELECTORAL corruption is the greatest sabotage Africa faces today, Reform Party president Pastor Nevers Mumba has said. And Pastor Mumba yesterday said without clear policies, strategic institutions, and a constitution that demands accountability, Zambia’s fight against corruption would always only be good rhetoric.

Commenting on the disputed Kenyan elections, Pastor Mumba said Africans were tired of the abuse of their votes. The disputed elections in Kenya saw President Mwai Kibaki being declared winner.

The opposition leader, Raila Odinga, claimed President Kibaki stole his victory.

“We must work to ensure that electoral offenses are heavily punished by completely disqualifying those implicated in vote buying,” Pastor Mumba said.

He said the recent Kenya experience was a big lesson for Africa.

“The permissive electoral processes of Africa will, henceforth, only accelerate violence and rob us of true and lasting development for the continent. As we march towards the 2011 election, Zambia would do well to reflect on the Kenya experience. We can together avoid loss of life by doing our homework now,” he said.

“The days of electoral theft are over in Africa. Zambia is privileged to have the ongoing Constitutional Conference. This is an opportunity to ensure that the electoral act is cleaned up and sealed against abuse.”

Pastor Mumba said Zambia must rise and lead the way in the vicious fight against corruption.

And Pastor Mumba noted that corruption was not a political problem, but a heart problem embedded in selfishness and greed.

Pastor Mumba said Zambia would remain stigmatised by its ranking as number 11 most corrupt country in the world.

“The goal of the government should, therefore, be to change this perception by sustaining an aggressive fight against corruption,” he said.

Pastor Mumba said corruption was in effect a tax usually imposed by the privileged few and usually, affected the most vulnerable members of society.

“A retired lady once narrated her ordeal to me concerning the effect and extent of corruption in Zambia. She has been waiting for her retirement benefits for close to 10 years. Her frequent visits to the Ministry of Finance have yielded no success. Recently a friend of hers advised her on how to obtain her money in record time - to promise the responsible officer a percentage of her benefits.

When she made this offer, the officer demanded that he gets K200,000.00 from every million kwacha she will get. This is 20 per cent tax on the principal! In desperation the lady collected the money minus the 20 per cent ‘tax’ which was pocketed by the public officer.

I asked her why she did not report the officer to higher authorities. Her answer was; “everyone in the department is corrupt, and you will only end up implicating yourself further,” Pastor Mumba narrated.

Pastor Mumba said Zambia could break the shackles of corruption by creating a new environment that was hostile to corruption.

Labels: CORRUPTION, ELECTIONS, NEVERS MUMBA

posted by MrK @ 4:33 PM