Maravi

Chungu, a foolish fugitive

Chungu, a foolish fugitive
Written by Editor

It is said that you can run but you can’t hide. And Xavier Chungu should by now know very well what this means. It’s over four years since Chungu bolted, jumped bail to avoid criminal prosecution for stealing public funds.

Looking at what has come out of our courts, the verbatim reports of court proceedings, it’s clear why Chungu ran away. He knew what he had done and the consequences of his deeds. Otherwise, why should a person who has been granted bail on such generous terms run away? It will be interesting to see if Chungu will again apply for bail and be granted such a privilege.

We will not be surprised to hear that Chungu has run away again if he realises that he is going in. Anyway, we leave that to the wisdom of our courts of law.

Becoming a fugitive is a romantic concept that is at once full of terror, excitement and opportunity. There are many reasons people become fugitives. But Chungu seems to have become a fugitive for only one reason: fear of prison. But he forgot that becoming a fugitive is a complicated bit of business.

If you have stolen, it’s always better to stay and face the temerity of your actions. And the best thing to do is to simply admit your crime and go in and do your time. There is no need to pretend or cheat yourself that you are “innocent until proven guilty”. You can try to deceive other people that you are innocent but there is no need to deceive yourself.

Some crooks even think that if they can manage to convince their lawyers that they are innocent, then they are innocent through and through. Life is not like that. A criminal’s lawyer is not the one who will make the decision whether to convict or not. If Chungu thought he was innocent, why did he run away? Why didn’t he just go in court and have his day?

The best thing if one knows that they have stolen is simply to admit and plead guilty and go in and serve whatever time than waste time trying to pretend they are innocent and try to defend what cannot be defended.

The return on investment is not there. Running is dangerous and expensive financially and emotionally. And this should only be done in extremely rare circumstances. And one of such circumstances is political persecution or a system run amok.

The price of running, of being a fugitive, is too high. Being separated from people you love and who love you is terrifying if you run. For a time, no matter how powerful or important you were in life, you will be a very weak person, continually looking over your shoulders. It’s better to go to jail for two, three, four or even five years than to be a fugitive for over four years like Chungu.

The conditions in prison will suck, but many people in the world live worse. You will be deprived of everything you know and love and you will learn to survive. You will learn that things have little value and people do. You will learn that family can be loving or family can be dangerous or both. You will learn that you have few friends. The experience will be awakening or deadening depending on your spiritual state before you were incarcerated.

Leaving the country is easy. But you will need to give thought to what your resources are and how you will get them to you without the law enforcement stopping you.

But Chungu now knows that if you are a criminal, there is no place to hide, this big planet becomes too small for you. At the beginning of his run, Chungu was very pompous, he was showing off in Lisbon. But eventually, he ended up next door in Maputo.

Life was becoming increasingly tough for him, even his complexion had changed to grey. Whatever he had stolen was becoming thin by the day and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to maintain the flamboyant lifestyle he had led from 1991 to 2002.

The ending for Chungu will be disastrous. By the time he comes out of prison, his loot would have been exhausted.

Credit must be given to the Task Force on Corruption who patiently waited for him to come back. Of course, not passively so, because efforts were being made to bring him back to justice. We know that the Task Force was collaborating with Interpol to fish him out of Mozambique. And when Chungu realised that his days were numbered and he had nowhere else to run to, he decided to hand himself over. So the truth is that Chungu has not voluntarily surrendered himself. The Task Force has forced him to do so. But it’s too late, it won’t do him any good – he has always spoiled things for himself.

But it is difficult to understand how this crooked and cowardly rat managed to be at the top of our country’s intelligence services for more than 10 years. Anyway, the results of what he did give us an idea of why it was possible for him to stay at the helm of our intelligence services for that long.

Chungu was not different from the crook who was his boss, the corrupt rat we had elected to lead our country – Frederick Chiluba. Both of them had minds of an ant in an anthill. It is equally difficult to understand how such a rat could have been at the helm of our country for 10 years doing the things he did, squandering public resources as he did.

We think Chungu’s friends who had been using him as a scapegoat for everything they did must be panicking now that he is here to tell his side of the story. Defences may have to change. But this is not possible, it’s too late. They have to live with the consequences of their lies while Chungu dances to his own tune.

We hope the Zambian people are following these plunder cases very closely and are learning the valuable lessons from them to ensure that people like these do not get near power again.

We hope that those who are in government are learning something and will ensure that they don’t fall in the same pit.

But from what we are seeing, they don’t seem to be learning the lesson. And this may explain why today they are embracing Chiluba for all his crimes, for all his corruption, for all his misdeeds and intolerance. Probably there is something in common between him and them.

After all, it is said that birds of the same feather flock together. But we just hope their friendship with Chiluba will not push them into adventurism and try to do crazy things, try to free him from these prosecutions or even from serving a prison sentence if he is so convicted.

As for Chungu, we say welcome back stupid fugitive. We say stupid because a wise person would not have done what Chungu did. And we hope Attan Shansonga will also realise the futility of his decision to jump bail and come back to face the consequences of his corruption.

Labels: XAVIER CHUNGU

posted by MrK @ 5:01 AM