George Kunda

George Kunda
Written by Editor

It is very clear that the Ministry of Justice is being abused by George Kunda. It is not difficult for any honest person to see that George has not discharged his duties as Minister of Justice, and previously as Attorney General, with sufficient honour, integrity and fairness. George has used these offices to carry on personal agendas that have very little, if not nothing, to do with the interests of the people.

George has never hesitated to use his political position to try and manipulate the office of the Attorney General, Solicitor General and the Director of Public Prosecutions. George has put excessive pressure on these offices and the officers occupying them to do wrong things, to defend indefensible things and to justify that which can’t be justified. And in the process, George has created veritable chaos in the nation and has nearly ruined the careers of very good lawyers in public service.

When George was occupying the office of Attorney General, he tried to use that office to totally derail or cripple the fight against corruption. If things were left to George alone, these corruption convictions we are seeing in our courts of law wouldn’t be there. George tried everything possible to destroy the Task Force on Corruption and malign those who were effective in carrying out its duties.

Today George is still fighting for the destruction of the Task Force and the derailment of its work. If things were to be left to George alone, all those facing corruption charges today under the Task Force would be set free. It should not surprise anyone tomorrow to hear that George is campaigning for the pardoning of Frederick Chiluba if he is convicted, for the generals and others who have been convicted for corruption.

Those who are weak will be messed up by George. The Zambian people know very well how George tried to mess up the work of Caroline Sokoni as acting Director of Public Prosecutions. But she was an honest lady who stood her ground and refused to be part of George’s scheme to corruptly enter a nolle in favour of their friend Kashiwa Bulaya. George tried to drag in many other lawyers to defend that scheme.

Former Solicitor General Sunday Nkonde, Darlington Mwape and even the current DPP Chalwe Muchenga were nearly messed up by George over the Bulaya nolle. Bulaya is today in jail after having been convicted by the magistrates’ court and losing an appeal in the High Court. Mind you, this is in a matter which George said there was no evidence to prosecute Bulaya.

George knew very well that there was enough evidence to prosecute and convict Bulaya. But he chose to be dishonest about it, to tell a lie about it. George is not empty at law. He is actually a good lawyer. And therefore his faulty judgement over the Bulaya nolle was deliberate and conscious. It was an act of outright dishonesty on George’s part.

George has not stopped his schemes at Bulaya. If it was still left to him, the likes of Xavier Chungu and many others facing corruption charges would be walking our streets as free men.

But when people in such high offices do wrong things, they always attempt to manipulate those under them to be accomplices, to be at their service. It is very clear that there was an attempt to manipulate Solicitor General Dominic Sichinga to support their evil scheme. And when they thought they had him on their evil side, the best inside him prevailed.

It was evil for them to think Sichinga would go before that tribunal, hold the Holy Bible in his hand and swear by the Almighty God that the evidence he was going to give would be the truth and nothing but the truth and ask God to help him and then proceed to tell lies. And when that did not happen, they want to accuse Sichinga of having misled them! Misled them in what? Who was trying to mislead who? It was them who were trying to mislead Sichinga, and not Sichinga misleading them.

As for Mumba Malila, the Attorney General, it was a question of being truly honest. A clear demonstration that if you are honest, truly honest, you won’t be corrupted; if you are unassuming and have a clear understanding of the worth of people and of yourself, you won’t be corrupted.

But as we have stated before, George should realise that manipulators like him have never enjoyed the respect of anyone. They might have terrified people into submission, but those people have never had respect for them. Manipulators have never deserved anybody’s respect or been successful anywhere. George may think he is successful in life by manipulating his way into this and that.

Well, there are many ways of measuring success but the only success that is worth calling success is that which comes from honest, caring and respectful dealings with others, dealings that are fair, humane and just.

Manipulation doesn’t have substance, soon the reality of George’s deceitful ways will catch up with him. He shouldn’t think those senior lawyers in government he is dealing with are less beings to him, have no sense of dignity and pride and can be used like his personal servants. Those men and women are fellow professionals and they have pride and dignity to defend.

Soon they will refuse to be used in the manner he is trying to use them. Already, Malila and Sichinga have demonstrated that dignity, that pride and that integrity. Soon George will find that he has no one to manipulate even at the DPP chambers in the way he used to do it.

As we have stated before, we think that everything – respect, relationships and understanding – is only possible among people who are honest with themselves and with others, people who have respect for themselves and for others. George’s conduct does not inspire respect, does not inspire faith and does not inspire loyalty.

Of course, there will always be some mercenaries to hire or who will be ready to hire themselves out, but there will also always be some men and women in our country who will refuse to be accomplices to wrong things like the way Malila and Sichinga did. And before George and his friends realise it, our civil and public service will soon be dominated by many Malilas and Sichingas.

We cannot have rule of law with characters like George exerting so much influence on the government ministries and departments dealing with justice. We say this because there is nothing that resembles the rule of law in George’s merciless heart.

It is not enough for us to say that the courts should follow and apply the laws faithfully and equally to all. We must in addition demand that there should be no dispensing powers vested in the hands of people like George which would relieve a person from the duties and processes of the law.

With the behaviour of people like George, it is clear to us that it is not sufficient to say that the holders of these legal and justice public offices are in practice, due to their high standards of probity, able to separate that part of their activity which they discharge as impartial ministers of justice from that which they perform as selfish, greedy political animals. Clearly, any system which relies on such high principles is open to abuse, and is being abused by people like George.

And if we go back in history, we shall generally find that although the notion that justice should be fairly administered may well have been accepted, those who administered the justice system were not expected to be in any real sense “independent”.

Thus in medieval England, from whose common law our country has derived its only national legal system, justice was a royal prerogative, which the ruler carried out through his appointed officials. As such, not only where there no separation of powers, but those who administered of the justice system were agents of those who ruled; while in theocratic societies, such as those where Islam was state religion, the administrators of justice had to conform to the dictates of the sacred law, as expressed in the Sharia and the Sunna.

George and his friends fit in very well in these medieval practices. He wants the Solicitor General, the Attorney General and the DPP, including the police as part of our judicial process, to do as he pleases. But where will such practices take us?

George is a very big disservice to our country’s justice system and should be moved very far from it. This is a job that requires honest people and not a liar, deceitful person, manipulative element like George. Well, Rupiah Banda may think a person of the character of George may be of value to him because he can dribble his way through this and that, manipulate this and that, bend the law here and there to get him out of trouble. But everything has got a time.

A day will come for accounting. Chiluba had a number of such characters around him. They manipulated a lot of things for him, including the current Constitution. But where is Chiluba today and where are those people who manipulated all those things for him? Chiluba is on his own today, waiting for his judgment day on July 20 and also waiting for the registration of the London High Court judgment so that what he stole from the people of Zambia can be given back to the people of Zambia in the Caesar style and fashion.

It is pleasing to see that the Zambian people are starting to highly appreciate the need for honesty and integrity in public service and they are starting to support and defend public officers who live up to such standards. Their defence of Sichinga and Malila should serve as a strong warning to George and his friends and the mercenaries they use to do their dirty things that their days are numbered.