Donor diplomacy

Donor diplomacy
Written by Editor

The news of another cooperating partner to our government suspending aid to Zambia cannot go without comment. It is a serious matter that calls for some reflection. Only a week ago, the Swedish government announced the suspension of aid to the Ministry of Health because of concerns that they have regarding accountability and stewardship of the resources that their taxpayers give to Zambia.

And yesterday, we carried a story where the Dutch government announced the suspension of aid to the Zambian health sector. This is a serious development.

According to the figures available to us, donor funding to the health sector amounts to 55 per cent of the Ministry of Health’s requirement with our own treasury contributing 45 per cent. This is why we say the withdrawal of any donor funding to the health sector is a serious development to which the government needs to respond.

In suspending their aid, the donors have said they are concerned about the reports of corruption and abuse of government resources that are being reported in the media today. This is the diplomatic message that has been delivered to our government.

The question that the donor position raises is: what are they actually saying? We say this because being diplomats, they try to communicate in a nuanced way. There is a deeper message behind the words they are saying. This is the art of diplomacy. Delivering a serious message without being offensive. If we say the diplomats have merely suspended support and look no farther, we will be cheating ourselves.

We do not think it is easy for these friends of Zambia to wake up one morning and simply say because Henry Kapoko is alleged to have stolen K10 billion from the Ministry of Health, ‘we are suspending aid’. This will be a very naïve way of looking at what is going on.

The donors are saying to the government that there is something very wrong about the way public resources are being expended. This is not about Kapoko, it is about the way Rupiah and his friends are relating to the cause for public accountability.

It is shameful that almost 45 years after our independence, our government does not seem to want to be accountable to their own people, to the extent that foreign governments with whom we have relations such as Sweden and the Netherlands, are being forced to remind our government that they should be accountable. What they are saying, by taking this drastic measure of suspending aid to a vital area of national need, is that Rupiah and his friends are not engendering confidence. It seems like many of our people, the donors are concerned that there is no accountability in Rupiah’s government.

It is wrong for us to accept help from other people and yet fail to account for it or indeed fail to ensure that it reaches the people for whom it is given.

Rupiah needs to change the way he is approaching the process of government. His chief preoccupation should not be showing everybody that he is in charge. Rupiah should be more concerned about delivering to the people. And if Rupiah is concerned about delivering to the people, and not delivering them to the cemetery in the many Chinese hearses he has bought, he will have no problem being accountable to them.

We say this because it seems Rupiah has a crisis of identity. He does not know who he is or what he is supposed to do in relation to the people. Rupiah wants to be the boss and not servant of the people. This is why Rupiah and his friends are having problems with accountability. They are having problems with everything else except they do not seem to have time to deal with the problems that our people are facing.

If only Rupiah and his friends could embrace accountability and be prepared to subject themselves to the interest of the people, they would find that they are better able to find solutions to the many problems that the nation is facing.

We say this because we do not want to pretend that there is a magic solution to the problems that we face as a nation. We also do not want to give the impression that an individual, any individual, can be the solution to all our problems. There is no genius in any one of our people that can sort out all our problems; there is only a collective genius.

The collective genius can only emerge if those who govern realise that there is nothing inimical about accountability. Indeed, there is nothing demeaning about subject to the people. Such an attitude can only lead to a culture of transparency. And transparency must give birth to increased confidence in the actions and motives of government.

The flipside to this is that where there is resistance to accountability, a refusal to be subject to the people, there is a lack of transparency. Those in leadership begin to operate in an opaque way. They do not want the people to fully understand what they are doing. Such a way of operating creates a culture of suspicion. The people lose confidence in their government. Whatever the government does is questioned.

This is what is happening to Rupiah. He ascended to the helm of the MMD party by pretending that he was going to be a unifier; a mature old man who was going to lead in a humble way. Some of the people who were selling his candidature sincerely believed that he meant well. But right from his campaign for adoption, Rupiah showed that he was not going to be accommodating to any divergent views. His way was the only way. Accountability and subjection to public scrutiny is not something that Rupiah welcomed.

What is unfortunate is that Rupiah has carried this attitude into the way he is running government. He does not want to be accountable. Rupiah thinks that being President has placed him beyond scrutiny. Anyone questioning Rupiah is insulting him according to his many sycophants. This is the problem that Rupiah has created for himself. He is quickly trying to cover himself in an aura of infallibility. From being a retired farmer clad in gumboots as he put it the other day, he now knows everything. His sycophants are almost suggesting that nobody can run Zambia better than him.

When all this is being said, public disillusionment with his government is increasing everyday. And this is not without cause.

In the six months that Rupiah has been President, he has not done anything to prove his critics wrong. In fact, to the contrary, he seems to be headed full steam on to prove anyone that ever expressed fear about his becoming President right. In other words, Rupiah does not seem to care what the people think or say, which is why he can never be accountable.

When people said Rupiah would run a corrupt government, his supporters and backers complained. But what has Rupiah done to allay these fears?

Every other day we are reporting one scandal after the other. And the reason is simple; Rupiah did not go into government to serve the people. He is there to serve his interests and those of his backers. We say this because if Rupiah and his backers were sensitive at all, they would not even be talking about 2011. So many things have gone wrong in the last few months that Rupiah is not giving anybody any confidence that he is capable of running this country in a way that brings prosperity to all. Against this background, it is shocking that Rupiah and his backers are busy announcing 2011 ambitions.

The lack of public accountability in Rupiah’s government has manifested itself in the number of deals that they have tried to do without any transparency at all. We have not forgotten the GMO maize in which Rupiah and his family were mentioned. Then there was also the Dora Siliya RP Capital/Zamtel and Selex/radar procurement scandals again in which Rupiah’s family was mentioned. Now we have the container hospitals they want to buy from China. As if that is not enough, Rupiah and his friends have brought us 100 hearses to make sure that they deliver us to the graveyards that are over subscribed due to poor medical care. This is Rupiah, this is his record.

With all this happening, we are convinced that the donors are not really talking about Kapoko, it is Rupiah they are talking about. His government is not giving them any confidence that it has the will and determination to fight corruption and be accountable. Asking Dr Joshua Kanganja to suspend civil servants who are suspected of having stolen from government does not prove government’s commitment to fighting corruption. Rupiah needs to do more to show that he is learning the lesson that times have changed, Zambia will not condone corruption.