Maravi

Lessons are not being learnt

COMMENT - An excellent editorial, and I hope a very important and influential one. We have a serious choice to make: we can either accept this situation and throw our hands in the air and say there is nothing we can do about it. Or we can redouble our efforts and fight it with all the tenacity, conviction and courage we can marshal. What is need is reform in governance. What is needed, is to not root out the corrupt, but to massively decrease the opportunity for corruption. Oversight. Transparancy. Professionalism.

1) Oversight

Let the ZRA issue comptrollers to all government projects, monitor and issue progress reports on a weekly basis. Give them unrestricted access to these projects and the company's finances.

2) Transparancy

Debate every major deal in parliament, with free access from the public, including the press. What a different economy and country it would have been, if the Development Agreements had been freely available and discussed by the public. Zambia would not have lost out on the commodities boom, because the government of the day, secretively gave away the mines and agreed to not let them pay taxes. The need for transparancy extends to the IMF and World Bank themselves, but it the Zambian government that we can do something about.

3) Professionalism

There has to be a strict separation between the government and the state. Let elected representatives set public policy, and let the civil servants carry this policy out, without further interverence. But there should be no contact between these two organisations. Stop the appointment of civil servants by politicians. The parastatals would be performing excellently, if it were not for political appointments of people who are more loyal than they are competent - including cadres as permanent secretaries. Let appointments in the civil service and parastatals be made on the basis of merit - through exams and tribunals, and never again through appointment by elected officials. There is a place for political oversight of the civil service, to the extent that new policies must be carried out, as is the expressed will of the electorate. However, technical jobs, management jobs, should only be carried out by individuals with a long record of experience, and these positions should never be handed out as rewards for political services rendered.

4) Legal frameworks

There should be clear frameworks that spell out the obligations of parastatals, local government councils, and other arms of government that not only prohibit corruption, but also protect these organisations from anyone who would sway them from the path of righteousness - politicians, businessmen, and other branches of government.


Lessons are not being learnt
Written by Editor

Lusaka chief resident magistrate Charles Kafunda yesterday made a very worrying observation. Sentencing former Zambia Air Force commander Lt Gen Sande Kayumba to two years imprisonment with hard labour, magistrate Kafunda observed that “cases of public officers abusing their offices were becoming more prevalent and hence the need for some deterrent mechanism”.

It is clear from this and other recent convictions involving high-ranking public officials and their associates that respect for public funds and resources had been totally lost under Frederick Chiluba’s regime. Things must have gone totally out of control. Corruption seems to have become the norm and not the exception under Chiluba’s regime. And no wonder Chiluba himself is awaiting a judgment over corruption charges on July 20.

And his wife Regina has been handed a two-year sentence connected to theft, corruption involving public funds. Almost all the top generals who served under Chiluba have been convicted for abuse of office, for stealing public funds. And many other senior civil servants and public officials who served under Chiluba are either in court or in prison. This is a sad picture. This is a symptom of a very serious problem in our country.

Levy Mwanawasa deserves a lot of credit for the steps he took to ensure that these cases of corruption were brought to the attention of our people by prosecuting those found wanting. And with these convictions, we thought people would learn something. But it seems the lessons are not being learnt.

Even under Levy himself, right under his nose some unscrupulous public officers were still stealing and abusing public resources. We have the classic case of Lt Gen Christopher Singogo who was brought in to replace a corrupt commander who was facing corruption charges. It didn’t take long before Singogo started to do the same things and was even convicted before Kayumba.

And despite the experiences of Chiluba and those around him, it is surprising to see Rupiah Banda and those around him behaving in the same way. And probably this explains their friendship, their close association with Chiluba and his people. Rupiah’s team seems to have embraced all the rotten practices of the Chiluba regime. The convictions going on don’t seem to scare them, don’t seem to mean a thing to them.

Probably this explains something about human behaviour that we don’t seem to understand. One starts to wonder if there is anything in the form of deterrence that will come from these convictions, these sentences that our courts of law seem to be handing out to these thieves. If prison sentences were truly a deterrent, probably by now many of our prisons would be empty and our prison warders would be simply playing njuga, draughts or nsolo the whole day because there would be no prisoners to look after. But there is no shortage of prisoners. Our prisons are today overcrowded.

It reminds us of what used to happen in West Africa. There would be a military coup with the coup leaders accusing the government and those they have toppled of corruption. They would execute them for corruption and just come to do the same themselves and also end up being executed for corruption.

No one can dispute that the cases of corruption before our courts are very few in relation to the magnitude of corruption in government. There are many people who were involved in corruption under the Chiluba regime who have escaped the dragnet. There are also many under Levy who have gotten away with it. And it is these who are today making members of the Rupiah regime think they can also get away with it.

We have a serious choice to make: we can either accept this situation and throw our hands in the air and say there is nothing we can do about it. Or we can redouble our efforts and fight it with all the tenacity, conviction and courage we can marshal. This demonstrates the tragedy of our people. We are convinced that it is utterly impossible to situate ourselves in the reality of today’s Zambia if the panorama presented by the facts coming out of our courts is not clearly understood by all our people and all our leaders for their profound meditation. This corruption is distressing.

We share the bitter feeling of impotence that many of our people who hate corruption and understand its evils have in the face of today’s reality.

So gloomy are the realities and prospects for the future viewed as a whole that they could generate pessimism and discouragement if we were not sure of our aims. They are inevitably a bitter pill to swallow, but if we are to face up to the realities we have first to become aware of them.

We do not have, nor do we think anyone has, magic remedies for this theft of public resources, for this abuse and apparently insoluble corruption. History shows, however, that no problem has ever been solved until it has become a tangible reality of which everyone is aware. Today we have a government whose leader seems to be so keen to defend wrongdoing, seems to be an ardent defender of corruption, a man with a record of corruption. This is an anguishing situation for those who are committed to fighting corruption because this government is not against corruption, it is for corruption. And they don’t pretend on this score. They may utter a few contradictory words here and there supporting the fight against corruption but no one can make a mistake as to where they stand in the fight against corruption. Yes, they pose a serious challenge to the fight against corruption because they have got all the state resources at their disposal to defend corruption and even fight those who are fighting corruption because they feel they are being fought. In truth, they are being fought because they are corrupt. But, no matter how enormous the difficulties, no matter how complex the task, there can be no room for pessimism, for surrender to these characters. To do so would be to renounce all hope and resign ourselves to the final defeat. We have no alternative but to struggle, trusting in the great moral and intellectual capacity of our people and their instinct for self-preservation, if we wish to harbour any hope for survival, for making our country a more just, fair and humane nation.

Only with a tremendous effort and the moral and intellectual support of all can we face a future that objectively appears desperate and sombre.

We hope that the modest effort our courts are making with some very good judicial activism in the fight against corruption may help create this necessary awareness. Our courts have taken up their proper role in the fight against corruption and need the support of all Zambians of goodwill.

What is being reported in the media about corruption, and what is coming out of our courts of law are facts are realities that are irrefutable. But everyone must be aware that fighting corruption is a complex and difficult thing without easy victories. Our aspirations and interests clash with the lack of understanding, selfishness. Truly, we have no alternative but to struggle and defeat corruption. Honest people constitute the vast majority of the citizens of this country, and their rights and interests cannot continue to be trampled underfoot forever by gangs, tandems of corrupt and greedy politicians and public servants.

But fighting corruption will be very difficult if democratic rights are not in the first place defended, if democracy is not broadened and entrenched in our country. Corrupt regimes are never democratic – they are despotic, they are intolerant and repressive. We are seeing serious signs of that. We have no alternative but to struggle without respite and end this injustice, this criminal abuse of our people and their resources. But the unity of all Zambians of good will is absolutely necessary in this fight. They must not allow anybody or anything to divide them. Let us form an indestructible battle line of Zambians of goodwill to put an end to corruption and abuse in our country. Zambians have never been characterised by resigned submission or defeatism in the face of difficulties. We have confronted complex, difficult situations in the last few years with unity, firmness and determination. Together we have striven and struggled and together we have scored victories. In this same spirit and with this same determination, we must be ready to wage the most colossal, legitimate, worth and necessary battle against corruption, against abuse for our people’s lives and future.

Labels: CORRUPTION

posted by MrK @ 4:07 PM