Maravi

Rupiah must allow Masebo to speak

Rupiah must allow Masebo to speak
Written by Editor

On Tuesday June 2, 2009 we received a copy of the letter dated May 31, 2009 written by local government and housing minister Benny Tetamashimba to his predecessor Sylvia Masebo.We did not request to be copied in this letter. We cannot even claim to have dug deeper. The information contained in the letter was brought to our doorstep by a government minister, Tetamashimba.

This is one of Rupiah Banda’s most vocal backers within the party and its government. In fact, Tetamashimba reminds us of what we thought was a bygone era in our politics.

In the unsolicited letter that Tetamashimba copied to us, he was making allegations of what appeared to be serious breaches within his ministry. He also made it very clear that these misdeeds were done by Masebo. It is not us who accused Masebo of anything. It is a serving Cabinet minister who saw it fit to release his allegations to the public. This is why Tetamashimba copied the letter to us.

With this letter in hand, we decided that the information contained was very important and should indeed be given to the public. But before doing this, we gave Masebo the chance to comment on it because Tetamashimba was clearly accusing her of grave misdeeds.

In her reaction, Masebo told us that she was happy to respond. She also informed us that she had requested Rupiah Banda, through his Vice-President George Kunda to allow her to respond. This is because, according to her, as a former Cabinet minister she was not allowed to discuss the issues that Tetamashimba wanted her to discuss without getting approval from the President. We found this explanation reasonable and in keeping with good professional behaviour.

Since the challenge had come from a Cabinet minister and a very staunch defender of Rupiah’s record – Tetamashimba – we did not expect Rupiah to have any problems allowing Masebo to talk.

Against this background, it is surprising that Rupiah is now accusing us of trying to distort politics because we asked him to inform the nation whether or not he had allowed Masebo to talk. There is no distortion on our part. We are simply doing what his Cabinet minister expected of us when he copied his letter to Masebo to us.

Tetamashimba must have had an end in mind when he decided to do what he did. As we said before, it is not normal for a minister to address a letter such as the one Tetamashimba authored to a newspaper like ours. But normal or not, the issues that were raised are matters of public interest. We should not be blamed for the ineptitude of Rupiah’s government.

If Rupiah is trying to run the country with a band of indisciplined and opinionated lieutenants, he should not blame us when they put him in an awkward position.

It is not The Post that is trying to distort issues. It is Rupiah and his sycophants who are distorting straightforward matters.

Rupiah and his friends seem to be getting used to the habit of defaming others and not expecting them to respond or fight back. They want everybody to be running around in fear. This is not acceptable.

What did Rupiah expect us to do when we received the letter from Tetamashimba? Ignore it? As a newpaper, we could not do that, even if we have to state the obvious. Tetamashimba has constituted himself into an official whistle-blower.

It is not our business at this stage to try and find out what is going on in Tetamashimba’s head or to understand his motives. We have chosen to deal with the facts as they are. Tetamashimba has implied that Masebo did wrong things regarding the Keep Zambia Clean campaign vehicles, Lusaka Girls School land issue, speedboats and the purchase of the hearses.

In relation to the boats, Tetamashimba has even said some people died in Siavonga because of the boats that Masebo bought.

These are very serious revelations. No serious newspaper can afford to ignore such allegations, especially when they are made by a serving Cabinet minister in public with no rebuttal from the government.

Why should we not ask Rupiah when he is going to allow Masebo to speak? She needs to speak. After all, Tetamashimba challenged her to talk. He stated in his letter to Masebo: “I challenge you to tell the nation. As minister I am responsible for all good things but for suspected corrupt (sic) or plunder, I am not supposed to swallow that. The Zambian people are suspecting that there is something fishy and you cannot stay hiding in a hole but to tell what you know.”

This is a serious challenge. Rupiah should not participate in keeping Masebo in a hole so that the Zambian people don’t know what she knows. This will not do.

We keep saying that if our country is going to develop, we have to have genuine determination to establish accountability. Rupiah must be prepared to behave transparently. We have to be ready to expose and deal with all the wrong things that have been going on in government regardless of when they happened and who did them.

To somehow suggest that because some criminal things happened when Levy Mwanawasa was president they should not be dealt with would be foolish. We have to root out corruption, abuse of office and theft of public resources from government ,regardless of who did it. To try to cover up the rot that is going on under Rupiah’s government by saying that there are wrong things that happened during Mwanawasa’s tenure is cheap. If wrong things happened during Mwanawasa’s tenure, deal with them. By the same token, if wrong things are happening, and they are, during Rupiah’s tenure, they should be dealt with.

This is what the rule of law demands. This is how society develops.

As for the Tetamashimba and Masebo saga, we will continue to demand that Masebo is allowed to speak. And when Masebo speaks, we will be very grateful if she can also deal with the fire tenders that were acquired during her tenure at the Ministry of Local Government and Housing. Maybe for some reason Tetamashimba forgot to include this in the list of demands that he was making from Masebo.

It is not right to defame people and deny them the right to defend themselves. Rupiah must allow Masebo to speak. The allegations made by Tetamashimba against Masebo are not a private matter. These are issues that have been brought into the public domain.

Accusing The Post of somehow trying to distort this issue is being dishonest. What has The Post done except to report what a serving Cabinet minister sent to them in a letter copied to, among others, the Secretary to the Cabinet. It is not right for Rupiah to suggest that we are somehow unprofessional in the way that we have handled this matter. How else could we have handled it?

Labels: BENNY TETAMASHIMBA, RUPIAH BANDA, SYLVIA MASEBO, THE POST

posted by MrK @ 2:59 PM