Criminal abuse of the police

Criminal abuse of the police
Written by Editor

It is said that a leader who relies on authority, on the police and other repressive agencies to solve problems of a social or political nature is bound to come to grief. It is also said that life is like a big wheel: the one who is at the top, today is at the bottom.

Clearly, the mark of great leaders is their ability to understand the context in which they are operating and act accordingly. These are lessons that Rupiah Banda and the minions that cheat him will do well to understand and appreciate.

As we have consistently reminded Rupiah and his minions, the exercise of power must be the constant practice of self-limitation, humility and modesty. It is now clear for everybody to see that the nation is in the grip of a repressive leader. We say this because of what is happening round about us.

On Friday, we saw a platoon of policemen having a lot of trouble to obey a High Court order. Although the High Court had decided that Fred M'membe the editor-in-chief of this newspaper should not be arrested, the police could not bring themselves to respect this order and follow its dictates.

What was clear from the behaviour of the police was that they seemed more scared of an invisible presence of the power that was directing their operations than the High Court order. One was forced to feel sorry for these humble policemen. No one in the hierarchy seemed capable of making the simple decision to obey a court order. They needed four hours of consultation to arrive at a decision to obey a court order.

This behaviour from an institution charged with the responsibility of maintaining law and order in our country is very worrying. Everyone present could see that these policemen had been given instructions, which they had to fulfill even if it meant bending or breaking the law. These humble sons of our people were too scared to communicate the bad news to the invisible power. Their orders were clear: Fred had to be arrested and humiliated. This is why we say the nation is in the grip of a repressive government.

Arresting, yes, this they could easily do. But humiliation never. We say this because we don't act out of pride. What was done had nothing to do with Fred's pride; but it had everything to do with the way our country is being governed and its institutions of governance are being run. And this includes the entire judicial process of our country. The formula is now well understood by all our people.

It starts with the declaration of one being wrong, of one being guilty, of one being a criminal by Rupiah. And then that declaration becomes an order to the police to effect arrest and for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to sanction or direct the prosecution. This is how the game is played. Once this is in motion, it rolls on like a rolling stone. This is the situation we found ourselves in last week. It was not a question of us being wrong or being right. That didn't matter.

What mattered to them was we had to be punished, humiliated. The behaviour of the police had nothing to do with the bench warrant. Actually, the bench warrant was a pretext for this behaviour and not the cause of it.

Not long ago, Rupiah told the nation that they will catch us one day. We may get away on this or that issue but one day Rupiah and his minions believe they will get even with us. It is this mindset that was driving the confusion of the police. Their failure to separate their professional duties from the whims and caprices of their political masters turned them into robots that were refusing to accept an instruction from a court of law.

Their political masters told them what to do: arrest Fred at whatever cost - so to them who is a judge of the High Court to come and change this instruction? This is where we are getting with Rupiah. And this is the process that we are expected to accept without challenging it. It would be naïve and criminal on our part to accept this type of behaviour without challenging it through all the other avenues available to us. It is for this reason that we sought the indulgence of the High Court over the conduct of the police.

We find the conduct of the leadership of the police in this country unacceptable. Their failure to face their political masters and tell them the truth about what is obtaining on the ground and how it differs with their wishes or desires is criminal. The police command do not seem to have a problem applying different standards to the same problems.

This is the kind of capriciousness they would like us to submit ourselves to. This is the kind of nonsense the like of shameless Shikapwasha would have us accept. What is even more unacceptable is the fact that whilst the police want to punish The Post for allegedly discussing a matter that is in court, Shikapwasha is free to discuss the same matter and call us names. Is there a different law for Shikapwasha? Anyway, nothing that Shikapwasha will say or do surprises us.

This is a man with no backbone. He seems ready to say anything as long as he thinks it’s going to help him to keep his job. These are the kinds of leaders that we have. These are the ones advising Rupiah today.

The systematic assault on the professionalism of our police by Rupiah and his minions should be stopped. We need that institution to safeguard our common interests. To use the police as an extension of the MMD is simply not acceptable. And to cooperate in this abuse is criminal. And no one should expect us to submit to such abuses. We can also not remain silent and neutral in matters of this nature.

These abuses need to be challenged, opposed and denounced in every way possible. Our conscience dictate that we must denounce these abuses; that we must oppose this injustice. We are not capable of doing nothing, of saying nothing, of not reacting to injustice and criminal abuse of legitimate institutions of the people. If in doing this they see us as criminals, then there is very little we can do. But they even then, in their heart of hearts, know very well that we are not criminals, we are decent and law-abiding citizens whose only crime is to refuse to submit to injustice and criminal abuse.

They are pursuing us today like criminals, but they know very well that we are not criminals. What they cannot stand, what they cannot accept is our independence from them and what we stand for, what we think and our conscience. This being the case, can it be any wonder to anybody that today Fred is being pursued with more vigour than fugitive Mathew Mohan who is facing a very serious case of murder?

What is happening today is a throw-back to the Chiluba days where law and order was secondary and subservient to the political wishes of Chiluba and his tandem of thieves.

When Chiluba came to power, he very quickly set about to destroy the processes and procedures that enabled government institutions to operate professionally. Chiluba and his innercircle dismissed any order and procedural operation of government entities as being Unipist and unacceptable. What was happening in the background was that government entities were being systematically destroyed to facilitate crime. Professional institutions such as the police were battered into submission. The result was it became easy to abuse government resources and get away with it. This is why even today Chiluba can argue that he kept private money in a government account. Every problem that government faced was blamed on poor laws and Kaunda-era legislation. To appease the donors, all sorts of new laws were enacted but there was never any intention to apply them to themselves.

We see similar things happening today. There is a deliberate attack on institutions of governance. Rupiah with the help of George Kunda, particularly, want to control all the important institutions of governance - the police, the courts, Parliament, important NGOs like the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) and even some churches. And those who refuse to cooperate, to give in or capitulate are categorised as enemies and are subjected to all sorts of attacks. We see this every day.

They will hide behind all sorts of nice-sounding words. They will even launch new anti-corruption policies and claim that the current laws are not sufficient. This is another Chiluba trick of hoodwinking the donors and the public. We say this because you can have all the best laws in the world but if the mechanism to effect or enforce those laws is stifled, muzzled, manipulated and rendered ineffective in all sorts of ways, such laws become useless.

The DPP's office is a good example of an office that should operate with the best possible professional independence. The DPP enjoys security of tenure and should not therefore worry about being fired if he differs with the political establishment. But who doesn't know that today Chalwe Mchenga, the current DPP, is under the clutches of Rupiah and George? It is obvious he will only do their bidding. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is also under the control of George. They will not prosecute any case which George does not approve or tells them not to. This is why the DPP has no shame in withdrawing an appeal against a clearly questionable acquittal of Chiluba. It has nothing to do with inadequacy of laws or weak grounds of appeal. The Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) is also not in a different position. They will only follow that which they are allowed to follow.

Clearly, what this shows is that you can have all the good laws in your statute books, all the good constitutional provisions you need but if there is no spirit in the hearts of men and women charged to enforce these statutory and constitutional provisions; or if the spirits in their hearts to do so are dead, no constitution, no act of parliament, no court order will save the situation. They will go around boasting about these legal or constitutional provisions and how good their system is and yet do the very opposite; behave as if no such laws existed.

This is the way this country is being run. It doesn't matter how many internal controls a system has on paper, if there is collusion or unwillingness on the part of those responsible for its effective, efficient and orderly functioning nothing good will come out of it - it will just be as good as having nothing. Again, this is the situation Zambia and Zambians find themselves in.

The question is; are we going to allow this to continue forever unabated? Are we going to remain silent and neutral on a matter that appears to be one of life and death for our people and our country? For our part we have made our choice: we will not accept this. And we believe that only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can this behaviour, this attitude be changed.