Maravi

What’s wrong with Chiluba?

What’s wrong with Chiluba?
Written by Editor

Blaming things on the past does not make them better. But there is need to know the past and ensure that it is not repeated. The past is a rich source on which we can draw in order to make decisions for the future. And the aim of trying to look at what was done in the past is not necessarily to deride human action, or to weep over it or to hate it, but to understand it – and then to learn from it as we contemplate our future.

However, if criminal acts are found to have been committed in the past, those responsible for those crimes should be made to account, should be punished if found wanting. And there is nothing vindictive or wrong in doing so.

This is different from the wholesale licensing of crime and abuse of power that Frederick Chiluba is advocating, is calling for in his own defence. Chiluba says that leaders should not pursue their predecessors but should thank them even if they discover some weaknesses in their leadership. This is not the issue because weaknesses will always be found in all human decisions and actions. Perfection is very difficult to attain in many things, no matter how much effort we devote to try to make things turn out in the best possible way. Only life itself will be able to tell us where the shortcomings are and which aspects or details leave something to be desired. But we will always be able to improve the instruments we have established. We feel that any citizen may have made a great mistake at a given moment but then he may make great and extraordinary efforts to vindicate himself.

There is a difference between the honest mistakes every one of us makes every day and the criminal acts of a leader who steals public funds and uses them to enrich himself, to purchase useless things – spending over a million dollars in a boutique on shoes, shirts, pyjamas and suits. And after doing all this, expecting the next set of leaders to do nothing about it is criminal. Chiluba stole public funds and this cannot be disputed. Of course, they have deployed all sorts of deception, lies, propaganda and calumny to justify their crimes. They have got the political platform to do this. But there is no amount of lies, deception, manipulation and propaganda that will clear away what Chiluba did. They can try to falsify or destroy records but everything is there in London and elsewhere in this country. There is no case of theft against Chiluba that we can today fail to prove in any court of law. And this is why we have challenged Chiluba if he truly thinks he is innocent to sue us in this country or anywhere in the world for defamation. And we will show him and the nation what he did as we have done before.

Those in power have a duty to do an honest job and not to enrich themselves, their friends and family members by stealing public funds and expect the next set of leaders to do nothing about it and simply turn everything into a God’s case no appeal, to borrow from Chinua Achebe’s vocabulary.

There is need to recognise the fact that our system overprotects those in power from being made to account for criminal acts while they are in office. Unlike other countries where the leaders cannot get away with any crime while they are still in office, in our country one has to wait until they are out of office to sort them out. It is even very difficult to arrest and prosecute their family members and friends until they are out of office. If it were possible to make the president of this country account for criminal acts while he still occupies public office the way we saw it in America under Bill Clinton, there would be very little cause for following someone after they have left office.

In our country today, it’s not even possible to meaningfully criticise those in power. And to the extent that criticism is insufficient and superficial, it is possible that certain problems do not strike the leaders’ sensitivities with the necessary rapidity. They only come to know the crimes committed by themselves and in their names after they have left office. Some of them think the president should have everything he wants, it’s just a matter of ordering a parastatal chief, a government department or the chief of intelligence to find the money. This is how Chiluba operated. There is the evidence of convicted former Zanaco managing director Samuel Musonda which shows how Chiluba was using stolen money from this state-owned bank. The judgment is there from our courts of law for everyone to see. And this judgment was written by the same magistrate who three weeks ago acquitted Chiluba. What can Chiluba say about these observations by the same magistrate? Yes, Chiluba has survived going to jail but he should leave things at that rather than try to claim or justify a lot of unjustifiable things. There is no country where leaders should be allowed to commit crimes and go scot-free simply because they are leaders, they are presidents. Yes, our Constitution, our laws do give reasonable leeway for leaders to make mistakes and get away with it. But it cannot be a blanket ticket where all sorts of crimes can be committed against people with impunity. There is no democratic country in the world that operates on that basis; it’s only tyrannical regimes that are managed in that way.

Chiluba and his friends went too far in their plunder and other crimes against the people. They did not even attempt to cover appearances. They did not bother in the least to conceal what they were doing as long as it was done in the name of the intelligence or the military. They thought they had deceived the people with their crookedness and lies and they ended up deceiving themselves. They felt themselves lords and masters of the universe, with unlimited power.

Chiluba’s behaviour reminds us of the story of Dante. Dante divided his inferno into nine circles. He put the criminals in the seventh, the thieves in the eighth and the traitors in the ninth. Difficult dilemma the devils will be faced with, when they try to find an adequate spot for this man’s soul – if this man has a soul.

In every society, there are men of base instincts. The sadists, brutes, conveyors of all the ancestral atavisms go about in the guise of human beings, but they are monsters, crooks, thieves, plunderers, only more or less restrained by discipline and social habit. If they are offered a drink from a river of blood, they will not be satisfied until they drink the river dry. At their hands the best and noblest Zambians have suffered: the most valiant, the most honest, the most idealistic. The plunderer, the thief, the tyrant called them all sorts of names. They were suffering at the hands of men who collect a salary from the Republic.

We were taught that the man who abides by unjust practices and permits any man to trample upon and mistreat the country he was born in, is not an honourable man. We were also taught that in the world there must be a certain degree of honour just as there must be a certain amount of light. And that when there are many men without honour, there are always others who bear in themselves the honour of many men. These are the men who challenge the evil deeds and schemes of the likes of Chiluba; these are the men who rebel with great force against those who steal the people’s resources, the people’s life, against those who steal human honour itself. In those men, thousands more are contained, an entire people is contained, human dignity is contained.

We were taught that to fight and suffer for one’s homeland is to live forever. All this we learnt and we will never forget, even though today in our country there is suffering, there is an attempt to humiliate the men who practice the ideas taught to them from cradle. We were born with these duties and the Zambezi, Kafue and Luangwa rivers will dry up before we consent to be accomplices to, defenders of, Chiluba’s crimes.

It is understandable that those who fight crime, those who challenge the corrupt, the thieves, the plunderers should be made to suffer, should be humiliated in a Republic where the President enjoys the company of a criminal and a thief.

We think we have got something to learn from the Taiwanese because in this same edition, we are carrying a story in which they have sent their former president to prison for life for the same reasons Chiluba is today justifying. Anyway, this is what happens in a nation when standards, values and decency are lost. This is what happens when patronage and parasitism is the order of the day in a nation.

Labels: CHILUBA

posted by MrK @ 1:21 AM