Maravi

Fighting corruption to please donors

Fighting corruption to please donors
By Editor
Wed 31 Mar. 2010, 04:00 CAT

THERE’S clearly no commitment on the part of the key leadership of this government to fight corruption.

So far, all their actions are in the direction of defending and perpetrating corruption. It is very clear that the key leadership of this government seeks to benefit itself from tenders. It is in league with those who tender for government business and is out to assist them in all sorts of ways to secure government contracts. Its lack of commitment to fighting corruption is also evidenced by the way it has handled the prosecution of and litigations against Frederick Chiluba and those close to him.

And we agree with Wynter Kabimba when he says that Rupiah Banda’s government only shows signs of fighting corruption when they want to get some money from donors who they think are better placed to extend funding to a government that is seen to be fighting corruption. But the fight against corruption should not be reduced to pleasing donors because its consequences have far much wider implications for the present and future of our country.

To us, and indeed it should be so for the majority of Zambians, the fight against corruption is in the first instance not merely a tool to use to obtain donor funding. And it is not merely a moral issue, but a political struggle. By political struggle we do not mean just party political activity, but a struggle to defend our independence and the process of democratisation that our people are seeking and have embarked on. The struggle against corruption is therefore a struggle for the deepening and consolidation of our democratic processes. The struggle against corruption is a struggle for the accelerated implementation of the priorities of our people for increased employment, access to quality education and health care for all, and a struggle against poverty.

We all know that too many heroic struggles and promising democracies on our continent and in other parts of the world have been compromised or even degenerated as a result of attempts by those who are politically and economically powerful to grab power in order to pursue their narrow, selfish and greedy interest. The struggle against corruption is therefore fundamentally a political struggle since it must involve the whole nation in defending, consolidating and deepening our democracy. It is for this reason, among others, that we should intensify the struggle against corruption and build a broad front against this scourge.

Clearly, the struggle against corruption is political also because it is aimed at building the confidence of our people to tackle corruption, to expose it, to be whistle blowers without fear of being victimised. The corrupt will always seek to intimidate our people, so that they do not have the confidence to confront their actions. There is need to mobilise our people to stand and confront corruption wherever it occurs, be it in State House, in the National Assembly, the Judiciary or indeed the private sector. Our workers and their organisations in particular have a special role to play of being in the forefront of this struggle, as they are located in all our workplaces both in the public and private sectors.

However, in elevating the political nature of the struggle against corruption, the moral dimensions of this struggle must not be lost. The struggle against corruption must also be a struggle against values that are alien to those that guided our people’s struggle for independence. And these are the values of social solidarity, selfless commitment and personal sacrifices to addressing the needs of the poor, and to defeat the “dog eat dog” and “get rich quick” mentality.

Our struggle against corruption must also be turned into a platform for the forging of common societal values that should underpin the governance of our country and our relations with each other. At the heart of these values must also be the fact that there can be no meaningful democracy, human rights for our people unless there is drastic improvement in their socioeconomic conditions. Corruption is theft from the poor, as it undermines our efforts as a nation to build a better life for all, by diverting our country’s resources away from the poor into the pockets of a few well-placed characters.

Therefore, intensifying the fight against corruption is not just about defending our democratic aspirations in the present, important as this may be, but it is also about building a better Zambia for generations to come.

It is indeed a truism that our young people have become particular targets for the corrupt and other malfeasance in society. Our youth today is a particular target for all sorts of corrupt elements. They are also a target of the decadent values of “get rich quick” and the idolisation of wealth. It is for these reasons that we should be paying particular attention to fighting corruption among our young people in all that they do, be it at work, college or university or in youth organisations and even in our national politics where they participate.

Our young people are very vulnerable precisely because of the conditions of poverty that the great majority of them face. They are the most affected by unemployment and poverty. It is for these reasons that particular attention must be given in targeting young people in our fights against corruption. Our young people must not merely be treated just as a passive lot, but must be mobilised and be made to be at the centre of the struggle against corruption for the sake of their future and that of their country. Let’s help them to rise against corruption.

Let us not spend all our time lamenting about corruption; let us spend our time more fruitfully by focussing attention on finding ways and means to tackle this scourge of corruption. Let us analyse critically the sources and patterns of corruption in both our public and private sectors in a way that is action and solution-oriented.

And in doing so, let us turn our attention to how we can strengthen the state agencies that are in one way or another involved in the fight against corruption – the Anti Corruption Commission, the Drug Enforcement Commission, the police, the office of the Auditor General, our entire criminal justice system, the Zambia Revenue Authority, and so on and so forth – to be more effective in fighting the scourge of corruption. Our fight against corruption should not be seen or thought of to be a substitute for these state agencies, but to assist and work with these agencies in order to defeat this scourge. We must also seek ways to forge a partnership between the people and these institutions. We should therefore in our fight against corruption seek to protect the integrity of these institutions and ensure that they do their work without fear or favour.

We must also seek ways of combating corruption in state institutions, especially around tenders and government services and programmes in general.

One of the matters that require special attention is that of tenders and of finding alternative ways to them, where possible. Not every government service must be converted into a tender. For instance, there are many government services that can be given to communities directly, non-profit organisations and cooperatives to run, without the involvement of middlemen through tenders.

Whilst tenders will always be there, but we must watch against the tenderisation of the state. We have to find ways to halt this growing tenderpreneurship.

By tenderpreneurs we mean the corrupt collusion between business, politicians and civil servants and other public workers to capture government tenders.

Tenderpreneurship also pauses a threat and is an obstacle to a specially genuine small and medium entrepreneurs who get deprived of government work just because they do not have political connections. We must defend and promote genuine and clean entrepreneurs, and they are many of them in our country, and defeat tenderpreneurs.

This struggle must also entail that we have the courage to even act against our friends, relatives and political allies who have been caught with their fingers on the till. Working together, in this way, we can end corruption. Let us carry this struggle without fear or favour. Without eternal vigilance, corruption will devour our country.

There are many Zambians serving in positions of responsibility in both the public and private sector who abhor corruption and are determined to go about doing their work in the most honest manner. In the public service in particular, we can highlight and salute the role of thousands of public servants who do their work honestly and are totally dedicated to serve our people, whatever it takes. We have seen some of them in action against corrupt politicians and their agents. We saw some of them in the Dora Siliya Tribunal.

Similarly, in the private sector there are many workers and professionals who are only interested in doing an honest and good day’s work. Corruption must be fought wherever it occurs, both in the private and public sectors. As a matter of fact, it is very difficult to separate or distinguish between corruption in the public and private sectors, as there is often collusion and overlap between the two. It is often the private sector that identifies corrupt characters in the private sector, and vice versa, that is the source of much of the corruption we are witnessing. It is for this reason also that when we talk about tenderpreneurs – those who corruptly seek to capture tenders, especially government tenders, in cahoots with public servants and private companies – we talk about this phenomenon as it cuts across both the public and private sectors. All this paralysis we are witnessing in our country is in one way or another a consequence of this cancer in our midst.

Labels: CORRUPTION, DONORS, RED CARD CAMPAIGN, WYNTER KABIMBA

posted by MrK @ 4:28 AM