‘Damn good thieves’

‘Damn good thieves’
By The Post
Fri 28 May 2010, 07:10 CAT

Short of violence, everything should be used to confront corruption.
And the courts remain the most effective way of fighting corruption. Outside that, arbitrariness may set in. And we know from history that without strong adherence to the rule of law, tyranny sets in under the guise of protecting society.

Give it to Levy Mwanawasa and to our magistrates and judges and indeed to all the law enforcement officers who investigated the many corruption cases that have ended in almost a 100 per cent conviction of all those who were accused of corruption. A strong legal and political precedent has been set in our country for us to follow and for others to emulate.

The set of corruption cases that were concluded with Wednesday’s conviction of former finance minister Katele Kalumba, former secretary to the treasury Professor Benjamin Mweene, former Ministry of Finance permanent secretary (budget and economic affairs) Boniface Nonde, former Ministry of Finance permanent secretary (finance and administration) Stella Chibanda, former Ministry of Finance chief economist Bede Mpande, former managing director Access Financial Services Limited Faustin Kabwe and his assistant Aaron Chungu have set a precedent of great value to our country.

These cases took a long time to conclude. But they have been concluded in a manner that is fair, justice and humane. The accused persons were accorded all the opportunities to defend themselves which they sometimes abused. Of course, this is not to say our judicial system is perfect. There are a lot of things that urgently need improvement and we hope lessons have been learnt.

And that said, what now needs our deepest reflections and meditation is the meaning and purpose of these convictions.

Most of the people who were convicted yesterday were public servants at the time of the crimes they committed. With the exception of Kabwe and Chungu, the rest were employed and paid by the state. It was not too much to expect that they would do their duties with full commitment and faithfulness to public interests.

But as magistrate Edward Musona rightly observed, these public servants used their positions to participate in siphoning public funds for all sorts of uses. What they did is a fundamental breach of the all-important fiduciary position they occupied in relation to our people. As fiduciaries they were our trustees, people who were meant to act in the best interest of all of us, but they gave in to the base instincts that drove them to theft and plunder of our national resources.

The crimes that Katele and others engaged in are very serious and should not be viewed lightly. These crimes illustrate the pernicious nature of corruption.

These public officers received amounts ranging from US$ 2,000 to US$ 50,000 but gave away public funds in excess of US$ 20 million to unscrupulous businessmen and colleagues. For peanuts, they were ready to compromise public services in the service of their thieving boss – Frederick Chiluba. Yes, this is what it was about. Chiluba is not far away from the conviction of Katele and others.

It is the kleptocracy that he presided over that gave rise to the kind of theft and plunder of public resources that people like Chibanda and Katele engaged in. It is difficult to understand how highly educated and otherwise very intelligent people like Prof Mweene could allow themselves to be bought for a pittance and tiny pieces of silver to betray our people. The gatekeepers, the people who were supposed to guard what belonged to our people became the looters. The whole thing had become free-for-all. Anybody who wanted could get what they wished with Chiluba as Father Christmas.

They thought they had got away with it and some of them mocked our people as they demanded justice. They have laughed and belittled the charges that they have been facing. But it is said that the wheels of justice grind slowly, but grind they do and yesterday their false and vain claims of innocence were dashed. The veneer of invincibility that they carried around was exposed for what it is. These chaps are nothing but common thieves and hoodlums who should not be trusted with public responsibility.

What this tells us is what happens when a nation is led by people who have no loyalty to those they lead. These are people who feel no real sympathy for the suffering and deprivation of the masses of our people. If they did, they would not steal and abuse public resources with the impunity that they did and their successors and friends still do today.

Magistrate Musona, who is now Lusaka High Court Deputy Director of Operations has demonstrated that there is always a small number of people in any society that are truly committed to seeing that injustice is punished and the law upheld.

We have no illusion about the amount of pressure this magistrates’ court must have felt in deciding this matter. There were very important people involved. It is also common knowledge that Rupiah Banda’s government is not supportive of the fight against corruption and the conviction of such high profile characters.

In deciding as it did, this court swam against the current and for that deserves all the respect and recognition. If only more of our people in responsible positions could muster the courage of their convictions and do the right thing, the future prospects for our homeland would look much better. Far too many important offices are occupied by spineless wimps who are scared of their own shadows and are not prepared to stand for anything, to do the right thing. There are many examples of this we can give.

Look at the conduct of Chalwe Mchenga, the disgraced Director of Public Prosecutions, who no future honest government should tolerate even to continue in that office that he has disgraced. If Mchenga was the magistrate in that court, Katele would have gone scot-free and so would all the other well connected thieves. We say this because of the way Mchenga has conducted himself in these corruption cases.

Mchenga played complicity in George Kunda’s efforts to try and get corrupt Kashiwa Bulaya off the hook by extending a nolle prosequi in his favour. We also saw Mchenga’s shameful behaviour over the acquittal of Chiluba and his withdrawal of the appeal that was correctly and legitimately filed in our courts.

This country cannot continue to have a Director of Public Prosecutions who is on the side of the corrupt as long as they are defended or backed by those in power. We shouldn’t also forget that Mchenga has in many ways tried to frustrate the effective and efficient prosecution of these criminals.

As we have stated before, we will not be surprised to see Mchenga come up with a scheme that will deliberately bungle the appeals of these corrupt elements. Again, we say this because Mchenga has deliberately removed the prosecutors of these matters before the appeals are concluded so that he can have control over the proceedings.

It doesn’t make sense to remove a prosecutor who has achieved a record of almost 100 per cent convictions from being able to argue the appeals. This is not an oversight on Mchenga’s part. It’s simply a part of the designs over their syndicate to defend the corrupt.

Anyway, as always, time will tell. Their actions should now be clear to all. And in saying this, we are not in any way express hate for anyone. We are simply trying to let our people know the truth about the way their public officers are conducting their affairs.

When we used to write about the corruption and abuses of Katele and his friends, including their boss Chiluba, we were being accused of hatred and all sorts of things. But today almost every court in our country has found them to be corrupt, to be thieves. And most of these people have also been found wanting by the London High Court.

So where was our hatred? The same crooked elements will today accuse us of hatred for Mchenga. It’s alright, time will absolve us because in the end time will reveal that Mchenga has not conducted the duties of his office with sufficient honour and integrity.

And this explains why the Law Association of Zambia has demanded Mchenga’s resignation. Even they have seen that his actions are not consistent with the demands of his office – he is a disgrace to his office and the legal profession as a whole. What keeps Mchenga in that office today is only the support of his political masters – the ones who use him to do all sorts of dirty jobs.

Otherwise, Mchenga would have been out of that office a long time ago because he is a disgrace and a pathetic excuse for a prosecutor. How can a self-respecting prosecutor be at the forefront of defending wrong and wrongdoers?

There is something fundamentally wrong with the way Mchenga relates to the powers-that-be. He is what is known as his master’s voice. It is not difficult to see that Mchenga does not act alone in the evil schemes that he comes up with to defeat the course of justice.

We know and have always known that Mchenga is Kunda’s puppet. It is Kunda who pulls the strings and plays the music to which Mchenga dances. Kunda has been a relentless supporter of what is wrong. But one day both Kunda and Mchenga will have to answer to the Zambian people for their dedication and consistent defence of criminals using their public offices.

It is also clear that Kunda and Mchenga have found a perfect partner for their schemes in Rupiah. Rupiah is on record praising Chiluba and calling him “a damn good president”. Rupiah is also on record saying he stopped the state’s appeal against Chiluba’s acquittal. Clearly indicating that Mchenga was merely a transmission belt and not the decision maker on this matter. We wonder what Rupiah will now say because his “damn good president” just happen to have been running a Ministry of Finance with ‘damn good thieves’.

All these things will come up and will be decided by the Zambian people because in the end people will know what happened in all these matters. We can only hope all these characters will live long enough to answer for their parts in these criminal schemes! As for Rupiah, he has to explain why he thinks that a president who staffed the whole important Ministry of Finance with thieves is supposed to have been a damn good president.

This is why we say that Rupiah is trying to defend Chiluba in the hope that no one will look into his own conduct. It does not make sense for a president to publicly or even privately defend criminality. But this is what Rupiah has been doing.

There is a lot to be said about these convictions. The only thing that remains for us to say today is that we are developing a jurisprudence for fighting corruption.

And some of our magistrates and judges, together with our lawyers, are making a tremendous contribution to this process. And their contribution should not be lost under the burden of expedience, legal or otherwise. And this reminds us of the precedents that were set by judge Phillip Musonda in this regard.

It is difficult for us to understand why people involved in grand corruption like Prof Mweene, Nonde and Mpande should be given suspended sentences when judge Musonda had clearly directed that cases of grand corruption should always receive custodial sentence. According to judge Musonda, nothing other than custodial sentence could demonstrate the seriousness of the offence of corruption.

This was in the case of Lt Gen Wilford Funjika who was given a suspended sentence on account of having suffered a stroke and had also repaid the money. Judge Musonda, exercising his supervisory jurisdiction, recalled the Funjika case and imposed a custodial sentence. Funjika went to jail on crutches having suffered a debilitating stroke.

What is special about Prof Mweene, Nonde and Mpande? Too much lenience has been shown. Anyway, the public will be waiting to see what judge Musonda does since he is now the judge-in-charge. These ‘damn good thieves’ do not deserve any lenience.