Why they removed Nchito from corruption prosecutions

Why they removed Nchito from corruption prosecutions
By The Post
Mon 10 May 2010, 04:10 CAT

NO one is indispensable. Not even the most meritorious individuals are indispensable. We knew the day would come when this government would dispense with the prosecution services of Mutembo Nchito. And this doesn’t require much disquisition.

Mutembo could have been removed from being a public prosecutor a month, a year or so after his appointment. But Mutembo has served as a public prosecutor since early 2002 after having previously been appointed to prosecute matters on behalf of the Anti Corruption Commission in 2001.

This was in matter involving Katele Kalumba, Peter Machungwa and the late Godden Mandandi over what came to be known as the K2 billion scandal.

Mutembo successfully represented the Anti Corruption Commission and Machungwa and Mandandi were found wanting and Katele was reprieved.

All this was under the presidency of Frederick Chiluba. In late 2001, the Anti Corruption Commission retained Mutembo to prosecute other corruption matters. And nine years later, Mutembo has still been prosecuting corruption matters on behalf of the state.

Given this background and what one may legitimately call a very impressive record of corruption prosecution, the question one might be forced to ask is: why have Mutembo’s services been terminated now, not yesterday, not last year, or the year before and so on and so forth?

This question is important because it may help put matters in their proper context or perspective and remove them from the realm of an individual, who as we have already pointed out, will always be dispensable.

What will not be dispensable are the issues that were being pursued in the corruption cases Mutembo was handling. And the termination of Mutembo’s duties as a public prosecutor should be looked at from this angle.

Corruption is a very big problem in Zambia. No one can deny that many of the problems that we face in accessing public services and enjoying good infrastructure are a result of corruption in the public sector. Successive governments have been crippled by corruption.

A political culture which accepts corruption as a normal occurrence has been engrained in our governments. From the very beginning the founding president of this country, Dr Kenneth Kaunda, was very concerned about the cancer of corruption, nepotism, tribalism and other corrupt uses of power that had begun to show themselves.

Dr Kaunda tried very hard to fight these evils and was very decisive in taking action against them. He never hesitated to part company with comrades, and some of them very dear ones, whenever they strayed into the realm of corruption and other abuses of power for personal gain. Dr Kaunda left government almost penniless, relying only on the pension he believed the Zambian people were going to give him.

And in this line, Dr Kaunda created a number of institutions to deal with corruption. He gave us the Anti Corruption Commission in 1980, Special Investigation Team for Economy and Trade (SITET), and towards the end of the 1980s, he created the Drug Enforcement Commission.

For all the mistakes, for all the failings – which are many – no one can take anything away from this comrade and his determination to fight crime in our country. As far as corruption is concerned, he tried to brook no nonsense.

Mirror this against Frederick Chiluba’s legacy. Chiluba went into government and immediately started stealing. The 10 years of his tenure saw the decline in the respect of law and public property.

The civil service was stripped of its professionalism. Corruption became an accepted engagement for senior public officers. Corruption was so commonplace that to this very day, it is an accepted norm and most of those who served with Chiluba see no wrong that they did in stealing public resources and abusing their offices for personal gain. They even laugh at people like Dr Kaunda and his generation who left government without amassing wealth, and sometimes without even a house.

They look at them as fools who were not intelligent enough to use their public offices for self-enrichment. This is what Chiluba reduced this country to. For the most part, Chiluba ran a kleptocracy where there was no difference between public resources and personal resources.

If this country is going to make any meaningful progress, this culture has to be exorcised and banished. A time must come when every public officer realises that everything that he does in the name of the people is a subject of accountability. This is something that Chiluba destroyed. Many people who worked for him were reduced to doing things that they knew to be wrong but they did them nevertheless to remain in good books with him and sometimes to accrue some personal benefits.

The fight against corruption that Levy Mwanawasa engaged in was a meaningful attempt to try and bridge the gap that was created by Chiluba from where Dr Kaunda had left things. Dr Kaunda took the fight against corruption and the struggle to build a nation with decency, values and principles to very high heights but Chiluba brought it down. Levy, albeit in a manner that was far much less resolute than that of Dr Kaunda, tried in a new time and in a new way to restore that decency.

This is the context into which the work of the task force on corruption fell. Clearly, its task was to deal with the corruption that has been created in our country by Chiluba and bring back things to where our liberators, the founders of this Republic had left them. This meant that Levy had to inevitably take the fight against corruption to Chiluba. And things moved, albeit in a slow way, but they moved. Chiluba was the bulwark of all that was rotten, of all that was corrupt under the 10 years of his presidency and probably beyond it.

Levy’s understanding of the challenge that he faced was not always clear, it was not as clear and resolute as that of Dr Kaunda. We say this because sometimes Levy kept very dirty and corrupt people in his government, people with a traceable history of being permanently wedded to corruption. This explains why immediately after Levy’s death, some of his closest and most senior lieutenants have embraced and returned to Chiluba and his way of doing things, his corruption.

We should not be surprised that no effort is being spared to reverse any success that Levy may have scored in fighting corruption. These people don’t like the precedents that have been set and will do everything to wipe them out so that they are never used against them in future.

Rupiah Banda has chosen the way he wants to be remembered. Rupiah had three choices: either to go the Dr Kaunda way, the Chiluba route or adopt the Levy methods. Rupiah had worked under Dr Kaunda’s government and it’s not a secret that when it comes to the core values, principles and methods of that regime, most of the times he fell short of what was acceptable. And Rupiah was Levy’s vice-president and saw what Levy was doing.

It’s clear Rupiah did not agree with what Levy was doing on corruption and that’s why he is undoing it today. Rupiah did not serve under Chiluba’s government but he knew very well what Chiluba had done and how he had done it.

And today the choice that Rupiah has made is that of following Chiluba’s path – a corrupt path. With the three choices that Rupiah had, he has made it clear that Chiluba is his mentor – the “damn good president” – whose methods he admires and he is emulating. For whose benefit? Corrupt methods are for personal benefit and not for the people’s progress and well-being.

Clearly, what this means is that by embracing Chiluba and his corrupt methods, Rupiah has stopped in earnest the fight against corruption. And all the efforts and initiatives that were taken by Levy, in line with the values and standards set by Dr Kaunda, have to be reversed, have to be abandoned, have to be stopped.

If we want to understand the significance of the removal of Mutembo from prosecuting corruption at this stage, we need to understand where Rupiah is headed.

There are many appeals of corruption cases involving Chiluba’s friends that are yet to be heard by our courts. Rupiah and his minions do not want these appeals to go in favour of the people at the expense of their friends. They will do everything to frustrate and bungle these appeals in the same way they stopped the appeal against Chiluba and ensure that their friends go scot-free without leaving any dangerous precedent that may be used against them in future.

In the same way they used Director of Public Prosecutions Chalwe Mchenga to stop the appeal against Chiluba’s questionable acquittal, they will use him again to frustrate and bungle the appeals that are now in court and those to come from matters yet to be decided.

And it is the same way they have used Mchenga to remove Mutembo so that these matters that had taken so many years and effort to master are lost. There are also matters that are yet to be prosecuted like that of Xavier Chungu. Given their conduct, can anyone reasonably expect them to prosecute Chungu let alone to seriously, efficiently and effectively do that in a manner that will secure a conviction?

As we stated at the beginning of this editorial comment, no one is indispensable, not even Mutembo for that matter despite his near-excellent prosecution of the corruption cases that were given to him. But that is not the point here. The point is that we now have a government that has come out in the open and declared its allegiance to the corrupt and their rotten ways. It is not the first time that they are trying to frustrate these cases in that way.

They have tried to frustrate these cases by doing all sorts of things. As for Mutembo, they tried to hound him out by making all sorts of unfounded allegations against him. Now that all their schemes have failed, they have been left with no choice but to terminate his contract, something they could have done a long time ago if their actions were honest and sincere. They tried the dishonest routes but failed.

Anyway, our people know what they stand for and understand why the corrupt need to be defended by them. If they think they will get away with their corruption by protecting their corrupt friends, they have got it all wrong – the Bembas say umulandu taubola.