COMMENT - Maria Ramos is married to
Trevor Manuel, former South African Finance Minister, and today working for the Rothschild Group, Rothschild South Africa and it's client Old Mutual.
Nicky Oppenheimer: South Africa’s richest man, reportedly donated R10 million to the leadership bid.
Raymond Ackerman: The owner of Pick n Pay is said to have dropped a cool R1 million into the funding pool.
Maria Ramos: The ex-ABSA CEO and PIC executive allegedly gave R1 million to the campaign.
Johnny Copelyn: CR17 can thank the owner of the news network eNCA for a R2 million donation.
An anonymous donor: Apparently, one unnamed benefactor pumped R120 million into Cyril’s campaign. Yikes.
(THE SOUTH AFRICAN) CR17 donors revealed: EFF pile in on Ramaphosa and his millionaire funders
It's a disastrous day for Cyril Ramaphosa, as his supposedly dirty laundry gets aired. The EFF have been highly critical of his CR17 funders on Sunday.
Tom Head
by Tom Head 2019-08-11 14:06in News
During Cyril Ramaphosa’s hour of misery, the EFF have arrived in a timely fashion. His CR17 campaign – which earned him the right to lead the ANC and eventually become president – has been the subject of intense scrutiny from Busisiwe Mkhwebane, who is now being accused of illegally obtaining the information.
CR17 donors revealed by the media
In a statement made late on Saturday, the presidency said Ramaphosa had been made aware that confidential banking information of his campaign contributors had been leaked to the media. It’s understood the head of state will seek court action to investigate how Mkhwebane managed to get inside the bank accounts belonging to the president:
“The information, supposedly held only by the Public Protector, includes bank statements of third parties, which record private transactions and which are strictly confidential. This amounts to a violation of the constitutionally enshrined right to privacy. Neither the President nor the campaign has done anything wrong, ethically or legally.”
Statement from the office of Cyril Ramaphosa
Who funded Cyril Ramaphosa and his CR17 campaign?
Ramaphosa was boosted by a victory in court against Busisiwe Mkhwebane last week, regarding the recommended remedial action against Pravin Gordhan. However, his joy seems to have been short-lived, as some rather conspicuous names have been linked to CR17 through a Sunday Independent report. These include:
Nicky Oppenheimer: South Africa’s richest man, reportedly donated R10 million to the leadership bid.
Raymond Ackerman: The owner of Pick n Pay is said to have dropped a cool R1 million into the funding pool.
Maria Ramos: The ex-ABSA CEO and PIC executive allegedly gave R1 million to the campaign.
Johnny Copelyn: CR17 can thank the owner of the news network eNCA for a R2 million donation.
An anonymous donor: Apparently, one unnamed benefactor pumped R120 million into Cyril’s campaign. Yikes.
ABSA Nation Building put R10 million towards CR17, and two Eskom executives – one past and one present – put a combined R1.8 million into Ramaphosa leadership campaign. Andre Crawford-Brunt, a board member of Sygnia, was also a big backer – he put R2 million into the kitty.
Needless to say, the lavish funding hasn’t escaped the attention of the EFF. The red berets have been utilising their Twitter platform to nail Cyril Ramaphosa and his friends in high places. Party Deputy President Floyd Shivambu said that the leaked information proved Ramaphosa was nothing more than a ‘puppet’ for outside influences.
“None of the funders look like the majority of members of the party they hypnotized through cash. Clearly, the white capitalist establishment has rented a president to the erstwhile liberation movement. And most definitely, this is no free later lunch!”
Floyd Shivambu
Meanwhile, EFF Spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi lambasted Cyril and his donor lists through a series of Tweets, hammering the president for showing that he holds “zero integrity” in his current position.
Labels: CORRUPTION, CR17, CYRIL RAMAPHOSA
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COMMENT - “Why should they tell us they are making losses from the time they came? If they were making losses, they could have gone. They are liars, cheats and take us for fools. I will not allow that. Those that want to work with us will follow our laws. It’s a sovereign state and if we say the way we want to manage our tax regime we decide we will not be blackmailed by investors. Those that don’t want to stay can go. Sales tax is here to stay, VAT is gone. We decide,” said President Lungu."
From 2014: Anil Agarwal brags about the amount of money he dragged out of Zambia. "KONKOLA Copper Mines owner Anil Agarwal has mocked the Zambian government over the paltry amount of money he paid to buy the mine, which is now giving him millions of dollars in profit.".
http://maravi.blogspot.com/2014/05/comment-i-hope-this-is-final-push-in.html
(LUSAKA TIMES) KCM TAKING US FOR FOOLS…if it’s the will of the people to divorce, I will do so – Lungu
By Charles tembo in Ndola
on May 18, 2019
PRESIDENT Edgar Lungu says Konkola Copper Mines are liars, cheats and want to take Zambians as fools. President Lungu said he is on the Copperbelt to end the marriage between his government and Konkola Copper Mines.
He said “enough is enough of exploitation from KCM” despite buying the mine so cheaply.
President Lungu said this upon arrival at the Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport in Ndola yesterday.
“We had a few matters to do at State House in Lusaka and of course, the Vice-President came back last night and I had to go and see her, she is doing very well. But my coming here is for one reason, one reason, the people of the Copperbelt want a divorce between themselves and copper mines namely KCM and Mopani. I want to hear it from the unions and the reason is simple, people have cried! I saw some women, some of them half naked crying that they feel cheated by the mining company KCM, and Mopani to some extreme,” President Lungu said.
“I have come here that if it’s the will of the people to divorce, I will do so. The message being made is clear. I want to consult the Chamber of Mines. I will be meeting them. The Mineworkers Union and other unions to find out what they think and I also have my position, and my position is that enough is enough. Zambians have been taken for a ride by the mining companies.”
He said KCM was bought so cheaply.
President Lungu said the Attorney General Likando Kalaluka and other lawyers would guide on how to share assets.
“KCM was bought for (US$) 25 million and we paid it all, our copper paid for the mines. They have done nothing since then, just promises, we can’t continue…. I am aware that there is a law in this country which should be followed, the Attorney General is here, the lawyers are here and will guide us on how we proceed with the divorce. So we will talk without any fear,” he said.
“I want to say this frankly because I know the opposition, those detractors who don’t see any good in what we do will be saying he is scaring investors. We are not going to scare any investor. Their investment is safe and those who want to come and invest should do so. I know there are other investors who are willing to come and invest in the mines. Immediately we kick them [KCM and Mopani] out, others will come and invest. There is engagement and disengagement even in marriage if things go bad…I am saying this without fear or favour.”
President Lungu said KCM had made enough profits.
“They have made money and taken money. We will ask the lawyer to tell us how we will share the assets and I know we will get married very soon. These are our mines.”
“Why should they tell us they are making losses from the time they came? If they were making losses, they could have gone. They are liars, cheats and take us for fools. I will not allow that. Those that want to work with us will follow our laws. It’s a sovereign state and if we say the way we want to manage our tax regime we decide we will not be blackmailed by investors. Those that don’t want to stay can go. Sales tax is here to stay, VAT is gone. We decide,” said President Lungu.
Labels: CORRUPTION, EDGAR LUNGU, KCM, MINING, PF, TAX EVASION
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COMMENT - Why does underpaying African farmers for their products sound so familiar? "Last week FRA pegged the maize floor price at K65".
(THE MAST ONLINE) Govt has continued to offer farmers slavery maize price, says Mtayachalo
By Christopher Miti
on July 27, 2018
YOTAM Mtayachalo says
the 2018 maize floor price set by the Food Reserve Agency will dampen the morale of the farming community in the country. And Mtayachalo has suggested that government, through FRA, should help small scale farmers sell maize to the international market.
Last week FRA pegged the maize floor price at K65 but this was met with mixed feelings prompting President Edgar Lungu to order a review of the price, describing the current one as not a very fair price. But Mtayachalo, who is
FDD national chairperson for labour, stated that the 2018 maize floor price was a mockery.
“The floor price of maize announced by the government through FRA is a mockery to our hard working farmers as the K65 per 50kg bag of maize price offered to farmers for the 2018 marketing season is not commensurate with the prevailing high cost of production in light of high cost of fertilisers, seeds and other auxiliary farming inputs. Further, the general cost of doing business in the country has been escalating at a very alarming rate and as such the agriculture sector has not equally been spared. Therefore, the price of maize will dampen the morale among the farming community and may further discourage them from growing the staple food because government has continued to offer them a slavery floor price which is mostly driven by political motives,” he stated.
Mtayachalo accused successive governments of having manipulated the maize floor price for political reasons.
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to tell that all successive governments have manipulated the price of maize for political reasons by deliberately offering maize farmers poor prices for their commodity for the sole purpose of providing cheaper mealie-meal on the market, notably for the urban communities at the expense of poor farmers, hence small scale farmers have failed to graduate into higher income brackets since independence because of lack of adequate working capital and mechanisation, job creation and poverty eradication remains a pipe dream,” he stated.
“It must also be realised that farmers have not equally been spared from the high cost of living in the country, and as such the government which claims to be pro-poor should have taken into account such factors before announcing the floor price of maize in order to motivate the farmers to grow more food for local consumption and export.”
Mtayachalo stated that the floor price might hinder farmers from diversifying.
“Furthermore, the continued poor price of maize offered to farmers may hinder the country from achieving the much preached diversification agenda from mining to agriculture if the government continues to pay lip service to the growth of the agriculture sector. Moreover, about 40 per cent of Zambians are actively engaged in agricultural economic activities. It is therefore important that the government must design deliberate policies in order to trigger growth in the sector if we have to significantly reduce or eliminate poverty which continues to ravage our vulnerable population, especially in rural areas,” he stated.
Mtayachalo also appealed to government to help farmers sell their maize on the international market.
He appealed to the government to consider coming up with a deliberate policy which would see the FRA entering into an agreement with small and medium scale maize farmers for the agency to sell the commodity on their behalf on the lucrative international market, while a certain quantity could be bought at the local price for strategic food reserves.
“I strongly believe that such a move would result into farmers getting real value for their money and stop depending on subsidised farming inputs as they will have the financial capacity to buy their own instead of perpetually depending on the farmer input support programme, which is proving to be a bottomless pit,” stated Mtayachalo.
Labels: CORRUPTION, EDGAR LUNGU, MAIZE
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COMMENT - The
Eurobonds,
IMF/WB,
Privatisation,
Anglo-American Corporation and it's many holdings (
De Beers,
Tongaat Hulett) all lead back to the same family and banks. When dealing with one, you are also dealing with the rest.
ZCCM-IH says FQM defrauded it repeatedly from 2006 to 2012 by hiding profits from Kansanshi Mining Plc and using proceeds from that period of high copper prices to build other mines without its consent as a shareholder.
The FQM executives sued by ZCCM-IH included chairman and chief executive officer Philip Pascall and directors Arthur Mathias Pascall, Clive Newall and Martin Rowley.
Mike Mulongoti:
He further asked the rationality of Zambia yearning to borrow from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) an amount of US$1.6 billion when they were in cahoots with FQM over US$1.4 billion.
We are convinced that they must have been paid because there is no way they can insist on going to the IMF to borrow US$1.6 billion and yet there is more than US$2 (billion) from the mine that they are trying to collect. How can that be?
Because the family that owns the mines is the same family that controls the IMF/WB, and they're making money both ways.
(THE MAST ZM) State House wants to rob Zambians through the ZCCM-IH, FQM fraud case – Mulongoti
Malawo Malawo
MIKE Mulongoti says State House’s attempt to rob Zambians out of billions of kwacha from First Quantum Minerals must viciously be watched and later followed up.
According to reliable sources, State House has bowed to pressure and is forcing Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines-Investments Holdings (ZCCM-IH) to discontinue the fraud case in which it claims First Quantum Minerals (FQM) swindled it out of US$1.4 billion.
In November last year, ZCCM-IH, which holds shares on behalf of the Zambian government in the privatised and now foreign-owned mines, sued FQM in the Lusaka High Court for fraud and simultaneously commenced an arbitration process in London in an attempt to recover the money.
ZCCM-IH says FQM defrauded it repeatedly from 2006 to 2012 by hiding profits from Kansanshi Mining Plc and using proceeds from that period of high copper prices to build other mines without its consent as a shareholder.
The FQM executives sued by ZCCM-IH included chairman and chief executive officer Philip Pascall and directors Arthur Mathias Pascall, Clive Newall and Martin Rowley.
On April 21, 2017, Arthur, the director of operations, wrote to Attorney General Likando Kalaluka requesting him to force ZCCM-IH to drop the matter that is actively before the courts of law. The FQM directors also asked Kalaluka to protect them from prosecution. As the matter continued being battled in the Lusaka High Court, State House press aide Amos Chanda announced on May 10 that President Edgar Lungu would interfere in the ongoing legal dispute between ZCCM-IH and FQM and direct the matter to be settled outside the courts of law.
And last week, while the case was being heard in court, the Ministry of Finance issued a statement saying the first round of negotiations on the matter were fruitful.
Commenting on the matter, Mulongoti, the People’s Party president, observed that there was no morality in President Lungu’s government. He wondered what incentive was there for President Lungu, who recently hinted that he did not interfere in active court processes, to now call for a friendly resolution of the ZCCM-IH and FQM legal battle.
We have a problem when it comes to the issue of integrity in the PF government. The President, together with his spokesperson, has emphatically said they will not interfere with any court issues. When the outside world and everybody was persuading him to secure the release of HH (Hakainde Hichilema), he refused! Now, there is a court process (between ZCCM-IH and First Quantum Minerals) which involves resources of Zambia where ZCCM-Investment Holdings want to get money from an investor who has behaved dishonestly and he wants to intervene! How?
Mulongoti, who served as a Cabinet minister in various ministries during the MMD reign, wondered in an interview in Lusaka.
“This is a matter that must be followed up very viciously. What we’ll see is that they will become richer and Zambia will get poorer! They (FQM) have spent money that is supposed to come to Zambia on developing their own companies and the (ZCCM-IH) chief executive officer Dr Pius Kasolo is trying to get that money back. But for whatever reason, they (government) want to stop that money coming back to the people of Zambia.”
He further asked the rationality of Zambia yearning to borrow from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) an amount of US$1.6 billion when they were in cahoots with FQM over US$1.4 billion.
We are convinced that they must have been paid because there is no way they can insist on going to the IMF to borrow US$1.6 billion and yet there is more than US$2 million from the mine that they are trying to collect. How can that be? Mulongoti asked.
“So, there is no reason to allow them even to go to the IMF if they can’t collect that money which is here! This issue of insincerity is not right and along the way, the people of Zambia who are suffering will demand for little more than just ordinary explanation.”
He cautioned those who were currently looting public funds in the PF government that money could not be hidden.
They have become so rich such that some of them don’t even know what to do with the money. There is no secret in the world today -whether you’ve hidden your money in South Africa, Dubai or wherever, we’ll get to know and the people of Zambia will demand for that money, cautioned Mulongoti.
Labels: CORRUPTION, DEBT, EDGAR LUNGU, EUROBOND, FQM, IMF, NEOLIBERALISM, PF, PRIVATISATION
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COMMENT - The same corrupting factor again -
Tongaat Hulett, South African regional
sugarcane refining monopolist. Tongaat Hulett is at least
20% owned by Anglo-American Corporation, the same company that holds 85% of
De Beers, the diamond monopolist. (Also see:
The Diamond Empire, 1994) Anglo-American Corporation was
formed in 1917 by sir Ernest Oppenheimer and J.P. Morgan, Rothschild baron associated family member and their US agent, respectively. (Read: The House Of Rothschild, by prof. Niall Ferguson) It's the Rothschild Barons. The reason I say all this, is because it is important to know that whether it's the
IMF/WB setting conditionalities like
ESAP,
De Beers going after the Chiadzwa and Marange diamond fields, or Tongaat Hulett bribing minister Douglas Mombeshora, the reason it is all in the same interest isn't some general class interest or 'White Monopoly Capital', but the interest of one very wealthy very specific family. - MrK
A source said the government had been put under pressure to honour its obligations under the BIPPA arrangement hence the speed with which it moved to evict the farmers.
A farmer who spoke to Newzimbabwe.com last week said government had been put under pressure by “senior sugar business people” and that large sums of money had exchanged hands.
(NEWZIMBABWE) Farm row: F/affairs, lands ministers clash as diaspora returnee et al farmers take eviction to court
by Mthulisi Mathuthu
29/12/2016
THE dispute over the Triangle Ranch in Masvingo turned ugly this week with the foreign affairs department accusing the minister of lands of resettling A2 farmers on the property without following “proper procedures”.
Newzimbabwe.com reported last week on the eviction with “immediate effect” of the farmers from a part of the sugar cane ranch which was acquired from Tongaat Hulett and subdivided into various plots for the resettlement of 174 A2 farmers.
On Wednesday, the Lowveld Sugar Cane Growers Association, mostly diaspora returnees, children of liberation war heroes and poor people, filed an urgent chamber application for an interdict. The association is part of the Hippo Valley Farmers Association-the broader group which represents the 290 farmers issued with the offer letters by Minister Douglas Mombeshora in April this year.
The hearing started on Thursday and will continue on Friday after lawyers from the foreign affairs said they needed time to file opposing papers because they needed to obtain affidavits from Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi and the Permanent Secretary Joey Bimha. Only the lands ministry had filed opposing papers by Thursday.
The matter is being heard by High Court judge Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo. The farmers are being represented by Mberi and Associates while the foreign affairs department is represented by Mumbengegwi and Partners.
The farmers made the urgent application to stop their immediate eviction pending another application to the Administrative Court which opens next month.
In his eviction order, minister Mombershora said the farmers should “cease all or any operations” and leave the property “immediately” because the “purpose for withdrawal outweighs the representations” made by the applicants.
But the farmers argue that they should be allowed to harvest their sugar cane while government must compensate them.
A member of the association told Newzimbabwe.com that during the brief appearance on Thursday, officials from the foreign affairs were “clearly unhappy” with the urgent application, labelling the evictees “enemies of the state”.
The spokesperson said the government officials felt that the farmers should have waited for the administrative court case.
She added, “We are now being labelled enemies of the state but we went to the High Court because Mombeshora said we should leave immediately. But how can we just leave after we have invested in our plots and do so without compensation?”
A government lawyer told Newzimbabwe.com that their argument is that Mombeshora resettled the farmers without following “proper procedures” hence the minister was put under pressure to evict the farmers “immediately”. The lawyers said, as such, the farmers have no case because they occupied the property due to the minister’s “error”.
The spokesman for the farmers said they had been told to claim compensation from the original owners of the farm, something she said was ridiculous.
She added, “But how can we claim compensation from Tongaat Hulett when we did not get the offer letters from them?”
She said while the lands ministry was offering alternative land, there was no guarantee yet that that was a genuine offer and that they would be compensated and allowed to harvest their sugar cane which is now one and half meters high.
Tongaat Hullet, whose core businesses are sugar, starch and property management is listed on the
Johannesburg Securities Exchange.
The Triangle Ranch is covered under the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA), hence the ministry of foreign affairs involvement. Agreements under BIPPA require that government pay fair compensation in currency of the former owner’s choice for both land and improvements. Zimbabwe and South Africa signed the BIPPA deal in 2010.
South African president Jacob Zuma was in Zimbabwe recently.
A source said the government had been put under pressure to honour its obligations under the BIPPA arrangement hence the speed with which it moved to evict the farmers.
A farmer who spoke to Newzimbabwe.com last week said government had been put under pressure by “senior sugar business people” and that large sums of money had exchanged hands.
Labels: CORRUPTION, DOUGLAS MOMBESHORA, NEOLIBERALISM, NEW FARMERS
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COMMENT - How about a pay cut? Just until the currency recovers.
TODAY'S EDITORIAL COMMENT: Can Lungu and his minions justify their pay hikes?
By Editor |
Updated: 24 Mar,2016 ,13:31:44
It is shocking that in the current financial and economic difficulties the country is going through, the President and other key political leaders of this country can have their salaries increased.
This is insensitivity of the highest order. It goes beyond selfishness, greed and vanity. It actually borders on lunacy. The Zambian economy in its current state has no capacity, both in the public and private sectors, to increase salaries. Many companies are struggling to pay salaries and workers are being retrenched every day. Equally, the government is also struggling to meet its wage bill.
And consequently, the public revenue collections are also very tight. This is so because the government gets its revenue from the workers through Pay As You Earn and Value Added Tax which every consumer, regardless of their economic status, has to pay whenever they purchase goods or services on which such tax is levied. So even the poor of the poorest are paying taxes.
All the salaries of our politicians and other public workers are borne primarily by the workers and the poor who pay taxes. Increasing salaries of the President and other politicians simply places a further burden on their shoulders. Why put additional burden on people who are already overburdened? Who doesn’t know the trials of our people today? And God forbid that one should add one grain of trouble to the anxiety which they bear with such patience and fortitude. We do not believe that any fair-minded person would accept the injustice and fairness of pushing a further financial and economic burden on our already overburdened people.
There is no morality in increasing the salaries of the President and other politicians. Dr Kenneth Kaunda would never have done that. Let us get back to the morality of Dr Kaunda’s leadership which stood for the establishment of “a just and fair society for man. Man - you. Man - me”. Let us realise that taking up political positions should be an expression of a desire to contribute to the happiness of our people rather than of a need to cheat or rape the nation.
Anyway, this just reflects the nature and character of the political leadership we have in the country today. As the Bible says, “There are people who take cruel advantage of the poor and needy; that is the way they make their living” (Proverbs 30:14).
“We must remember that we are there to serve the interests of the common man,” Dr Kaunda used to always remind those who were serving in the UNIP government with him. And he would add, “We must think and think again how best we shall serve and not about how important we are as leaders of our people. Let us remember that we are what we are today because of the common man, and that it is therefore right that he should expect better service from us…Selfishness in leaders inevitably leads to corruption…I do not want to see decisions made for self-interest rather than benefit of the people; I do not want to see people using their leadership positions to manipulate decisions in their favour. To be a leader at any level and in any scheme of things, you have got to love your fellow human beings, you have got to be ready to sacrifice for their good, you have got to be able to learn to respect the feelings of your fellow men.”
Good political leaders must be interested in the welfare of those in distress. We expect them to feel the distress of many who have a big problem about the cost of goods, with the tragedy of unemployment and not focus so much on themselves. Already, the cost to the taxpayer of keeping in office each one of these politicians is too high. Look at what the President gets for free! He has free housing, transport, food, alcohol and so on and so forth. Even clothes are bought for him by the taxpayer. The President of this country is not affected by the price hikes the great majority of our people have to endure. Probably this even explains how in a very short time in that office, Edgar Lungu has put on so much weight, has developed a potbelly. It’s free food, free everything while the rest of his fellow citizens njala yabanyokola and they are becoming thinner and thinner. Look at the number of automobiles bought by the taxpayer that service the President of this country and his family! Look at the number of workers around him paid by the taxpayer! There is a worker for everything he or his family members do! The President pays for nothing but he is getting a salary increment when those who pay for everything are getting none at all.
It is the poor of this country who are subsidising the expensive lifestyles of Edgar and his fellow politicians. Even when they go and recklessly borrow, it is the poor taxpayer of this country that has to, every month, put aside part of his or her earnings to repay the debts.
A start must be made to share the revenues of our government equitably and more fairly among all our people. If people have to be hungry, let us be hungry together. The privileged few like Edgar and his minions should not defend their well-stocked larder by making others go without the plenty they could have. We need leaders who are willing and able to serve the Zambian people heart and soul and never for a moment divorce themselves from the masses. We need leaders who in all cases proceed from the interests of the people and not from one’s self-interest or from the interest of a small group of those who find themselves in the top political leadership of the country.
We have Dr Kaunda’s example to follow. Let’s follow it. Comrade KK’s spirit as a political leader, his utter devotion to others without any thought for self, was shown in his boundless sense of responsibility in his work and his boundless warm-heartedness towards the masses of our people. Every political leader in this country must learn from him; must learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With that type of spirit, everyone can be very useful to the people. All our political leaders, whatever their rank, are servants of the people, and whatever they do must be to serve the people. Their duty is to hold themselves accountable to the people. Every policy and every act of theirs must conform to the people’s interests. They must have the interest of the people and the sufferings of the great majority at heart instead of thinking about how much they should get for themselves from the people’s taxes.
Strictly speaking, what we have are not leaders but vultures, mercenaries, hyenas out to enjoy, enrich themselves at the expense of the poor.
Labels: CORRUPTION, EDGAR LUNGU
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From The Post:
(THE POST ZAMBIA) It’s not taxes they’re after
By Editor
Updated: 11 Dec,2015 ,06:11:04
The Zambia Revenue Authority yesterday obtained a search warrant from the subordinate court to inspect, take possession or make copies of documents and ICT equipment, business records, purchase and sales daybooks, cash books and other account books, purchase invoices and sales invoices, annual accounts, bank statements and other banking records, VAT account, personal records, documents, diaries of directors, import documents, desktop computers, laptops, servers, etc, and any other such documents and ICT equipment related to the business or operations of The Post that they believe were used by the company to evade the payment of VAT and Income Tax.
It requires little intelligence, if a little is all one has, to realise that this is not a case of tax evasion but of something else. This company has been in existence for more than 24 years, paying its tax obligations. It is extremely malicious and unfair for the Zambia Revenue Authority to insinuate in any way that The Post is involved or could be involved in tax evasion. Tax evasion is a criminal offence and this newspaper, unlike some other newspapers in this country, is not run by criminals or ex-convicts. Tax evasion is knowingly breaking the law to reduce a tax liability by the deliberate concealing of income or the false claiming of allowances, deductible expenses and so on and so forth. This differs from tax avoidance, which is the process of arranging a taxpayer’s affairs in such a way that he can, within the law, reduce the amount of tax payable. And every taxpayer is entitled, if he can, to arrange his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it otherwise would be. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure the result, then however unappreciative the revenue authority or his fellow taxpayers may be of his ingenuity, he cannot be compelled to pay an increased tax. No taxpayer in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or otherwise, so to arrange his legal relation to his business, or to his property as to enable the inland revenue to put the largest possible shovel into his stores. But The Post is neither involved in tax evasion nor tax avoidance.
Anyone looking for any evidence of tax evasion from The Post will never find any because there is none. We don’t engage in criminal activities. Mistakes, we can make but not criminal activities. If they want to find cases of tax evasion on the part of The Post, they have to trump them up. And we will not be surprised if they did this because they have shown strange desperation to fix The Post. It is not tax they are after, it is fixing The Post they aiming for. They simply want to paralyse the operations of The Post and consequently close it. Business came to a standstill yesterday. They paralysed the operations of the newspaper and no meaningful business could be conducted. Income was lost. They tried to search documents in files and look at computer records, but they were not making sense. They had made up their minds from the beginning to go away with the computers. What happens when they take away the computers of a business in today’s world? They have literally stopped the business from operating. That is the net effect. And the computers they are taking, what guarantee do we have that they will not tamper with them or even attempt to plant things on them? These are clearly acts of desperate people trying to do desperate things.
Why are they in such a hurry to fix The Post? There are matters in court which need to be resolved; why can’t they wait until these matters are completely resolved?
Again, we can say it with our heads high that The Post is not a criminal organisation run by criminals. And whatever has been done here has been done with sufficient honour and integrity. Yes mistakes, we can make but not criminal acts of evading taxes.
And what is also shocking is that the Zambia Revenue Authority team yesterday came with a video camera trying to film the proceedings. For what? Just when did tax investigations become an issue of Zambia Revenue Authority publicity? But this is exactly what the Zambia Revenue Authority has been doing to The Post. Every communication with The Post has ended up into some newspapers working with the Zambia Revenue Authority. Which other taxpayer is Zambia Revenue Authority treating in this way other than The Post?
Of course, pronouncements on the issue of The Post have been made by senior ministers of this government and officers of the ruling Patriotic Front, including President Edgar Lungu himself. They have all threatened The Post with closure using the Zambia Revenue Authority. They have not hidden their intentions. The Zambia Revenue Authority is not an independent institution; it is a government agency that takes instructions from those in power. And if this government can manipulate and coerce people holding constitutional offices with security of tenure, what more Zambia Revenue Authority officers, whom they can hire and fire at will?
But the bells tolling for The Post today, if not silenced, will tomorrow toll for many others and eventually for the whole country.
As for The Post, they should not deceive themselves that we can be coerced into submission by acts like these. To silence The Post, they first have to close it. We are not criminals or wrongdoers who can be easily blackmailed into submission. We have seen what they have tried to do to the Director of Public Prosecutions with trumped-up charges after they failed to force him to resign. Let them come up with trumped-up charges of tax evasion against us and see where it will take them.
Again, it is not tax money they are looking for. It is The Post’s soul they are searching for. Look at the composition of the team that came to our offices yesterday! Were all those officers from the Zambia Revenue Authority? The answer is a categorical no. They were from some other offices, some other state agencies - ZICTA, the Drug Enforcement Commission and the intelligence services. What are they looking for that they could not tell us? They never told us what they are looking for! Why? But it is not very difficult to guess what they are looking for and what they are up to.
- See more at: http://www.postzambia.com/news.php?id=13795#sthash.WdK9U8GT.dpuf
Labels: CORRUPTION, EDGAR LUNGU, MEDIA, PF, PRESS FREEDOM, ZRA
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COMMENT - The problem is deeper than incompetence or a failure to listen. It goes right to the corruption that flows from the World Bank and IMF system like a tsunami. The former Finance Minister Caleb Fundanga's MEMFI institute now works with
the World Bank, IMF, Bank of International Settlements, and the National Treasury of South Africa. He is presently located in Zimbabwe, a country he disparaged for it's economic policies.
See:
(LUSAKATIMES) Fundanga opposed to suggestions to adopt the US dollar as national currency
September 4, 2015
The simple fact is this: as long as the mines are in private hands, the politicians will be bought off by the De Beers/IMF/World Bank cartel.
(THE POST ZM) Government officials now have kwacha diarrhoea - Nawakwi
By Mukosha Funga |
Updated: 06 Sep,2015 ,07:00:18
GOVERNMENT officials now have diarrhoea over the fast depreciating kwacha because of failure to heed to advice early on, says FDD leader Edith Nawakwi. And Nawakwi has charged that Zambia has a sleeping government. Meanwhile, Nawakwi has warned that Zambians will sit on the runway to prevent President Edgar Lungu from landing if he misuses public funds for party functions while in New York.
Nawakwi has over the last four years been calling for the dismissal of finance minister Alexander Chikwanda, saying he is ‘incompetent’. On March 18, Nawakwi attributed the continued depreciation of the kwacha to lack of economic understanding by President Lungu and his ministers and warned that the local currency would one day reach K15 to a dollar.
But government officials dismissed her statement as mere politicking.
However, six months on, the kwacha has breached the K10 psychological barrier,
trading at an average rate of K9.90 and K10.05 for buying and selling on Friday.
In an interview yesterday, Nawakwi said the kwacha has depreciated rapidly because of the government’s failure to listen to advice.
“When I said the dollar will reach K15, they were telling me that I was sick. Now I want to know who has diarrhea. Is it me or them? They were saying ‘Nawakwi is sick, she is politicking’; now let them talk. Instead of discussing the problem, they are playing golf. We told them [that] this Minister of Finance is going to take this country to the knife edge bridge. I haven’t even closed my mouth, where is the Minister of Finance? Where is he hiding?” she asked.
“They have been accusing me of politicking, so now I will start politicking. When I am advising them professionally, they don’t want to listen, someone is snoring and sleeping. Mwebantu ba mu Zambia, twapapata fumeni mubebe aba bantu ati beme bambe ukwenda! (You people of Zambia, I plead with you to come out and tell these people to stand up and start walking).”
Nawakwi said it as said that Zambia had a sleeping government.
“The kwacha has gone over K10 and the Central Bank and the Minister of Finance are sleeping. When a currency has slid this much, normally, speculators tend to go in and purchase the kwacha by bringing in dollars, praying that in the next one week, it can change and they can make profits. This is the best time that anyone who has dollars would have wanted to bring the dollars into the banking system. Those who have dollars in the mattresses, in the market, this is the best time because they can see that from one dollar, they will get more than K10 because we have a sleeping government,” she said.
“They are just snoring and not thinking about what is going on. They are still maintaining this archaic law which we put up in the 1980s which said that because there was a shortage of dollars - in fact this was a Katele (Kalumba) law - that there should be a restriction on how much dollars you can take out and how much dollars you can deposit. That was the reason for that. There was a shortage of dollars, there was no money, now this man has gone and borrowed Eurobonds which we can’t even see. Can they stop sleeping and take out the blankets from their heads and start to think! Stop playing golf! This is not time for golfing, sleeping and fundraising. This is the time for serious economic reflection.”
Nawakwi said not even diverting the US$120 million of borrowed money into the market could save the kwacha.
“I am asking [Bank of Zambia Governor] Dr Denny Kalyalya to lift this administrative hindrance where there is a restriction on deposit of dollars because that’s the only way we can mop up the dollars which are in mattresses and help the kwacha. It is not just by him releasing the few [dollars] which the minister borrowed a couple of months ago,” she said.
“I want them to answer me. I want those people who were saying ‘Nawakwi shut up’ to start talking now. I am urging them to open their mouths now. Talk baba, talk! Talk time yaoneka, talk! What is happening to the kwacha? We told them, even if it is a global phenomenon, it can be mitigated if you don’t have a deficit, the one that they have. This phenomenon of the sliding kwacha is being accelerated by the excessive expenditure, over borrowing and lack of alternative sources of income.”
Nawakwi said the argument that what was happening to the kwacha was a global phenomenon could not hold as the depreciation of other currencies was not as bad.
“Don’t tell me that because my neighbour is walking naked, I should also walk naked. That is wrong thinking! Because Tanzania has the same problem but they are not as hard hit as we are in this country. I wish I could be given a chance to talk to this Cabinet because it appears that the whole Cabinet is asleep,” she charged.
Nawakwi said the current massive load-shedding was worsening the economic situation.
“These people shock me; they are telling us we had a drought, isn’t this the same government which was telling us that we could not take ballot papers because of the heavy rains and the results could not come on time? They had to airlift the ballot boxes. Even the Minister of Agriculture said we have a bumper harvest because we had good rains. Now all of a sudden, in six months, they want to tell us there was a drought?” she wondered.
“How can you tell me, a Zambian who comes from Luapula, that we have a drought in this country? Does Egypt have dams? Does it have rainfall? In Egypt, does the Nile have waterfalls like we have here? The Nile is shared by so many states, fighting for the little water. Have you ever seen in Egypt where they cannot pick ballot boxes because there is too much rainfall? The answer is a simple no. They have a desert, one river and they have more power than this country where we have too much water.”
Nawakwi said the country lacked leaders with functioning brains.
“Ukutuka Lesa tuleke. Lesa alitulambula, alitupela fyonse efyo tufwayika. Efyo ta twakwata fye ni abantu abakwete ama tompwe ayaleshinguluka bwino muma office abo twapele inchito ati bane twafwilisheni. Pantu apa nafishupa. Ifilechitika lelo, Kwacha epo yafika, ninshi malilo, elo wingalaya namukutamfya aka bola wemukulu ne chinkonto, takwaba iyo (We should stop insulting God. God has blessed us with everything we need. What we lack are people with functioning brains in public offices who we have empowered to govern on our behalf. Because things are dire, what is happening today, how the kwacha has depreciated, amounts to a funeral. Is this the time a grown man should go and have the pleasure of playing golf, it is unacceptable),” she said.
Nawakwi also wondered why President Lungu could spend so much public money on campaigns but fail to pay the debt owed to the University of Zambia.
“There are 105 districts in this country; I am shocked that when we have no medicine, we have no books, the university can’t be paid but the President can buy 150 Land Cruisers purportedly for DCs when in fact, he is positioning district commissioners to be shadow MPs. He is sending them to start campaigning on public expenditure. You know, this kind of looting, I don’t understand it. This problem at the University of Zambia, we owe University of Zambia as a country K320 million. Now in dollar terms today, it is just $32 million. I am ordering minister Chikwanda to release $32 million dollars at the current rate of K10 to a dollar because that will resolve the problem at UNZA. That money doesn’t even have value to those who are owed,” she said.
Meanwhile, Nawakwi warned that Zambians would sit on the runway to prevent President Lungu from landing if he misuses public funds for party functions while in New York, where he will attend the UN General Assembly.
“We are seeing adverts that there will be a ‘Meet the President’ dinner in New York. Is it a PF trip? Or is it a government of the Republic of Zambia trip? How is he going to get to New York? Is he using an ox-cart or what? If it is a PF trip, I don’t want the policemen from Zambia to go with him. I don’t want the security team to go with him. Let him use PF security and use a chartered plane paid for by Patriotic Front. Honestly, if he goes on government expense, tell him he will have consequences which will be too dire to even contemplate,” she said.
“There will be no runway to land here. We are going to sit on the runway, he has to find his own runway. They should say that this is a private trip which he is paying for from his pocket since he has so much money now. But if he is going to New York just for fundraising for his political party, I don’t think I am going to accept it.”
Nawakwi said Zambians were the PF’s opposition in the 2016 elections.
“Anyway, he (President Lungu) has made our work very easy because in this country, this government of Patriotic Front doesn’t even need opposition. The people themselves are the opposition. They are feeling the heat, the people are angry; just walk into any shop, the problem is that this President can’t even go where we go. I am just walking downtown here in Cairo Road and he can come to Cairo Road and listen...he doesn’t even want to go on Cairo Road because he has created the dirtiest city in Southern Africa, but he is breathing fresh air there [at State House], playing golf,” said Nawakwi.
Related Stories
- See more at: http://www.postzambia.com/news.php?id=11099#sthash.HB4z1yyN.dpuf
Labels: ALEXANDER CHIKWANDA, CORRUPTION, DEBT, EDITH NAWAKWI, EUROBOND, IMF, KWACHA
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COMMENT - This is how they're softening up the economy for HIPC II. They should be in jail for fraud. And then there are the eurobonds, and the
SI89 tax rebate to the mines. External factors - only if the Minister is talking about the IMF/World Bank. Fluctuation in copper prices can be protected against. However this is a government that is trying to paper over state mishandling of resources and corruption, with Eurobond debt loans. This is onerous debt and must not be repaid. Without
massive legal and government reform, especially
financially, Eurobonds are just more sources for corruption. - MrK
(LUSAKATIMES) Current Economic Challenges facing Zambia are not unusual-Chikwanda
September 3, 2015
Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda says the current economic challenges facing Zambia are not unusual. Mr Chikwanda said this is not the first time that Zambia is undergoing economic challenges caused purely by external forces. Mr Chikwanda said the dip in the economy is a normal cycle in any economic which should not be over dramatised.
He said the slowdown in the Chinese economy is mainly responsible for the weakening of the Kwacha as copper receipts have drastically reduced.
The Finance Minister was speaking in Lusaka on Thursday when he delivered a key note address at the 2015 Zambia Finance and Investment Conference organised by Euromoney Conferences at the Taj Pamodzi Hotel.
Mr Chikwanda said although some people want to portray a picture as if the government is solely to blame for the current economic woes, every genuine economist knew that there will come a time when the Chinese economy will begin to slowdown.
“Surely nobody expected China to continue growing at the same level, there was going to be a time when they would finish constructing their roads, office buildings and any other infrastructure and reduce their appetite for our copper and maybe that time has now come,” Mr Chikwanda said.
He said the Zambian economy is resilient enough to withstand the current economic storm.
Mr Chikwanda said government has taken a raft of measures to stabilise the macroeconomic environment which is necessary for sustainable growth.
He said government is focused on reducing the budget deficit to manageable levels as a free of freeing up capital for private sector lending.
“We are going to rein in on public expenditure this year and going forward as a way of managing our cash flow position, but most of these measures have to be taken before cabinet first, i normally do not like to pre-empt these tins before we debate them as cabinet but we are formulating something,” he said.
On the foreign exchange position, Mr Chikwanda said the Kwacha depreciation has been compounded by the speculators who are trying to cash in on the situation.
“The Bank of Zambia has been carrying out open market operations which have somewhat helped but they can only do so much and their activities have been restricted because of dwindling foreign exchange reserves, we are probably sitting around two and half months of import cover which is not a desirable situation.”
Related News: Labels: ALEXANDER CHIKWANDA, CORRUPTION, EUROBOND, NEOLIBERALISM
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(IOL SA) Diamond scandal hits De Beers
COMMENT - De Beers and Beny Steinmetz are colluding to steal South African diamonds, through Beny Steinmetz' Ascot Diamonds (Pty) Ltd. This is where the money is going that should be diversifying the South African economy, and eliminate poverty.
Diamond scandal hits De Beers
- Crime & Courts | IOL News
Independent Newspapers Online
Johannesburg - A senior government diamond valuator in Joburg has accused his bosses of blocking his investigation into diamond giant De Beers – and then firing him to shut him up.
Conrad Benn, the country’s first black diamond valuator, has launched an urgent application in the high court in Joburg to challenge the South African Diamond and Precious Metals Regulator’s decision to suspend him in April last year and fire him last month.
Under section 74 of the Diamond Act, De Beers is exempt from getting permission to sell its diamonds overseas – if it can show that for any of its sales exceeding R5 billion, at least 40 percent of it benefited local companies.
Benn said that
instead of a total of 11 local companies benefiting, a single off-shore company received the lion’s share.
He has submitted an affidavit from one of
De Beers’ other sight-holders, Israeli businessman Erez Daleyot, that De Beers and the Swiss-based, Israeli-owned Steinmetz Group “are working in collusion with (Levy) Rapoo (the chief executive of the diamond regulator) and stealing from the nation of South Africa”.
Rapoo asked Benn to verify the claim. Benn found in November 2013 that De Beers was not complying with the act.
“Of the 40 percent of the gross value of the production cycle to beneficiaries in South Africa, 35 percent was sold to one customer, being Ascot Diamonds (Pty) Ltd. Ascot Diamonds is part of a group of companies owned by a major worldwide diamond entrepreneur, Beny Steinmetz.
“I analysed the 35 percent sold to Ascot Diamonds and noted that it consisted of purchases of ordinary usual diamonds as well as a substantial portion of what is known as ‘exceptional stones’.
“These can be described as large diamonds of good colour and clarity and are the best of any production cycle. They are the cream of the crop,” Benn said.
He said his findings made him uncomfortable and he had made countless efforts to raise it with the relevant authorities in De Beers.
He said that instead of resolving the matter, De Beers wrote a letter to Rapoo accusing Benn of leaking confidential corporate information to a third party.
The regulator then made an “Anton Piller” application, using information given to it by De Beers, said Benn, allowing local law firm ENS Forensics to search Benn’s house and seize his laptop.
Benn was suspended before facing a disciplinary hearing chaired by advocate GJ Fourie, who, Benn told the court, had been appointed by ENS Forensics. Fourie fired him last month.
In his papers, Benn remains adamant that the motive of the regulator was to “get rid of him” instead of probing allegations of wrongdoing by De Beers.
He was the regulator’s senior manager in the valuation department.
Benn worked for De Beers in Kimberley after matriculating at St Patrick’s College in that city. He worked there until 1998 when he joined the regulator, leaving in 2003 to join a private diamond mining company.
He returned to the regulator in 2008 and was later appointed senior manager.
Benn has asked the high court to stop the disciplinary proceedings until his new counsel had familiarised himself with the allegations.
He is adamant that the process has been launched “because I had uncovered the skewed allocation of exceptional stones. The purpose of getting rid of me is to stifle my investigation,” he said.
baldwin.ndaba@inl.co.za
The Star
Labels: ANC, BENY STEINMETZ GROUP RESOURCES, CORRUPTION, DEBEERS, DIAMONDS, LEVY RAPOO
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(THOUGHTLEADER SA) Flipping the corruption myth
Transparency International recently published their latest annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), laid out in an eye-catching map of the world with the least corrupt nations coded in happy yellow and the most corrupt nations smeared in stigmatising red. The CPI defines corruption as “the misuse of public power for private benefit,” and draws its data from 12 different institutions including the World Bank, Freedom House, and the World Economic Forum.
When I first saw this map I was struck by the fact that most of the yellow areas happen to be rich Western countries, including the US and the UK, whereas red covers almost the entirety of the global South, with countries like South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Somalia daubed especially dark.
cpi.transparency.org
This geographical division fits squarely with mainstream views, which see corruption as the scourge of the developing world (cue cliché images of dictators in Africa and bribery in India). But is this storyline accurate?
Many international development organisations hold that persistent poverty in the global South is caused largely by corruption among local public officials. In 2003 these concerns led to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which asserts that, while corruption exists in all countries, this “evil phenomenon” is “most destructive” in the global South, where it is a “key element in economic underperformance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development”.
There’s only one problem with this theory: it’s just not true.
Corruption, superpower style
According to the World Bank, corruption in the form of bribery and theft by government officials, the main target of the UN Convention, costs developing countries between $20 billion and $40 billion each year. That’s a lot of money. But it’s an extremely small proportion — only about 3% — of the total illicit flows that leak out of public coffers. Tax avoidance, on the other hand, accounts for more than $900 billion each year, money that multinational corporations steal from developing countries through practices such as trade mispricing.
This enormous outflow of wealth is facilitated by a shadowy financial system that includes tax havens, paper companies, anonymous accounts, and fake foundations, with the City of London at the very heart of it. Over 30% of global foreign direct investment is booked through tax havens, which now collectively hide one sixth of the world’s total private wealth.
This is a massive — indeed, fundamental — cause of poverty in the developing world, yet it does not register in the mainstream definition of corruption, is absent from the UN Convention, and rarely if ever appears on the agenda of international development organisations.
With the City of London at the centre of the global tax haven web, how does the UK end up with a clean CPI?
The question is all the more baffling given that the city is immune from many of the nation’s democratic laws and free of all parliamentary oversight. As a result of this special status, the city has maintained a number of quaint plutocratic traditions. Take its electoral process, for instance: more than 70% of the votes cast during council elections are cast not by residents, but by corporations — mostly banks and financial firms. And the bigger the corporation, the more votes they get, with the largest firms getting 79 votes each. This takes US-style corporate personhood to another level.
To be fair, this kind of corruption is not entirely out of place in a country where a feudalistic royal family owns 120 000 hectares of the nation’s land and sucks up about £40 million of public funds each year. Then there’s the parliament, where the House of Lords is filled not by election but by appointment, with 92 seats inherited by aristocratic families, 26 set aside for the leaders of the country’s largest religious sect, and dozens of others divvied up for sale to multi-millionaires.
Corruption in the US is only slightly less blatant. Whereas Congressional seats are not yet available for outright purchase, the recent Citizens United vs FEC ruling allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns to ensure that their preferred candidates get elected, a practice justified under the Orwellian banner of “free speech”.
The poverty factor
The UN Convention is correct to say that poverty in developing countries is caused by corruption. But the corruption we ought to be most concerned about has its root in the countries that are coloured yellow on the CPI map, not red.
The tax haven system is not the only culprit. We know that the global financial crisis of 2008 was precipitated by systemic corruption among public officials in the US who were intimately tied to the interests of Wall Street firms. In addition to shifting trillions of dollars from public coffers into private pockets through bailouts, the crisis wiped out a huge chunk of the global economy and had a devastating effect on developing countries when demand for exports dried up, causing massive waves of unemployment.
A similar story can be told about the Libor scandal in the UK, when major London banks colluded to rig interest rates so as to suck about $100 billion of free money from people even well beyond Britain’s shores. How could either of these scandals be defined as anything but the misuse of public power for private benefit? The global reach of this kind of corruption makes petty bribery and theft in the developing world seem parochial by comparison.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. If we really want to understand how corruption drives poverty in developing countries, we need to start by looking at the institutions that control the global economy, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the policies that these institutions foisted on the global South, following the Washington Consensus, caused per capita income growth rates to collapse by almost 50%. Economist Robert Pollin has estimated that during this period developing countries lost about $480 billion a year in potential GDP. It would be difficult to overstate the human devastation that these numbers represent. Yet Western corporations have benefitted tremendously from this process, gaining access to new markets, cheaper labour and raw materials, and fresh avenues for capital flight.
These international institutions masquerade as mechanisms for public governance, but they are deeply anti-democratic; this is why they can get away with imposing policies that so directly violate public interest. Voting power in the IMF and World Bank is apportioned so that developing countries — the vast majority of the world’s population — together hold less than 50% of the vote, while the United States Treasury wields de facto veto power. The leaders of these institutions are not elected, but appointed by the US and Europe, with not a few military bosses and Wall Street executives among them.
Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank, has publicly denounced these institutions as among the least transparent he has ever encountered. They also suffer from a shocking lack of accountability, as they enjoy special “sovereign immunity” status that protects them against public lawsuit when their policies fail, regardless of how much harm they cause.
Shifting the blame
If these patterns of governance were true of any given nation in the global South, the West would cry corruption. Yet such corruption is normalised in the command centres of the global economy, perpetuating poverty in the developing world while Transparency International directs our attention elsewhere.
Even if we do decide to focus on localised corruption in developing countries, we have to accept that it does not exist in a geopolitical vacuum. Many of history’s most famous dictators — like Augusto Pinochet, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Hosni Mubarak — were supported by a steady flow of Western aid. Today, not a few of the world’s most corrupt regimes have been installed or bolstered by the US, among them Afghanistan, South Sudan, and allegedly the warlords of Somalia — three of the darkest states on the CPI map.
This raises an interesting question: which is more corrupt, the petty dictatorship or the superpower that installs it? Unfortunately, the UN Convention conveniently ignores these dynamics, and the CPI map leads us to believe, incorrectly, that each country’s corruption is neatly bounded by national borders.
Corruption is a major driver of poverty, to be sure. But if we are to be serious about tackling this problem, the CPI map will not be much help. The biggest cause of poverty in developing countries is not localised bribery and theft, but the corruption that is endemic to the global governance system, the tax-haven network, and the banking sectors of New York and London. It’s time to flip the corruption myth on its head and start demanding transparency where it counts.
Labels: CORRUPTION
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Nelson Mandela leaves US$4m estate to family, staff and ANC
By Reuters
Mon 03 Feb. 2014, 16:10 CAT
COMMENT - At some level I understand that Presidents will have more money than most, and that $4 million is really not that much money nowadays, even frugal. However, you can't shake the feeling that this money was accumulated because President Mandela refused to take back the mines and the land, which would have economically empowered all South Africans. - MrK
Nelson Mandela left his roughly $4.1-million estate to his wife Graca Machel, family members, staff, schools and the ANC, according to a summary of his will released Monday.
Two months after the death of the 95-year-old South African statesman, lawyers said wife Graca was likely to waive her right to half the estate, opting instead to receive four properties in Mozambique and other assets.
Royalties from his books and other projects, as well as his homes in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Qunu and Mthatha were left to a family trust.
The home in Houghton, Johannesburg where Mandela died on December 5 will be used by the family of his deceased son Makgatho.
"It is my wish that it should also serve as a place of gathering of the Mandela family in order to maintain its unity long after my death," the former statesman wrote.
Mandela's children each received $300,000 in loans during his lifetime and will have that debt scrapped if it has not been repaid.
The will was first written in 2004 and last amended in 2008.
Even before his death, Mandela's children and grandchildren frequently clashed over who leads the family and who should benefit from his investments.
Several have already put the Mandela brand behind commercial projects including wine, clothing, artwork, a social network and a reality television show.
Executor Dikgang Moseneke, the deputy head of South Africa's Constitutional Court, said the reading of the will to the family had been "charged with emotion" but no one had yet contested it.
Mandela's other bequeathments reflected a life in politics and championing education.
Mandela gave around $4,500 each to members of staff, including long-time personal aide Zelda la Grange.
The will also provided around $9,000 each for Wits and Fort Hare universities, and the same amount to three other schools.
The African National Congress, which Mandela led to victory in the first democratic elections in 1994, could receive between 10 and 30 percent of his royalties.
The cash will be used specifically to promote "policies and principles of reconciliation amongst the people of South Africa."
Family feud
It is unclear if the will can prevent family battles over who controls the Mandela name, which have seen family remains exhumed and reinterred and exhumed and reinterred again.
Eldest daughter Makaziwe reportedly had the locks changed on Mandela's rural home after his death to exclude his eldest grandson Mandla, the head of Mandela's clan.
Makaziwe and Mandla both lay claim to lead the family following the death of the anti-apartheid hero in December.
Makaziwe is backed by his second wife Winnie and Mandla has the support for the royal family of his tribe.
Three executors will now be tasked with winding up the estate and carrying out Mandela's wishes.
They are George Bizos, who represented Mandela at the trial that jailed him for 27 years; Moseneke, the deputy head of the country's Constitutional Court who spent years with the icon imprisoned on Robben Island; and Themba Sangoni the head judge in Mandela's birth province the Eastern Cape
Mandela became South Africa's first black president after the first all-race elections in 1994 and his politics of forgiveness and reconciliation made him a global peace icon.
He died December 5 and was buried 10 days later in his rural boyhood home of Qunu
Labels: ANC, CORRUPTION, NELSON MANDELA
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Nelson Mandela leaves US$4m estate to family, staff and ANC
By Reuters
Mon 03 Feb. 2014, 16:10 CAT
COMMENT - At some level I understand that Presidents will have more money than most, and that $4 million is really not that much money nowadays, even frugal. However, you can't shake the feeling that this money was accumulated because President Mandela refused to take back the mines and the land, which would have economically empowered all South Africans. - MrK
Nelson Mandela left his roughly $4.1-million estate to his wife Graca Machel, family members, staff, schools and the ANC, according to a summary of his will released Monday.
Two months after the death of the 95-year-old South African statesman, lawyers said wife Graca was likely to waive her right to half the estate, opting instead to receive four properties in Mozambique and other assets.
Royalties from his books and other projects, as well as his homes in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Qunu and Mthatha were left to a family trust.
The home in Houghton, Johannesburg where Mandela died on December 5 will be used by the family of his deceased son Makgatho.
"It is my wish that it should also serve as a place of gathering of the Mandela family in order to maintain its unity long after my death," the former statesman wrote.
Mandela's children each received $300,000 in loans during his lifetime and will have that debt scrapped if it has not been repaid.
The will was first written in 2004 and last amended in 2008.
Even before his death, Mandela's children and grandchildren frequently clashed over who leads the family and who should benefit from his investments.
Several have already put the Mandela brand behind commercial projects including wine, clothing, artwork, a social network and a reality television show.
Executor Dikgang Moseneke, the deputy head of South Africa's Constitutional Court, said the reading of the will to the family had been "charged with emotion" but no one had yet contested it.
Mandela's other bequeathments reflected a life in politics and championing education.
Mandela gave around $4,500 each to members of staff, including long-time personal aide Zelda la Grange.
The will also provided around $9,000 each for Wits and Fort Hare universities, and the same amount to three other schools.
The African National Congress, which Mandela led to victory in the first democratic elections in 1994, could receive between 10 and 30 percent of his royalties.
The cash will be used specifically to promote "policies and principles of reconciliation amongst the people of South Africa."
Family feud
It is unclear if the will can prevent family battles over who controls the Mandela name, which have seen family remains exhumed and reinterred and exhumed and reinterred again.
Eldest daughter Makaziwe reportedly had the locks changed on Mandela's rural home after his death to exclude his eldest grandson Mandla, the head of Mandela's clan.
Makaziwe and Mandla both lay claim to lead the family following the death of the anti-apartheid hero in December.
Makaziwe is backed by his second wife Winnie and Mandla has the support for the royal family of his tribe.
Three executors will now be tasked with winding up the estate and carrying out Mandela's wishes.
They are George Bizos, who represented Mandela at the trial that jailed him for 27 years; Moseneke, the deputy head of the country's Constitutional Court who spent years with the icon imprisoned on Robben Island; and Themba Sangoni the head judge in Mandela's birth province the Eastern Cape
Mandela became South Africa's first black president after the first all-race elections in 1994 and his politics of forgiveness and reconciliation made him a global peace icon.
He died December 5 and was buried 10 days later in his rural boyhood home of Qunu
Labels: ANC, CORRUPTION, NELSON MANDELA
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Evaluate ACC's performance
By Editor
Mon 03 Feb. 2014, 14:00 CAT
Corruption has never been an easy evil to fight anywhere.
It also doesn't die quickly. Fighting corruption is like trying to eliminate cockroaches in a house. They don't disappear so easily. One has to be persistent to eliminate them.
To forge iron, you need a strong hammer. Similarly, to effectively fight corruption and win, you need strong institutions, laws and individuals.
Our fight against corruption doesn't seem to be going very well. There are many wonderful pronouncements against corruption - even from corrupt elements themselves - but very little progress is being recorded.
The institutions and individuals tasked with the responsibility to champion the fight against corruption on behalf of our people seem to be in a paralysis. There is very little positive that seems to be coming out of our Anti Corruption Commission.
Public expectations are very high when it comes to the work and mandate of our Anti Corruption Commission. But what has this institution delivered since its establishment in 1982 following the enactment of the Corrupt Practices Act No. 14 of 1980? And what has it achieved since the repeal of the Corrupt Practices Act and its replacement by the Anti Corruption Commission Act of 1996? Our answer to these questions is a categorical: very little, if not nothing.
The enactments that led to the establishment of our Anti Corruption Commission were good products of political will to fight corruption. But it has proved that political will alone is not enough to enable us to fight corruption effectively. Political ideas are worthless if they are not inspired by noble, selfless sentiments. Likewise, noble sentiments are worthless if they are not based on correct, fair ideas and practices.
When we look at very high-level corruption issues that have been unearthed and even prosecuted in this country, we will find that the role of the Anti Corruption Commission in all this has been very small, if not nothing.
The highest level of corruption prosecution ever reached in this country was that of Frederick Chiluba and those connected to him in his MMD government. Here, a former president, Minister of Finance, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Secretary to the Treasury, the chief of intelligence and other very high-ranking government officials were investigated and prosecuted for corruption.
The great majority of them were convicted. And civil proceedings were commenced in the London High Court against Chiluba and his accomplices and the Zambian government won. But again, corruption in the Rupiah Banda government denied the Zambian people recovery of what Chiluba and his friends had stolen. In all this, the role of the Anti Corruption Commission was very minimal. These were not matters initiated and investigated by the Anti Corruption Commission. Of course, a few officials were recruited from the Anti Corruption Commission to join the investigations and prosecution. But this was not a matter that was led by the Anti Corruption Commission.
And even today, the prosecution of Rupiah and those around him are not matters which the Anti Corruption Commission can in all honesty claim to be leading. Their participation in these issues is merely symbolic.
But this is an institution that is mandated by law to investigate and prosecute corruption in our Republic. Taxpayers' money is every day being spent on the Anti Corruption Commission to do its job. But can it be said that the Zambian taxpayer is getting a fair return from the Anti Corruption Commission? Again, the answer is a categorical no.
As things stand today, the Anti Corruption Commission is simply a ceremonial institution to show people that we are committed to fighting corruption and we have set up an institution for that purpose. In its current form and structure, the Anti Corruption Commission is a dead, useless but costly institution.
In saying this, we are not in any way trying to discredit, belittle and undermine those who work for this institution. We are merely trying to take a critical and self-critical approach to life in the firm belief that no institution, whatsoever, should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don't. There is no doubt, of course, that criticism is good for people and institutions that are part of public life. And this sort of questioning can also act, and it should do so, as an effective engine for change, for improvement.
We need to critically examine the reasons for the Anti Corruption Commission's poor performance. We need to find out if it is the legal framework that is inhibiting it from efficiently and effectively delivering on its mandate. If this is so, let the necessary legal amendments be made. We also need to find out if it is the organisational framework that is making the work of the Anti Corruption Commission difficult. If this is the case, let's effect the necessary organisational changes to make this very necessary public institution efficient and effective. If it is the individuals who are simply not up to the tasks they have been employed to carry out, let the necessary changes be made in personnel so as to enable the institution to operate efficiently and effectively.
Leaving things the way they are is very dangerous because it may lead to many false interpretations and wrong assumptions.
Some of the inefficiencies and deficiencies of the Anti Corruption Commission lead to the assumption of political interference in its work. This is an institution that has been very poor in investigating and prosecuting matters involving senior government officials, political appointees. Such people are only investigated and prosecuted for corruption when they fall out with the sitting government or are no longer influential in it. Even where there is meaningful public suspicion of corruption of senior government officials, the Anti Corruption Commission never moves in.
However, this approach has the dangerous consequence of making the sitting president appear to be protecting members of his or her government when this may not be so.
Public institutions need to account for the public money invested in them. The Anti Corruption Commission is not exempt from this accountability. And there is need for the relevant parliamentary committee to critically evaluate the work of the Anti Corruption Commission and recommend the necessary amends. This is so because as things stand today, the Anti Corruption Commission cannot easily justify public investment in it. The results of their work are not tying in with what the public is putting in it. More is expected, and justifiably so, from this institution.
As things stand today, the Anti Corruption Commission is operating more or less like an ineffective anti corruption complaints commission that is not able to move anything by itself or at its own instigation.
This inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the Anti Corruption Commission is putting too much pressure on the political authorities and other institutions of the state that are closely connected to its work. It is putting unnecessary pressure on the presidency to match its anti-corruption pronouncements with deeds or action. It is also putting unnecessary pressure on the National Prosecution Authority, which, in the final analysis, has to take responsibility for its work.
Things cannot be allowed to continue this way if legitimate public expectations on the fight against corruption have to be met. All the necessary changes, whatever it takes, must be made.
More can be said and needs to be said. What has been stated in this comment is merely an introduction to the detailed debate and evaluation of the performance of our Anti Corruption Commission. More public discourse is needed, and must take place, on this issue.
Labels: ACC, CORRUPTION
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The corrupt religious
By Editor
Sun 26 Jan. 2014, 14:00 CAT
It is said that the corruption of the best is the worst of all. This can be applied to the religious, among whom the corrupt also exist. Many of our religious institutions have problems of corruption, to a greater or lesser extent. And we do not mean isolated cases, but daily occurrences of corruption. We would call them venial, but they do bog down religious life. How can such a thing happen?
A golden rule has been suggested to detect the state of a soul living in peace and tranquility: assign to him or her something extra. A soul closed to generosity reacts badly.
A soul gets used to the evil smell of corruption. It is the same in a closed environment: only the one who comes from outside detects the rarefied atmosphere. When one wants to help a soul in that state, there arises an indescribable sequence of resistances. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt, but they had become used to this loss of freedom, adjusting the state of their soul to it, and did not desire any other manner of living. Their conscience was asleep, somewhat corrupt. When Moses announced to them God's plan, "they would not listen to him because of their dejection and hard slavery" (Exodus 6:9). Later, when the going in the desert got increasingly difficult, they reproached Moses for having got them into trouble: "When they came up on Moses and Aaron … they said to them: 'The Lord look upon you and judge! You have brought us into bad odour with Pharaoh and his servants and have put a sword into their hands to slay us" (Exodus 5:21).
The elders intended to negotiate with the enemy. They were tired and frightened. Judith had to come and re-read history to them in order that they would not accept situations unwanted by God, like sheep led to the slaughter. Jona does not want problems: he is sent to Nineveh and rushes off to Tarshish. God has to intervene and purify him with a long night in the belly of the monster. Elijah says to himself that he's gone too far in the issue of the slaughter of the priests of Balaam, and gets frightened of a woman to the extent of desiring death: he is not up to bearing the solitude of triumphing in God. Nathaniel finds it easier to utter his skeptical "nothing good can come out of Nazareth…" (John 1:46), than to believe in Philip's enthusiasm. The two disciples, new Jonahs, didn't want problems either: they had been summoned to Galilee and escaped towards Emmaus instead…and the rest of the apostles could not believe what their eyes were seeing, "incredulously for joy and amazed" (Luke 24:41). This is the key point: sorrow always leads to a worse state; having experienced defeat, it leads the human heart to getting used to it, so as not to be surprised and not to suffer before another possible defeat. Or, simply, one is satisfied with one's state and wants no more problems.
There is reticence in all these biblical references. The heart wants no trouble. There is the fear that God might burst in and lead us along ways out of our control. There is fear of God's visit, fear of being consoled. A fatalism of sorts sets in; horizons shrink to the measure of one's desolation or tranquility. One fears hope, preferring the realism of less to the promise of more…forgetting that God's utmost realism is in the words: "Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing" (Genesis 12:1-2).
There is a subtle process of corruption in this supposedly realistic preferring of the less: one arrives at mediocrity or lukewarmness, two forms of spiritual corruption, and haggles with God according to one or the other. In the sacrament of reconciliation, one asks for the forgiveness of other sins…but does not show the Lord this deluded state of soul. A slow, but fatal sclerosis of the heart has begun.
Then the soul begins to find satisfaction in the products of religious consumerism. Consecrated life is lived more than ever as an immanent realisation of one's personality. For many, this will consist in professional satisfaction, for others in successful works, for others in taking pleasure in oneself for the esteem in which one is held or, in finding imperfection of modern means, the ways of filling the vacuum left in the soul by the absence of the end originally looked for and for which one let oneself be called. Others will engage in an intense social life: they will enjoy going out, holidays with friends, dinners and receptions; they will try to be taken into account in all that implies status. We could go on listing cases of corruption…but, simply, all of this is a part of something deeper: spiritual worldliness. It is a form of paganism ecclesially disguised. In the face of such men and women with their corrupt consecrated life, the Church shows the greatness of her saints…who have been able to transcend all appearances to contemplate the face of Christ, thus becoming mad for Christ.
Many men and women spend their lives in what we have called venial corruption. They don't measure up to the standard of their consecration. They make themselves comfortable beside the pool, during 38 long years looking at the waters and seeing others getting cured (John 5:5). Such a heart is corrupt. One dreams while awake, and would rather revive the dead part of the heart; one feels the call of the Lord…but no, it's too much trouble, too much work. Our indigence must make an effort to open up to transcendence, but the illness of corruption prevents it.
Spiritual worldliness constitutes the greatest danger, the most treacherous temptation. It is insidiously reborn when all the others have been conquered, and the very victories give it new strength. Were this same spiritual worldliness to infiltrate the Church so as to corrupt her in her very principle, it would infinitely be more disastrous than any other, simply moral, worldliness. It would be even worse than loathsome leprosy that at some historical times cruelly disfigured the countenance of the beloved spouse.
Labels: CORRUPTION, RELIGION, RICHARD LUONDE
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Corruption rife in the church-Fr.Luonde
By Roy Habaalu
Sun 26 Jan. 2014, 09:20 CAT
CORRUPTION is rife in the church, says Fr Richard Luonde.
Fr Luonde, a Kitwe-based Anglican priest, says most clergy lived beyond their means, raising suspicion on how they acquired what they have. He said corruption was not only in the secular world but also in churches.
"Corruption is everywhere, even in families, so the church cannot be excluded. If you carried out a thorough investigation on the happenings in the church today, you will be shocked because the church has become so secular in certain areas such that you fail to understand if we are still prophesying the Gospel of Jesus Christ," Fr Luonde said.
"Nobody is speaking out on the corruption in the church. Corruption is also found in the church and the levels of living for ministers in the church leave much to be desired and if they are living comfortably than anyone else, it means someone with whom they run the church have taken advantage of the congregation."
Fr Luonde said the church had not been transparent in its financial dealings.
He wondered how some church leaders were living lavish lives while followers remained poverty stricken.
"There's a lot of hypocrisy, a lot of judging others before judging ourselves. Some churches, the way they are established and their guidelines and programmes, leave a lot to be desired. In certain churches you would find a bishop driven in a posh vehicle with bodyguards; why should you have bodyguards? Some of them are as poor as the church mouse. Now if we call ourselves Christians, why should me as a bishop or a church leader drive a very expensive vehicle while my flock and pastors or reverends languish in poverty? That is corruption.
If you can amass such wealth to buy an expensive vehicle and build a mansion while your ministers and church members are in a grass-thatched house, how did you acquire that wealth? It means it was acquired at the expense of the church because when we talk about equality and being equal before Jesus Christ, the difference should not be so huge that in the same environment, others should live comfortably whilst others are suffering. But this is happening in the church today," Fr Luonde said.
He said it was hypocritical for the church to call others to virtues that they themselves do not practice.
"If we cry for a people-driven constitution in Zambia, we should also cry for a people-driven regulatory framework within the church. The Ten Commandments should apply to all, including church leaders. We should begin to regulate the way we run and conduct church affairs. So corruption is not only in the secular world; it's also in church and this must be fought," said Fr Luonde.
Labels: CORRUPTION, RELIGION, RICHARD LUONDE
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