Rupiah’s peace of docility
By The Post
Wed 02 Mar. 2011, 04:00 CAT
IT is said that example is not the main thing in leading others, it is the only thing. It is also said that it is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself. You can’t lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself.
Some have even gone further to say that a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way. People do not follow uncommitted leaders and commitment is shown by the way one lives his own life and conducts his affairs.
No man that cannot command himself is fit to command another. A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.
It is said that to think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
It doesn’t make sense for our leaders to preach justice, fairness and peace when they are incapable of practicing these things themselves.
As Fr John Lesa has correctly observed, leaders should act in line with what they preach and demand from others.
When they talk about justice, they should ask themselves if they are acting justly to others.
When they are talking about peace, they should be asking themselves if they are acting in a manner that promotes peace.
We have seen that even the worst tyrants have always portrayed themselves as people who want peace, who seek peace.
But often when they talk about peace, they are actually and simply asking for obedience to their rule; they are asking citizens not to disturb their reign.
Anything that disturbs their hold on power is seen as inimical to peace.
But with what we are seeing today in North Africa, it is easy for us to realise that peace in a country cannot be reduced to the mere absence of conflict.
Whoever thought what is happening in Libya today could be happening with such speed and intensity?
Who could have ever imagined that there was no peace in that country?
We ask this question because that society appeared peaceful and happy with a lot of tolerance for Muammar Gadaffi and his family.
But today Libya is in flames.
And this anger cannot be said to have developed overnight. It was there in the hearts of many Libyans.
This just goes to show that peace is not the mere absence of conflict; it is the tranquility of order; it is the fruit of honesty, truth and solidarity.
And the enjoyment of peace also requires justice. Without justice, there will be no peace.
They are twin sisters. The use of unjust means of any form, by anyone, is against justice.
To engage in corruption and all sorts of abuse of power and public office, election bribery and malpractices lead to injustice and consequently the destruction of peace.
Therefore, the search for the ways for the realisation of the enjoyment of the right to peace requires the knowledge of what peace is not.
You can’t claim to have peace in a country where corruption is high, where public resources are being stolen with impunity.
You can’t claim to have peace in a country where those in power and their friends are enriching themselves by stealing, in broad daylight, people’s pensions.
The story that we started running yesterday about how the MMD leadership and their friends are stealing billions of kwacha from NAPSA through all sorts of schemes cannot be said to be a good recipe for peace.
This is a sure recipe for conflict. Is this the way to invest a pension contributor’s money and expect him to be happy, to have peace in his heart?
To build a climate where the enjoyment of the right to peace is realised, it is important to realise that the source of conflict is not solely out there. It is first and foremost located inside people’s hearts.
Conflicts spring from the hearts that are full of greed for money and for power; hearts that are full of hatred and vanity.
There is no way somebody can call deals that are going on at NAPSA ‘genuine business approved by the board’.
What type of board can approve such deals?
Only a corrupt board can approve such deals.
Those deals are outright theft; they are not a product of oversight on the part of anyone involved in them.
Again, this is not a recipe for peace because there is no justice in it and there can be no peace where there is no justice.
The peace that we claim to be enjoying today will soon be destroyed by greed for money, political power and unfair sharing of the wealth of our country.
We say this because the forces of discord that unleash themselves in the blood and destruction of conflict are hidden in every human heart.
Too often they surface, to the great distress of others, in the frequently lamented evils of corruption, abuse of power and greed, injustice in all its sordid and selfish guises.
It is pointless to preach about peace in our country when every day the chief preacher himself is engaged in acts of injustice that rob others of their dignity.
A complete conversion of heart and a thorough reform of our society are needed and must be attempted soon if we are to continue enjoying peace.
There is no real peace to talk about in our country today.
And the mere absence of violence on our streets does not mean there is peace in our country.
Real peace only exists where injustices have been combated or are fought and conquered as soon as the arise.
There can’t be peace in a country where injustice is the order of the day. What justice is there for these characters to steal public resources the way they are doing?
Zambia can only be saved by an increase in justice, by a genuine revolution of love, by violence to our selfish interests.
We need peace in our country.
But not the peace that dehumanises us, the peace of docility, the peace that accepts wrongdoing and does nothing about it, refuses to challenge evil deeds.
Zambia needs peace but not just any peace.
The peace we need is that which is worthy of human beings, and enjoyed by everyone.
No Zambian will exert his energies for meaningless peace, for peace that only protects thieves, crooks, tyrants.
The peace that Zambians need is one that allows a genuine dialogue, not a cosmetic dialogue.
And such genuine dialogue requires that people from different groupings open their ears and hearts to listen to each other, to learn and unlearn from each other.
A political leader can’t claim to be preaching peace when every time he opens his mouth, it is to insult and belittle others, accuse others of crimes they have not committed and pass judgment on them before they are even tried.
This is Rupiah Banda’s approach to peace. When Rupiah talks about peace, he actually means docility.
We should all support his heinous deeds to be seen to be peaceful citizens.
This won’t happen.
It will only happen over our dead bodies.
Labels: JOHN LESA, LIBYA, RUPIAH BANDA
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We agree with Fr Lesa
By The Post
Wed 17 Nov. 2010, 04:00 CAT
In yesterday’s edition, we carried a story which quoted Fr John Lesa calling upon our people to vote for a leadership that will take the lead in mobilising our people to get rid of corruption.
We agree with Fr Lesa that our people have a duty to hold their leaders to account, thereby ensuring that the vice of corruption that has ravaged our country is combated in a meaningful way.
We also agree with Fr Lesa when he says that it is because of selfishness amongst our leaders that our country looks like a nation emerging from war. The statistics about the welfare of our people are sometimes worse than those of countries that are at war. This is something that we should be ashamed of as a nation. We hear Rupiah Banda and his ministers celebrate the growth of the Zambian economy.
They churn out statistics about Zambia growing by this or that percentage. What they fail to tell us is how many more people are attending hospitals and receiving medical care which they could not receive a few years ago; how many more children are going to secondary school and getting a decent education, who could not otherwise access education; how many more teachers, doctors, nurses and other essential public workers are we producing as a result of this so-called growth of the economy? These are the issues that matter to our people. They want to be able to access medical care when they need it; they want to be able to send their children to school with the knowledge that they will be taught by motivated, well-trained and qualified teachers.
This is what the growth of an economy should translate into. We cannot celebrate the growth of our economy when vast numbers of our people cannot afford to eat what they need just to survive. A government that does not spend its energy addressing these basic and fundamental requirements of its people is irrelevant and an anti-thesis to the necessity of government.
Governments exist because of the will of the people, and that will can never be characterised by the denial of medical care, denial of good education and, more fundamentally, the denial of food. A government that is indifferent to whether its people eat or not; whether they receive the basic necessities of life or not is not a government for the people, but it is an enemy of the people. We say this because no one elects a government so that their suffering can increase. All those who participate in elections do so in the hope that their vote will count and their lives will improve.
But this is not what we see with Rupiah. His approach to running government is akin to abstract art that may not have any real relevance and use in the eyes of those who see it. But government is not supposed to be abstract art; it is supposed to be a three-dimensional engagement with our people which is designed to meet their needs. Rupiah is supposed to understand the basic needs of our people and design a programme that meets them. We are not saying here that Rupiah should provide mealie-meal for every household in our country. But there are certain things that he has to do that ensure that every household has a better chance of affording a bag of mealie-meal. In other words, it is his job to ensure that every citizen is looked after.
But a government that is preoccupied with its own interests and appetites cannot be expected to worry about its people. This is the kind of government that Rupiah is running. It is not a government of the people, for the people; it is a government of Rupiah, for Rupiah and his family, friends and hangers-on.
Our people must not expect much in terms of better living standards for as long as their government is more preoccupied with small things that have no consequence in the wider scheme of things. A government of the people would be wrestling with how to better deliver services and help our people to be self-reliant. They would be concerned about how the resources that the country is blessed with can be used to improve the lot of all our people.
Such a government would engage in understanding practical economic theories that impact on the lives of our people positively. But Rupiah’s economic policies are parrot policies. They repeat the nonsense that people tell them without asking themselves how those policies that they parrot impact the lives of our people. We have heard them celebrate this or that promise of investment that some foreign investor is bringing into the country. But we have never heard them say how much of that money is actually going to stay in this country and impact in very practical ways the government’s ability to deliver services.
In other words, how much tax are they going to collect from these services; how much money is actually going to trickle into the national Treasury. Many of our people have been calling for a fairer way of our country getting a share from its mineral resources. This can only come through taxation which, it seems, Rupiah and his minions are too timid to demand from the companies that are extracting copper and other resources from this country. We doubt whether we get any meaningful revenue from our timber which foreigners are being allowed to extract and export for nothing. But this is what happens when a government is more interested in its own stomach than delivering policies that allow our people to benefit from their resources.
It is not far-fetched to say that one of the reasons why Rupiah and his minions are failing to come up with policies that benefit our people is public corruption and abuse of office. How can a government which lines up for handouts from so-called investors to finance lavish lifestyles and corrupt politics ever implement policies that require those same investors to operate transparently and in the interest of our people?
As Fr Lesa correctly observes, corruption, therefore, becomes a very debilitated cancer which our people must fight if they are ever going to enjoy meaningful development. But we should not be naïve about how deep-rooted this problem is. Those who enjoy its benefits will do anything to ensure that the status quo continues.
And this is what Rupiah’s government seems to be telling us. They are so determined to ensure that any system that is capable of fighting corruption effectively is erased from our laws. This is what explains their determination to remove section 37 from the Anti Corruption Commission Act. To them, there is nothing wrong with the government saying that it is uncomfortable with a law that requires public officers to account for all their property and wealth. The current system of patronage is too lucrative to be inconvenienced by a small law such as the Anti Corruption Commission Act. And for that reason, Rupiah is ensuring that this law goes.
We have no doubt that if Rupiah had been calling for the strengthening of the law against corruption, including improving the penalties that are meted out to those who commit acts of corruption, his government would have been parroting the same song. People like George Kunda would have been eloquent champions of anti corruption rhetoric. What this tells us is that leadership is very important.
If the leader was asking for the right thing, chances are high that his followers would follow. On the other hand, if the leader is championing the cause of the corrupt, the likelihood of his followers doing the same is by the same token very high. This is what we have seen with Rupiah and Levy Mwanawasa before him. To that extent, therefore, Fr Lesa makes a very important point when he says our people must look for a leadership that will take a leading role in mobilising a citizenry to work hard and get rid of corruption.
If we fail to give ourselves leaders who do this for us, we should not be surprised that our country continues to wallow in poverty in the midst of plenty. We have a government that sees nothing wrong with refusing to tax the mining companies that are extracting valuable minerals from our ground and yet go to beg for alms from the governments of those same mining companies. This is a failure to reason. Rupiah and his minions would rather beg for what is theirs.
This behaviour is consistent with the culture of corruption and abuse of power that has blighted our continent. No one will save Africa but Africa itself, and no one will save Zambia but Zambia itself.
Labels: JOHN LESA
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Economic growth must have impact on poor - Fr Lesa
By Darious Kapembwa in Kitwe
Tue 13 July 2010, 03:00 CAT
KITWE’s Sacred Heart parish priest John Lesa has charged that the much talked about economic growth should not just be statistics on paper.
Speaking on Sunday during a homily about the Good Samaritan as told in the Bible, Fr Lesa told congregants that economic growth should have a positive bearing on the lives of poor people.
“Economy is not just about statistics, people must benefit from the growth especially the poor and the down-trodden in society,” Fr Lesa said.
He advised the congregation not to fight among themselves despite their political beliefs and affiliation.
“Do not fight amongst yourselves because you are MMD or PF but help everyone who needs your help like Christ has told us in His teachings, but you have an obligation to criticise wrong policies,” he said.
Fr Lesa said it was surprising that even people calling themselves clergymen or deacons neglect the needy.
Fr Lesa called on those holding power to do right things at the right time rather than waiting for the worst before taking remedial measures.
“Do not buy a mandamanda when people need an ambulance, buy an ambulance first before somebody dies. Why should you buy expensive mandamandas whose spare parts cannot even be found?” Fr Lesa asked.
He said people living with disabilities must be taken care of just in the same way the able-bodied persons were treated.
Fr Lesa reminded the leadership in the congregation to always remember what Jesus did to the disabled, the poor and the down trodden in society adding that true love did not choose which neighbour to love the most.
Fr Lesa said love should be all-encompassing.
Labels: JOHN LESA
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