CORRUPTION IN AFRICA HINDERS WESTERN INVESTMENT

“Corruption is not exclusive to Africa, of course. Yet official corruption is bound to be more glaring on a continent where most people live in dire poverty. And the news from Africa, as reported in the International Herald Tribune on June 10 by Celia W. Dugger, is that the fight against such corruption is not going well…

“Corruption is a terrible disease that destroys a country from within. Funds desperately needed to combat poverty and disease and to build roads, hospitals and schools are spent instead on everything from palaces on the Riviera to the acres of shoes made of snakeskin, satin and ostrich that Frederick Chiluba accumulated in a decade as Zambia’s president. Corruption begets corruption, turning ruling elites into self-perpetuating cliques, destroying peoples’ faith in government and law.”

The above passage is part of a recent Editorial in the influential New York Times entitled “Grand Larceny Africa” and this is definitely not good for the continent which is stirring interest in western, particularly American, investors who think that Africa is the last frontier of investment.

The western investors want to emulate the Chinese who have in the last decade poured billions of dollars into Africa by investing in oil exploration, mining and infrastructural development. But unlike the Chinese, the western investors are averse to corruption, lack of transparency and poor governance.

Stories like the on-going court case involving Ministry of Health staff in which K27 billion is alleged to have been misappropriated, the Dora Siliya saga involving RP Capital in the earmarked privatization process of ZAMTEL, etc, all do not give confidence to potential western investors who think that their investments would go down the corruption drain.

But what is very sad is the reaction from the donors who finally appear to be putting a plug on funding to corrupt ministries and departments, and they cannot be faulted for their actions. They have to protect their taxpayers’ funds back home.

Statutory media regulation

Written by Gershom Ndhlovu

Of late, the issue of compelling media organisations and journalists to join the Media Ethics Council of Zambia (MECOZ) and the threat of statutory regulation of the media has been quite hot. I am one of those who feel that MECOZ has gone off the rails and I wish to point out that there is no need for extrastatutory regulation of the media because the laws that are in place are adequate. Unfortunately, I do not have ready access to the laws of Zambia, but from what I can recall off-hand, there is the supreme law, the Constitution which guarantees freedom of expression, which guides every citizen. The piece of law that sends a chill down the spine of every journalist is the official secrets Act which carries a minimum sentence of 25 years. This mainly guides matters of security of the nation. Then there is the Penal Code which prescribes crimes and penalties thereof. Under this law, there is criminal libel and defamation as well as sedition to which any journalist is liable if he or she breaks the law. Anyone who feels that a journalist has criminally defamed someone or has committed an act of sedition is free to report him or her to the police. There is also the law of civil libel and defamation for individuals who feel that a newspaper has written untruthfully about them. Such people are free to sue in their individual capacities to seek compensation for any damage caused them by such publications. A lot of people have invoked this right and many a newspaper has paid the price to an extent of even folding up. Then there is the law of copyright. No journalist in his right frame of mind can go about lifting published or unpublished materials without attributing to that source. Infringement of copyright can be treated both as a civil or criminal matter. As I am recalling these laws from memory, I may have forgotten some of the laws and may have misrepresented what they exactly state. However, the point is that there are enough laws in the land dealing with how the media should operate. Our ministers, members of parliament and politicians in general should not even waste time making a piece of law regulating the media when they can invoke the above laws if anyone breaks the law. One thing for sure is that MECOZ has lost credibility to an extent where it needs serious sprucing if it has to stand with its head high. The people behind it need to go back to the drawing board and start afresh, recapturing the spirit for which it was initiated just over a decade ago. Lecturing on what stories a newspaper should cover, how it should write them and what words should be used, is not in their ambit.  **This post appeared as a letter to the editor in The Post of 19/05/2009.

 

MECOZ lobby is targeting Organizations

Written by Gershom Ndhlovu

I understand the background from which newly-appointed ZNBC acting director general Juliana Mwila is coming. Ms Mwila was until recently director of press and planning at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and by advocating for the accreditation of journalists through the Media Ethics Council Of Zambia (MECOZ), she is actually singing from the same hymn book as the present and former ministers of information. Having been a delegate to the inaugural MECOZ meeting held at Andrews Motel in Lusaka in 1998, I feel that the direction that this body has taken is totally opposite of what was discussed at the time. Every journalist who has studied media law and ethics knows that in Zambia, there is a whole gamut of laws that regulate the media from the civil law of libel to criminal libel in the Penal Code, to the state secrets Act and a whole range in between. In terms of accreditation, journalists used to get accredited through the now defunct Zambia Information Services. I must admit though that I am a bit ignorant about the role of ZANIS in all this for the simple fact that I have been outside the country for the last few years. What I remember about the conception of MECOZ was for people who had any complaints against any one media organisation was to short-circuit the court process in terms of litigation by an offended party because libel cases took unnecessarily long for both the aggrieved party and the newspapers. But the lengths which the pro-MECOZ lobby are taking are worrying because they want to take a tangential course which was not part of those first discussions of September 1998. It is very clear that that lobby has certain people and organisations in mind by calling for compulsory accreditation of journalists. They must also remember that by calling for statutory regulation of the media, they are being like Dr Frankestein who created a monster that came back to haunt him. The law they want enacted now will encroach on the very people demanding it when they are no longer in the comfort of the offices they are holding now. By calling for a Law Association of Zambia-like statute, there are a lot of things that will need to be taken into account, such as education levels of practitioners with the very minimum being a degree. Where will it leave non-degree holders? With the lawyers, there is no short-cut. With journalism, everyone with an opinion can write. Friends (and relatives), think deeply about MECOZ and what you want before you regret a few years down the road. *The above item appeared as a letter to the editor in The Post on 15/5/2009.