NOT SO CLEVER, SILAVWE

By Gershom Ndhlovu

The conviction and sentencing of former deputy minister, Clever Silavwe who is also Nakonde MP should serve as a warning to people serving and those aspiring to serve in government not to tamper with public funds because the long arm of the law will catch up with them.

It is disheartening in the nation in which over 80 percent of the citizens live in poverty for selfish people in leadership to be stealing money which would otherwise go to improve social infrastructure and service delivery for all.

Kudos go to law enforcement officers who work under very difficult conditions especially where investigating the high and mighty in society is concerned for securing the conviction of Silavwe, the former Northern Province minister for fiddling public funds.

But there is also need for citizens to play their role in exposing the crimes by people they chose to lead them. It is not uncommon to hear stories of how some leaders boast that their names would never be found on dubious documents used to filch money from government coffers when it is clear that something wrong goes on in their ministries.

Zambians have in the past tended to admire people who have stolen money from government or the private sector by labelling them as inshimbi or abaume.

But, incidentally, these are the very reasons why standards of education have fallen, roads have deteriorated, why there have been shortages of drugs in hospitals and above all, why public service salaries have remained poor—because of the thieves in government.

I have often said that President Mwanawasa has his own weaknesses, but on the fight against corruption he deserves unequivocal praise because allowing the arrest, prosecution and conviction of a ruling party MP and former minister would obviously be an embarrassment to government.

Silavwe’s trip to the slammer means that there are no sacred cows who would be allowed to steal public funds with impunity.

The nation’s moral compass should be activated by the fact that an MP and former minister has been convicted for fraud which means many others of similar character could be reported, arrested, and if found guilty, sent to Chimbokaila, Kansenshi or Kamfinsa prisons.

Those who have remained undetected should be exposed instead of just admiring them driving expensive cars, building mansions and drinking from ‘30 to 30’ (that is from one end of the month to the other) when the rest cannot make ends meet.

It is really scandalous that some ministers, permanent secretaries, other senior civil servants and parastatal chiefs should be in the forefront of exhibiting extravagance in this way when they are the first ones to claim that government or their parastatal companies have no money to pay improved salaries.

That is why an announcement by Mwanawasa that there is another ministry being investigated for corruption, like the Ministry of Lands where some officials are appearing in court, can only be waited with baited breath.

On that score, this is also the reason why non-governmental organisations which are clearly non-profit making, should be roped in terms of statutory controls because they also lack accountability with some of the NGO leaders also displaying the same extravagance as some crooked government officials.

Is it any wonder that some NGO leaders, vocal on calling on calling on government to be accountable when they themselves are not? If they are not criticising government, the NGO leaders are on Cha Cha Cha Road weaving in and out of hardware shops buying materials for their endless building projects.

I only wonder what happened to the NGO bill that Home Affairs Minister Ronnie Shikapwasha introduced in parliament a year or two ago which unsettled the NGO leadership.

To underscore the importance of fighting corruption in the nation, there is need to not only promote the culture of whistle blowing, but to also protect the whistle blowers who are presently harassed at places of work or even dismissed for reporting dubious activities in their midst.

 

 

It is a very big shame that South Africans are repaying the people that hosted them in their darker days with life and limb. Before the South Africans embark on their murderous rampage against foreigners, they need to ask themselves where they sheltered when they were being hunted like rabid dogs by the apartheid regime.

Did they not hide in Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and all over Africa? Is not Tanzania that provided them with military training in their refugee camps? Didn’t Mozambican president Samora Machel die because of trying to secure the freedom of the same South Africans today chasing Mozambicans like animals?

What didn't the Nigerians do to help in the liberation of South Africa? Some Nigerians may be a crooked lot, but their role in the South African liberation struggle cannot and should not be ignored or easily forgotten.

Zambians did not only sacrifice their economy which was once very strong, but they also lost their lives when the racist South Africans were ferreting out the freedom fighters hiding in their midst.

Lest South Africans forget, Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki squatted among the people of M'tendere, yes, you heard me, M'tendere, that shanty township in Lusaka. On one state visit to Zambia, he even visited the township to pay homage to the people there. 

South Africans need to be told in no uncertain terms that they are offside in their bloodletting on foreigners. Their leaders like Nelson Mandela, Mbeki himself and all others should not only send soldiers on the streets for a token ceasefire, they should condemn in no uncertain terms the xenophobic behaviour of their citizens.

For Zimbabweans now caught up in this ugly mess, the buck stops at Mbeki's door. He has dithered for over six years to sort out the political situation across the Limpopo until the matter reached tipping point a few days ago when his countrymen felt they had enough of Zimbabweans and Africans from other parts of the continent.

May be it is time countries like Zambia demanded reparations from the South Africans for the loss of lives her people suffered and the shattered economy she ended up with by supporting the liberation struggle down south.

HERO OF THE DAY

By Gershom Ndhlovu

My hero for the last few days is neither President Mwanawasa nor Michael Sata for their shocking reconciliation resulting from an ailment that the PF leader suffered from and the government dispatching him to South Africa for treatment at tax payers’ expense.
Rather, my hero has been the bus driver, Felix Mwape, who died somewhere in Kaputa after he asked passengers to disembark so that he could try to drive up a hill.
Mwape had feared that he would have difficulties to climb the hill and he sensibly asked the passengers to disembark and, as Luapula Province police chief, Dobson Siame said, “unfortunately, even without passengers, the bus failed to negotiate its way up and rolled back and he crashed to his death on his own.”
I do not know the criterion used to pick people who are honoured on African Freedom Day, Heroes and Unity Days and Independence Day, but whichever authority deals with these issues should consider Mwape for a posthumous award.
I mean, how many passengers have died from accidents on a number of buses out of carelessness of the bus crews who just wanted to show how fast their buses went?
How many innocent passengers have died because bus drivers and conductors had had one too many for the road and never considered the souls of those on board? Many, many people have lost their lives in this way.
Most bus companies that employed racing drivers have even gone scot-free even with poor road safety records when they should have had their licences withdrawn or their insurance premiums hiked to levels that should have forced them out of business if only it would force them to employ sensible drivers.
But comes along Mwape, sober, level headed and considerate at the risk of his own life, asking the passengers to get off the bus who, I am sure, watched in horror as the bus rolled back and crushed him.
Strangely, because not one of the over sixty passengers, knowing how loaded those buses can be in the rural areas, died, the government has been very quiet about raising the issues that ought to be raised in the circumstances. But imagine what hullabaloo would have been raised if the passengers had died.
The way the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) has come up with safety mechanism such as speed limiters on those “flying buses”, is the same way it should come up with controls regarding old, old buses plying the roads. As that was a Tata Bus that was involved in the Kaputa accident, it should be one that survived from the UBZ era.
This brings into question the second hand cars that are being brought into the country from countries like Japan where they would have done “galactic miles” to the point of being taken to a landfill or what we in Zambia know as marabo.
But the clever Japanese don’t have enough landfill sites and the best disposal mode is selling the cars to Zambia where they come for more “galactic miles” to an extent where the owners spend more time under the cars than inside them. Such cars are called, and appropriately so, wire.
There should be a vigorous law to force motorists to service their vehicles so that when a vehicle hits a certain mileage, it should be scrapped. Motorists should not claim the issue of costs. It is the avoidance of those costs that is costing lives.
As they say in Chewa, walila mvula, walila matope, loosely translated, it says if you want rain, be ready for the mud, motorists, more so passenger transport operators, should spend money to keep their vehicles roadworthy.
By forcing motorists to have their vehicles serviced at registered garages where the mileage of the cars would be registered and therefore traceable in case of accidents, it would also have an added bonus of creating jobs for the bush mechanics who ply their trade on street corners.
For now, Cabinet Office should surely think of an appropriate medal for the late Mwape for saving the nation unnecessary tears.

***

Not that reconciliation is bad for politics in a nation, but what is unfortunate in the circumstances is the fate of PF members who were ahead of their president’s time in search of reconciliation by opting to sit on the National Constitution Council (NCC). This brought so much acrimony in the party such that five or so MPs are on the verge of being expelled but are only served by the fact that the matter is in court.
I remember a picture of some PF MPs praying at some motel in Lusaka where their fate of expulsion was being decided that God should soften the hearts (no pun intended) of their leaders or something to that effect.
Now that this has happened and Mr Sata is now bosom friends with President Mwanawasa and he, himself, has been forgiven the passport transgression, he should similarly forgive his MPs if the Speaker has not yet declared their seats vacant.
He should then allow them to sit on the NCC and earn themselves the loose cash flying around in the name of contributing to the constitution making process. I am sure that will complete the cycle of reconciliation.
But as other commentators have said, I hope that this reconciliation of the PF and MMD will not mean that the opposition will just be rubber stamping any government policies and parliamentary bills that would hurt people if implemented. We as citizens hope that Mr Sata will still be as robust as previously in his outspokenness on issues such as those that won his party the Kanyama by-election.
In the same vein, I hope that he will not hitch a ride from President Mwanawasa on the presidential chopper to go and campaign for the Milanzi by-election in the next few weeks otherwise he would have delivered the country back into the one party era.
Or may be it is time Mr Sata stepped back from the political arena and left it to younger and more energetic members. After all he has been on the political scene for a long time, hasn’t he?

COME CLEAN ON CORRUPTION

By Gershom Ndhlovu

Now that Chief Justice Ernest Sakala has himself come out on the issue of corruption in the judiciary, we outsiders can come in and finish off the carcass which we previously failed to tackle for fear of being contemptuous of the judicial system.

As Justice Sakala pointed out, corruption in the court system starts from the local courts to the highest levels of the judiciary. By its very nature, corruption is a very difficult case to tackle because it works on a satisfied-client-basis. What I mean is that both the “briber” and the “bribed” get what they want and carry on as if nothing has happened.

If the benefit is very high to the one who has offered a bribe or from whom a bribe has been solicited, none of the two would be obliged to report the matter to law enforcement agencies.

Technically, both are potentially culpable unless one of the two reports “being offered a bribe” or “being solicited for a bribe” and that is normally why the ACC or other investigative agencies would record warn and caution statements from the giver and the receiver or the “offerer” and the “offeree” if there are such terms.

In the case of the judiciary, someone facing a court process, criminal or civil, will want to influence the outcome of the case in his/her favour and the only way to do it is by finding weak minded court officials from court clerks to the local court justices, magistrates and judges to short-circuit the process.

To pretend that this does not happen is to pretend that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. It is so obvious even the blind can see it.

Sometimes even lawyers are involved in “fixing” cases in this way. Some court officials do it with such impunity they state to those close to them about what they will eat without taking bribes with statements like “You know our job; I can’t refuse the money if I am offered?”

Higher up in the judicial system, court marshals come in as middlemen for the judges they work for. These are the people who handle the “dirty cash” for which they get shares and hence build the mansions that Justice Sakala talked about. These are the people who are able to drink beer everyday of the month when others are struggling on their meagre salaries.

Apart from the judiciary whose chief executive has accepted what goes on in his domain, other hotbeds of corruption are the Zambia Revenue Authority, Police, Passport Office, Immigration, Road Traffic and Safety Agency and the ministry of lands.

Because of the ubiquitous nature of the police service which makes them come into regular contact with ordinary citizens who feel the effects of even parting away with a K50, 000 to a policeman and are therefore prone to be reported, other departments like ZRA in which huge amounts of money exchange hands for the passage or release of goods, chances of such activities being reported to the ACC are very slim.

I know that Inspector General of Police Ephraim Mateyo also harps on the issue of corruption, but heads of other government departments should come clean on corruption like Justice Sakala did last week by admitting the existence of the problem in their midst.

The fight against corruption might not have been as effective as desired, but the fact that President Mwanawasa himself speaks out against corruption is a positive sign in itself which should give impetus to the ACC and other collaborative agencies to fight the scourge.

Those who have followed the history of the ACC will remember that from 1991 when the MMD came to power under Chiluba, the institution was strangled to near-death due, perhaps, to deliberate under-funding which prevented the commission from effectively carrying out its mandate. At that time the commission only had four offices in the entire country.

Coincidentally, that was the time the Special Investigating Team on Economy and Trade (SITET) was scrapped. SITET was effective as a deterrent against unscrupulous businesspeople and civil servants who always feared on knock on their door. What we, as a nation, saw after that can only be described as shameful the way the nation’s resources were plundered thereafter.

 

 

With the rising cases of post-election violence in neighbouring Zimbabwe, it is difficult to appreciate the efforts of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union in resolving the “no-crisis” crisis in that country.

Both pictures and stories that are coming out of Zimbabwe point to state sponsored and systematic brutality in which people are being killed, maimed and humiliated in what ZANU-PF militia are calling “re-education” to change their political views.

It may appear as if the trip by the so-called SADC troika to Zimbabwe in the last few days as well as the visit of AU executive secretary Jean Ping to that country were mere tea-party jaunts because nothing much has changed in levels of violence.

Medical personnel rarely comment on political issues, but if the desperate voices of Zimbabwean doctors and nurses who are having to treat the victims of the government sponsored violence are anything to go by, the situation will degenerate into something worse than 1994 Rwanda genocide.

Insensitive Zimbabwean government leaders even question those who are likening the situation to that of Rwanda saying the violence does not involve any ethnic groups and is therefore not ‘tribal.’

But the fact that people are being hunted for not voting for President Mugabe, makes matters even direr.

AU and SADC chairpersons Jakaya Kikwete and Levy Mwanawasa should not rely on Thabo Mbeki as mediator because he appears to be biased in favour of Mugabe. If what is coming out about an agreement he had with Mugabe for him to delay land grabbing to facilitate a smooth transition in South Africa in 1994 is true, then he should definitely be ditched as mediator because he will be seen as paying a debt to Mugabe.

Those interested in reading more about what is going on Zimbabwe should visit www.sokwanele.com.