TIZ STATEMENT ON THE STATE OF CORRUPTION IN ZAMBIA IN THE LAST QUARTER

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By Charles Chulu
Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) has for the last quarter of January to March
been following government’s commitment to the fight against corruption in the country.
TIZ would like to note that there have been many positive pronouncements coming from
government which if implemented could have seen the country record tremendous
progress in recovering a lot of stolen assets which were unlawfully acquired using public
funds and many arrests made of controlling officers and other government officials cited
in the Auditor general’s report of 2015, including recovery of resources.
As an organization that supports the government’s pronouncements committing to Zero
tolerance for corruption, we are concerned that to date, these powerful pronouncements
made by government through the head of state are not yielding demonstrable results.
For instance, towards the end of last year during the launch of the United Nations AntiCorruption
Day the president of Zambia His excellence Edger Chagwa Lungu through
the Vice President unveiled an anti-corruption slogan, stating that “a corruption free
Zambia starts with me”. He committed to work hard to reduce corruption levels in the
country because corruption has contributed the ever rising poverty levels in the country.
The president has gone on to make many strong pronouncements on different fora
including the recent state of the nation address, and prior to that at the opening of
parliament and at his inaugural speech. It is the same narrative. We need to move from
the rhetoric to action.
In welcoming his pronouncements, we would like to register our dismay over the lack of
seriousness in implementation of these pronouncements, a situation we find as
unfortunate and a serious setback to our shared vision of a zero tolerance to corruption
in Zambia. Corrupt individuals must be prosecuted, their assets seized and eventually
forfeited to the state if convicted, as a way of recovering lost resources. As an
organisation we do not take delight in seeing people going to jail, but it is one way of
enforcing the law and deterring plunderers from continuing to loot public resources. It is
only a fact that when a leader falls short of values relating to integrity, accountability and
transparency, their actions or lack thereof, may conflict with the law and the stipulated
punishment could be that they to go to prison. We strongly feel our society needs to
have good leaders who plant good seeds of integrity, accountability and transparency
and also lead by example.
We are alive to the fact that;
1. Government has still not given a conclusive statement nor allowed for proper
investigations into the Malawi and Zambia maize gate scandal. We feel that the
country deserves more than what came out of this case and a probe of the
minister of agriculture’s involvement in this case could have been sanctioned
since everything that government does is done in the interest of the people of
Zambia.
2. Lack of action in prosecuting those found wanting in the Auditor General’s report
has made us wonder whether the report is just an academic exercise which will
be released and shared like a story on social media and the next day everyone
goes back to their usual business. For instance, despite many calls by various
stake holders for government to change the farming input distributers,
government through the Ministry of Agriculture have continued to give the tender
to certain companies such as Nyiombo Investment Limited who are on record to
have failed to deliver some farming input in given years, as per auditor general’s
reports. But such things are not pursued, the company was given a contract even
for the following year. We challenge the government to explain to Zambians why
they have continued giving contracts to such companies. This is only but one
example, there are many cases of impropriety cited in the 2015 Auditor General’s
report, but we have not heard of any arrests. This is an example of which
premise we base our argument when we say there is no demonstrable action on
the pronouncements, rendering them rhetorical.
3. Changing of the Director General at the Anti-Corruption Commission. We are
alive to the fact that the president has the right to hire and fire civil servants but
we feel that such a position is sensitive and deserves consistency and continuity.
We feel that the manner in which the changes were done at this institution were
not properly handled and could affect some of the cases that the commission
was handling because the new person settling in would need time to establish
themselves for them to execute their duties. This is a reason why we always
suggest that the ACC be left alone to operate independently for the fight against
corruption to be meaningful.
4. Protection of whistle blowers. As an organisation that believes in the promotion of
the provisions of the Public Interest Disclosure Act we will feel that very little is
being done to protect whistle blowers. It has become common place now for high
ranking government officials to openly castigate whistle blowers and even
threatening action against them, legal or otherwise. It is only imperative that
whistle blowers are protected because failure to do so will discourage those
entitled to make a protected disclosure fail to come fourth because of the fear of
being victimized. We implore government to be receptive to whistle blowers and
to protect them according to the law. That is why the public interest disclosure act
exists. We have seen total disregard of this piece of legislation in the recent past.
We also urge members of the public that are making these disclosures in public
interest to gather substantive evidence on which law enforcement agencies can
act. Taking a case to court which gets thrown out on technicalities or insufficient
evidence is a waste of public resources.
5. We also noted with dismay that Zambia has not improved in terms of the
corruption situation in the public sector as evidenced by its score and ranking in
the 2016 Corruption Perception Index. Zambia has continued scoring the 38
points out of a possible 100 points consecutively for 4 years now. There has
literally been no improvement on the corruption situation in the country. The
country is ranked 87th in terms of performance out of about 168 countries. Again
it goes to say the pronouncements are not matched by actions to reduce
corruption.
Despite these setbacks we are hopeful that government listens to these concerns and
allow the due course of the law to take its course if we want to see any progress in the
fight against corruption. We strongly advise that the government in this new quarter
should walk the talk, implement its pronouncement and deal with perpetrators especially
serving ministers and controlling officers instead of waiting for them to leave office for
the law to follow them.
We also believe that government should come out in the open and respond to the
various issues we have raised here so that Zambians are told why there is government
inaction on certain issues. We cannot allow unlawful transactions to continue happening
at the expense of the poor Zambians who are the same voters that put the government
in power.
As an organisation, we would also like to thank all whistle blowers who have been
coming out to report cases of corruption and abuse of office. We are encouraging you to
continue reporting these cases but with concrete evidence to support your allegations, a
case is only as strong as its evidence. Otherwise without concrete evidence such cases
may be thrown out of court and the same law that protects you may turn against you.
TIZ further recommends that the seizure of properties suspected to have been acquired
unlawfully by public servants continues like in the case of the late president Fredrick
Chiluba’s Tedworth Properties. It is of great concern to TIZ that public office bearers
over the years have developed a propensity to pilfer public resources with very little
regard for the law, because they know that they can play on legal technicalities and
walk away with the crime. We will continue to work with the ACC and other law
enforcement agencies to ensure that sanity is brought back in this country.
Yours faithfully
Wesley Chibamba
Executive Director (Ag)
Transparency International Zambia Stand No. 3880
Kwacha Road
Olympia Park
P.O. Box 37475
Lusaka, Zambia
Tel: ++260 1 290080
Fax: ++260 1 293649
Cell: ++260 97 662610
E-mail: tizambia@zamnet.zm
Website: www.tizambia.org.zm
5th April, 2017
For Immediate Release
The News Editor
www.rainbownewszambia.com