TI-Zambia’s Reflections on this Year’s Africa Freedom Day
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House No. 128
Mwambula Rd
Jesmondine
P.O. Box 37475
Lusaka, Zambia
Telefax: +260 1 293649
E-mail: tizambiageneral@gmail.com
Website: www.tizambia.org.zm
Monday 25th May, 2020
For Immediate Release
The News editor
TI-ZAMBIA’S REFLECTIONS ON THIS YEAR’S AFRICA FREEDOM DAY
Maurice K. Nyambe
TI-Z Executive Director
TRANSPARENCY International Zambia (TI-Z) joins the rest of the African continent in celebrating this year’s Africa Freedom Day.
We believe that this day provides an opportunity for us as a continent, and for individual countries including Zambia, to take a moment to look back on our journey and reflect not just on the strides we have made in different aspects of our society, but also the lessons that have shaped our continent and individual countries.
Africa is a continent that is awash with natural resources such as minerals, water bodies, forests, wildlife and many others, and yet its countries remain some of the poorest on the face of the planet.
This paradoxical reality is not lost on TI-Z, and we believe that part of the reason why it is the case has to do with the way that those we have successively entrusted to manage our affairs across the length and breadth of this continent have not done so in ways that promote accountable, transparent and equitable development across the continent.
TI-Z would therefore like to call upon Africa’s leaders to depart from the rhetoric that has characterized their response to the challenges of our times, such as corruption, poor governance, reducing civic space, and many other challenges that have continued to ravage our continent and individual countries.
Being a local chapter of a global movement dedicated to fighting corruption and promoting good governance, TI-Z takes particular interest in Zambia’s efforts to fight this scourge.
In this vein, we would like to reiterate our call to the Zambian government to step up efforts to fight corruption as we believe that if left unchecked, this vice has the potential to decimate our economic, social, political and environmental wellbeing in ways that will make it impossible for citizens to enjoy their freedom.
While TI-Z takes note of and commends President Edgar Lungu’s decision to pardon 2,984 inmates in accordance with Article 97 of the Zambian Constitution, we believe that there is a lot more that the Head of State can do to make the commemoration of this year’s Africa Freedom Day even more meaningful and worthwhile for Zambia.
For instance, we believe that the Head of State should pronounce himself on the unfortunate trivialization of corruption that we have seen in the recent past from a senior government official.
We also believe that the Head of State, also being the leader of the party in government, should further pronounce himself on the unfortunate incidents of lawlessness that have been exhibited by suspected cadres from the ruling party in disrupting radio programmes featuring opposition leaders.
It is our considered view that these two issues represent significant obstacles in our country’s quest to meaningfully celebrate Africa Freedom Day.
In this same light, we wish reiterate our call to the government through the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) to exercise a gesture of goodwill on the day of celebrating Africa’s freedom to immediately reinstate Prime TV’s broadcasting licence in order to restore the freedom that citizens had to choose their own preferred source of news.
Lastly, as Zambia commemorates this day, TI-Z wishes to call on our leaders across the political divide to join together in unity of purpose in order to address challenges such as corruption, the corona virus pandemic, mounting external debt, and many other challenges that threaten to erode our freedom in different respects.
We believe that we will be stronger as a nation, and ultimately as a continent, when we put our efforts together in the spirit of One Zambia, One Nation. Happy Africa Freedom Day.
Yours faithfully,
Maurice K. Nyambe
TI-Z Executive Director