| I have been falsely accused | ||||
| By Andrew Mwenda | ||||
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In this part Frederick Chiluba tells Andrew Mwenda about his trials and tribulations in the Zambian court. President Mwanawasa went to parliament and prayed that there had been plundering of national resources and this was attributed to me as former president of the country. Mwanawasa is my brother. He used the word “plunder.” It was attributed to my government and me. Because I was a plunderer, he asked parliament to lift my immunity from prosecution as a former head of state. Article 43 (2) of our constitution says nothing should ever happen to a president for the acts he commits or fails to commit during his tenure of office. Mwanawasa set the grounds for lifting my immunity, essentially about seven of them. The first was that the purchase price or the money for the sale of the Luanshya mine, US$ 35million had gone untraced, and the US$ 12 million which was brought in as working capital had also disappeared, meaning that they were both misused or stolen. The second charge was that I had stolen 67 oil tankers whose values were not established. It could have been $100 million or something, but 67 oil tankers were lost and they remained unaccounted for.
The third charge was the alleged fraudulent purchase of military hardware from Mr. Katebekatoto, a Congolese businessman amounting to $20.5 million. The fourth charge concerned the transfer and conversion of state assets, which were under the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, for private use, meaning that I was stealing them from government for my personal use. This charge claimed that I had registered these assets into my names or something close to that. These assets were said to be in London and Dar-Es-salaam. I know what those assets were in England: they were the sale or the remains of the sale of ZTCM assets especially buildings. And so they said this money had been stolen when the proceeds of these assets were going to the Ministry of Finance. There were two other charges whose details I cannot recollect now, making a total of seven. On this basis, parliament lifted my immunity with the euphoria that they had caught a thief. Sadly, and disappointingly, the state did not have even the prima facie evidence on all these cases, and therefore none of them appeared on the indictment list when I first appeared in court to take my plea. My understanding is that even when we were going to court, they must have discovered that no such plundering ever took place. Thus, in court, all these seven charges against me were withdrawn. It is important to remember that when the hullabaloo about my case started, the government through the media claimed that I had stolen US $2 billion from the treasury. This claim was ridiculous although some people bought it. Zambia’s annual budget is just above US$ 500 million. Now in court, they withdrew the seven charges on which parliament relied to lift my immunity. Instead, the government brought forth fresh charges in which I was now accused of theft and abuse of office, causing a loss amounting to 19 billion Kwacha, which is the equivalent of US$ 4 million. They brought another charge of 168 counts, a second set of counts. You can’t help but laugh at the way they brought the second charge and then said US$ 40 million was missing.
Then all of a sudden, the first charge of money stolen in Kwacha was the first one to be withdrawn after one and a half years. The government entered a Nolly proseque. So you can see that the so-called war on corruption is a political instrument to keep pressure on me. They said that when the payments were being made when the intelligence were setting up some security gadgets around offices; the cabinet offices, the Ministry of Finance offices, the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Defence, I was in charge of the payments and so benefited from the flow of the US$ 40 million. The contract sum was US$ 40 million, and I was accused of stealing all of it, which means that the contractors were not paid. But the contractors were paid and the work was done. I should add that with these two sets of charges, one involving the 19 billion Kwacha and one involving the US$ 40million, they had witnesses who were brought to court by the task force to support or to help the case presented by the Director of Public Prosecutions office. If I may recall they may have been 14 in one and 13 in the other, and none of them ever mentioned my name or even my person ever being involved in the withdrawals or the sales of any transactions related to the charges before the court. They were senior government officials like permanent secretaries and directors who made decisions. So when they talk about stealing, it is all nothing but rubbish, it is all junk. You can’t steal anything as president even if you wished to, because I know how they operate and if we had stolen, this government would not have spoken. The World Bank, the IMF would have spoken and I would have been in serious trouble today. The auditors would have come from all over the place flying like bees. There is no way you can steal 1 dollar. When the international donors give you 5 million Kwacha they bring 500 auditors to where are you going to take the money. Anyway, even this case is withdrawn because there is not a shred of evidence in what they were saying. This time they did not even explain what the six counts contain. They simply told court that they had failed to find evidence on the previous charges, and now they had six new counts where I am accused of stealing US$ 488,000. That is less than half a million dollars. This is a long journey for a man who has been accused of plundering the state to the tune of US$ 2 billion. Now the state is saying the plunder was only less than half a million dollars. Now we are also going on the offensive. That is why we say they are abusing the court process. I have not yet even entered a plea on the new charges because there is no specific accusation. Although the state is harassing me, apparently it is using the procedures of court. Possibly that is the only good thing I can see. But they have not returned my passport. This harassment is too much. You can imagine: I was president of Zambia, I was respected worldwide, I helped in many causes and in many ways, I am a father, I have children. My children want to hold their heads high and they are being called children of a plunderer; all the daunting and teasing that goes on in the world. Some people don’t believe what the state says but others tend to. And so I am walking a tight rope. Many times I am not sure whether I am among friends or not. However, I want to thank the Zambian people. Wherever we have been, whatever the occasion, they have not failed to express themselves in one way or another. They have turned up in their huge crowds with broad smiles and they just shout back and say, “We love you, we know you committed no crime.” So in the hearts of many I am innocent, in fact more innocent today than I was then. In some ways, I am glad that this prosecution happened to me because many of our colleagues in the MMD would not have seen this as political persecution. Sometimes this makes me ask the question: what is democracy for if not to check on cases like this? The silver lining in this is to leave it open to society. Let them judge for themselves when they witness what the government is doing. I do not think that our friends especially in parliament have behaved well. I don’t think that I regret anything. However, I have learnt a lot. Each one is a lesson in life. To say that is to suggest that God is condemning Jesus for having made Judas Iscariot the traitor. Who was wrong, Jesus or Judas? When you give, that’s what God wants. When you give with all your heart, then you have not committed a crime, and if the person you give betrays your trust, if the person you give turns his back on you and becomes treacherous, it’s not your fault. I have learnt that it is still nice to give. This is what happened to Mahatma Gandhi because they didn’t understand him. They went to kill the whites and he said you haven’t understood my message; I haven’t come here to kill. Those who were killing you are not to be killed but to be taught a lesson that we can live more decently as human beings and so I will not be influenced by evil. I want to overcome evil with good. I can never be influenced by it and so my lessons are, yes the good and the bad exist but the power of the good must always be made to overcome. I am sure that no one in his rightful mind in the future will ever do what has been done to me today. If I had stolen – and you know when a president steals from a country he is stealing from his own pocket – If I had stolen from the poor people of Zambia, my own conscience would have killed me. Stealing is not when you are caught by police. I contend that stealing is when the act is consummated. So this is not teaching me any new thing except that I must do justice to all. Tomorrow, in the continuation of the series on the lives of former presidents Former president Kenneth Kaunda talks about his about his friendship with former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. |
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