Transparency International Zambia (TI-Z) joins the rest of the African continent in commemorating the African Anti-Corruption Day which falls on the 11th of July each year. This year’s commemoration marks the fifth time that the African Anti-Corruption Day is being celebrated ever since it was proclaimed by the African Union in 2016, and as TI-Z, we are cognizant of the importance of keeping this day on the agenda of respective African governments’ governance practices in order to keep the discourse on corruption ongoing.
The theme for this year’s African Anti-Corruption Day is “Regional Economic Communities: Critical Actors in the Implementation of the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption”.
TI-Z would like to use this theme to reflect more on how Zambia has fared in implementing the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (AUCPCC). It is worth noting that Zambia signed the AUCPCC on 3rd August 2003 and ratified it on 30th March 2007. In the 14 years since Zambia ratified the Convention, TI-Z does note some positive developments that have taken place, primarily to do with the domestication of some provisions of the Convention through the enactment of key pieces of legislation to help fight corruption. In this respect, Zambia already has in place basic pieces of legislation such as the Anti-Corruption Act; the Forfeiture of Proceeds of Crime Act; the Public Interest Disclosure Act; the Prohibition of Money Laundering Act; and the Public Finance Management Act, among others.
Despite these basic legislative parameters being in place, the overall picture as far as the fight against corruption goes in Zambia is a depressing one that shows a deteriorating situation as seen by the country’s worsening score on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). The fact that Zambia’s score on the CPI has been declining in each of the last five years is a damning verdict on government’s willpower and commitment to fight corruption, a commitment which always seems to exist only on a rhetorical level with no real and practical interventions to decisively deal with the scourge.
According to Article 22(7) of the AUCPCC, governments should take swift action to report progress on the implementation of the Convention. To our knowledge as TI-Z, the Zambian government has not given any real updates of how we are faring as a country in the implementation of the AUCPCC. We therefore wish to challenge the government to use this year’s African Anti-Corruption Day to give an account of what progress Zambia has made in the fight against corruption beyond the rhetoric that we regularly hear from government officials.
We further note the AUCPCC’s provision for governments to create an enabling environment for civil society and the media to hold them accountable to the highest levels of transparency and accountability in the management of public affairs. In TI-Z’s view, the Zambian government has failed this litmus test in many respects as not only do they frown upon any civic actors demanding accountability from them – they also actively seek ways to reduce the space for such civic engagement to occur through the misapplication of pieces of legislation such as the Public Order Act. TI-Z therefore further challenges the government to go back to the AUCPCC and reflect on all the provisions in the Convention in order to ascertain a more effective approach for ensuring that we as a country are adhering to the provisions which are meant to enhance the fight against corruption in different ways. We also wish to emphasize that while some basic pieces of legislation are in place, there are other necessary laws that would enhance the fight against corruption that we are yet to enact as a country, with the key ones being the laws pertaining to Asset Recovery, Access to Information and the regulation of political party financing.
There is no doubt that corruption remains a very serious problem that has the potential to decimate different sectors of our economy and its potential impact is therefore not something we can afford to take lightly in any way, shape or form. It is for this reason that TI-Z urges the Zambian government to exhibit more seriousness when it comes to implementing Conventions such as the AUCPCC, and to use the occasion of the 2021 African Anti-Corruption Day to recalibrate Zambia’s anti-corruption efforts.
Maurice K. Nyambe
TI-Z Executive Director
