THIS IS  A DEEPLY CORRUPT GOVERNMENT!-MICHAEL GONZALEZ’S POWERFUL FAREWELL SPEECH

THIS IS  A DEEPLY CORRUPT GOVERNMENT!-MICHAEL GONZALEZ’S POWERFUL FAREWELL SPEECH

…Attacking the messenger who dares to name these dynamics out loud is not limited in targeting the U.S. ambassador and asking Washington for his removal….

●The rhetoric of “no sacred cows” is rubbish when there aren’t any cows except those who are deemed to be disloyal.

●Zambia does not need money. It needs leaders who govern for the people with
integrity. It needs the political will to put Zambia first.

Remarks by Amb. Michael Gonzales
Farewell Reception – April 30, 2026

●The theater of commissioning a report to get a scandal out of the news cycle but taking no substantive action on accountability is all too common.

●Empty promises must be replaced with tangible action. Commitments must be honored, laws must be implemented and enforced consistently and equally.

●Since last February not a single notable prosecution has even begun. After last year’s pause, we resumed almost all of our health assistance: over $400 million including over $75 million in medication.

●We continue to pay the salaries for over 23,000 healthcare workers, as we have for decades.

●Any suggestion that the United States would withhold critical life-saving healthcare support from those Zambians whose lives and health depend on it unless we get critical minerals is disgusting and patently false.

●Certainly, it’s not just U.S. taxpayers’ support that is stolen. Every year, the country loses out on hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment and growth because they are hijacked by unmitigated petty corruption, blocked because law-abiding investors refuse to pay kickbacks to Zambian bureaucrats or leaders who are never held accountable.

● By appointing a Director General of the Anti-Corruption Commission who was
actively under investigation by the ACC, and her admonishment to her intentionally under-resourced agency not to investigate senior government officials, only cripple hopes that clean business can be done.
For decades, the U.S. relationship with Zambia was one centered around aid.

The United States has provided billions of dollars of assistance to Zambia, helping the
country reach HIV epidemic control, contributing to a 20-year increase in life
expectancy, slashing malaria deaths, and truly impacting the lives of every Zambian alive today.

●Government has a 500-page expert report detailing the irreversible harm
and risk of generations of birth defects, cancers, heart and liver disease caused by
carcinogenic heavy metals unleashed into the Kafue River ecosystem by last year’s
Sino Metals’tailings dam disaster.

● So, as I prepare to leave this country that I love, I ask those of you whose country it is: Is this the Zambia you want? Are you on course to achieve it? If not, what action will you take to contribute to making that become a reality?

Good evening,

When we paused funding to review our assistance programs last year, so much of
Zambia’s health system began to crumble almost overnight.

Despite over $7 billion in U.S. health assistance since 2000 and the hard work of many Zambians alongside us, that crumbling system revealed that while we thought we were building capacity, successive Zambian governments had not built systems.

Too often, Zambian officials and leaders abdicated their responsibilities, letting the
United States pay for healthcare while officials diverted government funds to their
own pockets.

Last year I shed tears before the world when I announced a $50 million cut in US health assistance. After years of pleading, I could no longer stand-by while the Zambian government refused to stop or take action to hold people accountable for the systematic and nationwide theft of U.S. provided medicines while the Zambian citizens for whom those were intended went without.

One year later, not a single notable person has been arrested since last February.
Not a single notable prosecution has even begun. After last year’s pause, we resumed almost all of our health assistance: over $400 million including over $75 million in medication.

We continue to pay the salaries for over 23,000 healthcare workers, as we have for decades. Such is the legacy of  America’s support to the Zambian people.

Now, I know there have been alarmist allegations recently.

But let me be clear, any suggestion that the United States would withhold critical life-saving healthcare support from those Zambians whose lives and health depend on it unless we get critical minerals is disgusting and patently false.

In reality, since October, my government has offered over $2 billion in additional
health and economic assistance to Zambia.

But we can no longer accept empty
promises. The future must look different.

The Zambian government must also
increase Zambian funding, staffing, and genuine ownership of its systems.

This is not to impose our will; it is the only way we know for Zambia to truly own a
sustainable healthcare system and to enable robust growth. It’s the only way we know to ensure that system serves the people while finally breaking the cycle of foreign aid dependency.

Since January, however, like with so many of our other overtures to the Zambian
government, we have had effectively zero substantive engagement from Zambian
officials to move these efforts forward.

Our calls go ignored, questions unanswered, meetings cancelled, leaving us without even opportunities to speak, much less engage in substantive deliberations. Instead of continuing to languish without engagement, the actual funding under our Health MOU should have started this month.

Instead, we have reached April 30 still cobbling together funds for mismatched projects without an implementation plan to guide us forward under Zambian leadership, much less a finalized MOU that guides our strategic approach.

We know that the Zambian budget cannot even afford to pay for public services
today, not to mention the increased healthcare funding or the myriad other huge budget commitments that seem to get pledged daily.

So, something has to change if Zambia will ever meet its full potential or be able to sustainably provide services to its own people.

At the same time, the Zambian government’s own reports reveal that every year Zambia loses over $4 billion in dirty money flows to East Asia. That is Zambian money that does not benefit the Zambian people or contribute to the budget.

If taxed, that would bring an additional $1 billion for the government to fund healthcare, education, social services, and development.

Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars of government funds are lost to the Zambian people through corruption.

Certainly, it’s not just U.S. taxpayers’ support
that is stolen. Every year, the country loses out on hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment and growth because they are hijacked by unmitigated petty corruption, blocked because law-abiding investors refuse to pay kickbacks to Zambian bureaucrats or leaders who are never held accountable.

The narrative of the U.S.-Zambia relationship is adorned with flowery words of “partnership,” “collaboration,” “strategic,” or “mutual.” Regrettably, the reality of our unrequited relationship for decades has been starkly different.

For years, the United States funded programs and sent technical advisors to help achieve Zambia’s development objectives.

As we have for these past four months, we have often struggled to get successive governments to even bother answering the phone. It takes months to get a meeting that yields nothing. Officials draft policies they have no intention of implementing, invoking them in only speeches to sound like they are taking action.

MOUs decay on the shelf among the others
before the signing ceremony even ends, never to be implemented because the ministry won’t even meet to discuss implementation. Why? Because generations of Zambian officials and leaders gain from the dysfunction.

The non-responsiveness on our availed funding and efforts to truly build a Zambian-owned health system that serves the Zambian people is sadly the norm.

The theater of commissioning a report to get a scandal out of the news cycle but taking no substantive action on accountability is all too common.

Of course, the systematic theft of public resources is not unique to American-provided medicines.

Attacking the messenger who dares to name these dynamics out loud is not limited in targeting the U.S. ambassador and asking Washington for his removal.

Today, 10% of my diplomats have family members who still haven’t received basic
residency permits from the Zambian government.

Several have received court summonses as a result. Like Zambians themselves experience,

ZRA staff shake down my departing diplomats for fees that don’t apply to them too. When elevated, their supervisors double down on the demand.

Zambia’s institutionalized and refined corruption does not only dissuade
transparent and law-abiding investors from the United States.

The inaction, corruption, and intimidation of opponents also harms American citizens, it
undermines American organizations, NGOs, companies, and philanthropies.

Zambians and so many other global friends of Zambia are also hampered by these very same dynamics, often bearing far more of the brunt of their effects.

America’s support to Zambia is long-standing. Our goodwill runs through the
veins, the hearts, and the dreams of millions of Zambians.

Our hands remain open, outstretched in a genuine, transparent offer of true, tangible, and meaningful collaboration for mutual benefit.

But there must be change Going forward, the benefits of our relationship must be mutual.

Empty promises must be replaced with tangible action. Commitments must be honored, laws must be implemented and enforced consistently and equally.

The decades of paying for healthcare while national resources are pocketed must give way to ownership and systematic improvements that enable growth, development, and accountability.

Since President Hichilema and I committed to reset the U.S.-Zambia relationship last July, America has re-doubled our efforts to support robust Zambian agency.

We have availed billions of dollars to support tangible investments and reforms to catalyze Zambia’s success.

We have offered expert support to inform reforms that would systematically benefit both the Zambian people and their many friends from around the world, without bias or favor.

Sadly, so many of our overtures and goodwill have been met with … to use the
most persistent and notorious of the Zambian government’s responses … “Noted.
With thanks.”

But, appointing a Director General of the Anti-Corruption Commission who was
actively under investigation by the ACC, and her admonishment to her intentionally under-resourced agency not to investigate senior government officials, only cripple hopes that clean business can be done.

Last May, multiple senior government officials shared with me and have confirmed
that the government has a 500-page expert report detailing the irreversible harm
and risk of generations of birth defects, cancers, heart and liver disease caused by
carcinogenic heavy metals unleashed into the Kafue River ecosystem by last year’s
Sino Metals’tailings dam disaster.

But, my heart broke when on July 29th last year, one of the country’s seniormost leaders vehemently denied that the government
even had the report, much less would act on it until the polluter themselves provided it.

I pleaded with her to take action to protect the Zambian people and I again offered U.S. assistance, which the Foreign Ministry had already formally declined.

While so many American prospective investors leave, put off by bureaucratic drudgery, inaction, and corruption, the Zambian government recently approved Sino Metals to expand its operations. Did this happen in the face of Zambia’s myriad impediments, or because of them? 

Today, Sino Metals is scarring game management areas abutting the Kafue National Park. When that tailings dam
breaks, I will not be alone shedding tears.

Punctuating this, apart from the truly exceptional cases, too many American
companies cannot get licenses, approvals, or action on basic administrative matters
without being shaken down to give the Sino-brown envelopes of cash.

The Zambian people suffer the consequences of these dual offenses: exploitation and
foregone opportunity.

When Parliament ignores the Constitutional Court’s ruling that the process used to ram through a constitutional amendment was itself unconstitutional, investors rightly ask “If they can do that to the constitution, what does that mean for the sanctity of my contract?”

They rightly wonder if the next constitutional
amendment which the Attorney General has already announced is really just a guise for resetting term limits.

Even the Chinese government convicted AVIC’s Chairman to death for corruption.

AVIC’s Chingola-Chililabombwe Road was washed out last month, its negligence
disrupting Zambia’s trade with the region.

AVIC’s fraud in a $320 million police
housing tender in 2014 is well documented.

Despite that, this government ignored
the competitive bid by renown Zambian investors only to award AVIC the $650
million Lusaka-Ndola Dual Carriageway project, subsidizing this notoriously
fraudulent and corrupt company with $300 million from the public pension
scheme. How does this happen? Can law-abiding investors do clean business here?

Will donors be asked to backfill the loss when the pension money too is wiped out?

The rhetoric of “no sacred cows” is rubbish when there aren’t any cows except those who are deemed to be disloyal. When only opponents are arrested, but not those in office engaged in the very same practices, the hollow rhetoric of “rule of law” only further keeps investors away, preventing the creation of growth, jobs, and tax revenues to pay for public service commitments.

Zambia does not need money. It needs leaders who govern for the people with
integrity. It needs the political will to put Zambia first.

But, of course, you don’t need me to say this. Dambisa Moyo, herself a daughter of the soil, made these same arguments 17 years ago.

What America is trying to do here is both bolster Zambia’s sovereignty and catalyze Zambia’s growth.

We are offering a transparent and open hand to join the Zambian people for mutual progress.

We know that while you pursue a Zambia
First agenda and we pursue America First, we are still able together to achieve something notably better for both of our countries, and we can do so without it coming at anyone’s expense, anyone’s exclusion, fully transparently, and legally.

Now, of course the United States will absolutely continue to honor our longstanding commitment to the Zambian people to provide critical life-saving healthcare support. We will not leave Zambians without access to ARVs.

We are redoubling our support to ensure that babies are not born HIV-positive.
But,
●Against the unmitigated systematic theft of U.S. assistance,
●Against the refusal by the Zambian government to engage and to own or
enable a sustainable healthcare system that serves the people,

●In an environment where only the most exceptional of American investors can do clean business, and
●Where Zambian government officials often can scarcely be bothered to take meetings with American officials or companies, not to mention capture the billion dollars of its own money secreted out of the country to east Asia, or hold accountable the company that unleashes generations of cancer and birth
defects onto the people…
without fundamental change, as the American Ambassador to the Republic of Zambia, how can I ask American taxpayers, Congress, or President Trump to continue the massive aid budgets that have been the hallmark of our relationship for decades?

The United States remains intent to work with Zambia toward our mutual objectives, but how Washington responds to silence, inaction, aversion to accountability, and lack of ownership remains to be seen.

That said, I am confident that it will depend on fundamental changes by the Zambian government to take
action to do right by the Zambian people.

It will depend on actions to foster and enable the Zambian people – and their partners who abide by the rule of law – to
be able to tangibly contribute to a mutually beneficial future Washington’s hand remains open and outreached for transparent, accountable collaboration enabling tangible action to benefit both of our countries. But we can no longer own the projects more than the Zambian government.

We can’t justify continuing to prioritize funding where the Zambian government also does not deploy its own resources.

No longer will we lead, while Zambian officials sit back unresponsively. Quite simply, America can best support Zambia’s sovereignty, agency, and success, if we finally abide by the maxim and refrain from wanting development more than the Zambian government does.

That said, what happens between governments and embassies is important, but it is only a small fraction of the broader relationship between countries.

The ties between Zambia and America are profound, strong, and everlasting. The
connections between churches and civil society; the linkages between students,
artists, and researchers; the bonds between communities; the union of our peoples
– these are the essence of the U.S.-Zambia relationship, and these will never fade.

Too often people hope for change. They note what others should do. But, hope is not a strategy, and we cannot control the actions of others, only our own.

So, as I prepare to leave this country that I love, I ask those of you whose country it is: Is this the Zambia you want? Are you on course to achieve it? If not, what action will you take to contribute to making that become a reality?
I first stepped foot in Zambia in 1995. My daughter took her first steps in
Livingstone. As I prepare to depart, I take with me beautiful memories of Zambia
and the Zambian people, but I depart with a heavy heart wondering if realization of
the Zambian dream will be deferred for yet another 64 years while even more
Zambians fall into poverty instead of being able to rise into the brilliant future that
is possible.

But my role here is not about this little guy with a big heart for Africa. It is about America and Zambia. America will continue reaching out to the people of Zambia, offering our support, seeking as much to learn as to share, doing so openly and transparently, and eager to help enable the realization of that Zambian dream and the creative future that benefits, and can only be discovered through, our sincere partnership.

I thank you