HAKAINDE Hichilema poses the greatest risk to the PF’s continued stay in power hence the privatisation mudslinging campaign using Edith Nawakwi, says Mufulira senior citizen Pepino Kashishi.
Kashishi, a retired employee of ZCCM, has questioned how a single individual could circumvent an elaborate system in the privatisation process to personally give recommendations directly to a minister.
He wondered why and how a minister (Nawakwi) allowed such a procedural lapse to occur.
Kashishi has expressed disgust at attempts by the public media institutions to systematically condemn Hichilema without giving him the platform to give his side of the story.
An avid reader, writer and social commentator, Kashishi has questioned where the entire cabinet in which Nawakwi was finance minister was when Hichilema did what he has been accused of doing in the privatisation process.
“I wish to comment on the renewed allegations of impropriety in the sale of state enterprises against UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema and especially those by Edith Nawakwi, FDD president. On the TVZ [ZNBC] Sunday Interview programme on 30 August, 2020, neither the host, Grevazio Zulu nor the guest, Edith Nawakwi, made any reference to the role of the Zambia Privatisation Agency (ZPA) in the sale of state companies. If they did it was done fleetingly and I missed it. The host should have asked more probing questions especially in this regard. As it was, the picture painted by Nawakwi was that HH acted alone as consultant and chair of some unnamed committee charged to sale the Livingstone InterContinental Hotel and that he made misleading recommendations in person to her as then minister of finance that resulted in selling this entity in a fraudulent manner and HH made personal gain from this transaction,” he said. “How did the minister accept any recommendations directly from a consultant against the implementation guidelines under the Zambia Privatisation Act No.386 of the Laws of Zambia?”
Kashishi explained that the ZPA Act provides for the privatisation and commercialisation of state owned enterprises and established the Zambia Privatisation Agency to “plan, manage, implement and control of the privatisation of state owned enterprises in Zambia.”
He said established under the same law are a board and a management team to deal with the day-to-day running of the agency.
He further said the cabinet and not the minister of finance, was given the final authority over the privatisation programme.
Kashishi said even the list of enterprises to be privatised and the order in which this was to be done had to be approved by cabinet.
He said ZPA advised on the mode of sale in each case but that cabinet gave the final approval.
Kashishi also stressed that the procedure, except for ZCCM which had its own negotiation team, all other state enterprises had a ZPA negotiation team consisting of ZPA staff, business analysts and consultants.
“These teams prepared tender packages on each entity to be sold and on which bids were made by potential buyers. These were public bids and evaluated by the same ZPA negotiation teams. The teams then made recommendations to the members of the ZPA board who then shortlisted the bids for further negotiations before a final decision was made,” he said. “Price consideration had to be matched against the potential of the bidder to improve the enterprise to be sold based on their record. But the Sunday Interview attempted to cast this in a dark manner. Among the members of the board were the permanent secretary for finance, permanent secretary for commerce and industry and the Attorney General, among many other representatives from various organisations appointed by the President. How then did HH manage to circumvent such an elaborate system to personally give recommendations to the minister and why and how did the minister herself allow such a serious procedural lapse to occur? And where was the whole cabinet in all of this? Admittedly, rules and procedures are usually broken or circumvented when under the table deals are made. But the picture painted in the Sunday Interview was that it was standard procedure for a consultant to give his own recommendations directly to the minister of finance on the sale of state enterprises they were tasked to sale without necessarily involving ZPA.”
Kashishi said Hichilema as a Zambian has suffered a lot at the hands of the ruling party and was once placed under filthy detention on a serious charge of treason for a traffic offence in Mongu.
He also wondered why Hichilema has not been prosecuted by successive regimes if, indeed, he committed any crimes.
“It is my considered view that these allegations against HH are just a sustained way by the Lungu PF administration to paint black Hakainde Hichilema with the purpose of pulling him down because he poses the greatest risk to their continued stay in power,” he said. “It is not the purpose of my statement to judge HH as innocent or otherwise. But I am disgusted at this systematic attempt to condemn HH without giving him the necessary platform to give his side of the story. It has always been a one sided stream of accusations on ZNBC and other tax payers’ funded public media. Taking everything into the right perspective why hasn’t HH been prosecuted for this by the current and previous regimes? This Zambian has been arrested, gassed and detained on very flimsy grounds such as merely impeding the flow of a presidential motorcade for which he was charged with a very serious crime of treason and had to spend months in filthy detention. In case we have forgotten, Francis Kaunda, the last chairman and CEO of ZCCM who later headed the GRZ/ZCCM negotiation team by a presidential appointment, was jailed in 2008 for two years with hard labour. He was imprisoned for abuse of office and (with the then Access Financial Services director, Faustin Kabwe) for conspiracy to defraud. This was for offering Ndola Primary School for sale to Ndola Trust School. The crime was a misdemeanour but Judge Edward Musona who presided over the case noted the seriousness under which the crime was committed as it was against the privatisation guidelines and thus prejudicial to the interests of the government. However, both were later acquitted on appeal by the High Court on account that ‘they had no mandate for such an act’, i.e. selling the primary school.”
Kashishi said he was making a reference to “this to illustrate how the allegations against HH, which in my view are more serious than the Kaunda/Kabwe cases, should have been treated if there was evidence as is being claimed”. “HH himself has even offered to be prosecuted and has placed some bounty on the evidence that could be produced on the allegations. But nothing, so far, has happened. Why?” he wondered.
He said if an integrity test was to be conducted on Hichilema as it was being suggested by some quarters, it must be extended to both President Edgar Lungu and Nawakwi herself before next year’s elections.
“And if ZNBC are truly a professional national broadcaster, let them accord HH the same platform now as they gave to Nawakwi so that we hear his side of the story. Otherwise the allegations including the Nawakwi Sunday Interview, in my view, should be treated simply as misguided political gimmicks and with the contempt that they deserve,” said Kashishi. “The allegations should be treated as political persecution that HH and his UPND continue to suffer in a democratic and Christian nation that we claim to be but, in reality, are not. And talking about some news media unprofessionalism as Mr. Amos Malupenga, PS for information, recently pointed out, he should first deal with the unprecedented high unprofessionalism at ZNBC which is under his watch, before going to other news media houses.”
