Hon. Bowman Chilosha Lusambo writes….
Hon. Kakubo and his businesses
Seasonal greetings to you my comrades.
I wish to add my voice to the debate that has ensued over Foreign Affairs and International Relations Minister Hon. Stanley Kakubo’s business dealings.
To start with, my contestations with Hon. Kakubo are well known and they mostly border on politics and his handling of Zambia’s foreign policy. However, I wish to place on record that as a Zambian, I believe Hon. Kakubo is entitled to do business in Zambia provided that his business transaction does not conflict with his office.
The excitement around Hon. Kakubo’s transaction should be examined carefully as there is no law preventing Ministers or any senior government officials from engaging in private business.
This spirit of demonizing money or wealth creation is what is breading poverty in our country and should be done away with.
Further, the only mischief if any that can be imputed in this transaction according to information in the public domain is if Hon. Kakubo short changed the Chinese colleague by not delivering on his obligations in the transaction which will then bring a whole different conversation.
As a former Minister myself, I wish to encourage Hon. Kakubo to be strong and stand his ground firmly if the transaction is clean.
On the other hand, we await to see if the ACC will seize the cash or the vehicle paid to Hon. Kakubo because that is the standard they have set in their crusade against corruption.
If the ACC does not seize the cash and vehicle , they should redeem themselves by returning cash and assets to all those other Zambians that they are unable to prove any crimes instead of hiding behind an abused proceeds of crime law.
As Zambians, we need to celebrate innovations around making money by our citizens whether Ministers or otherwise as long as it is genuine business.
Whether the story is true or not, the way it’s reported is not okay. For example, the money is quoted in dollars but the video is showing someone receiving the money in kwacha. At the current exchange rate, $200,000 would amount to about K5,000,000 and that parcel could have been too big and too heavy for the Minister to carry. Then the video itself, it does not plainly or clearly show Hon Kakubo, you just have to assume it was him as alleged in the story. So to me, doctoring the video cannot be completely ruled out. They say Politics is a dirty game and we know that those behind the story, their target is not Kakubo but his boss. But the law is very clear, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, there is no sacred cow in UPND, if the scandal turns to be true, the Minister has to go and he will go alone. It happened to the former State House Aid and to the former Luapula Provincial Minister, it can also happen to Kakubo, so there is nothing to get excited about here.