There has always been a need for the commission of inquiry into governmental corruption under the PF and UPND regimes – Prof Munyonzwe Hamalengwa

There has always been a need for the commission of inquiry into governmental corruption under the PF and UPND regimes



By Prof Munyonzwe Hamalengwa



Shortly after the United Party for National Development(UPND) defeated the Patriotic Front(PF) government in the August 2021 elections, I published the following article on the need for establishing a commission of inquiry on corruption in Zambia in my column in The Mast newspaper.

I reproduce the entire article below as it was then published. It is my thesis that the continuing reports of escalating levels of official corruption under the UPND government is partly because there was no commission of inquiry to unearth the modus operandi of corruption, its avenues of manifestation, how it can be detected and its embeddedness in the structures of escalating institutions tasked to fighting corruption, there was no methodology of fighting this cancer. There was no reckoning of what had just happened among others that had led to the unexpected change of government.

In the recent past we have seen a great deal of ferment and internal combustion within institutions tasked with fighting corruption. There have been resignations of high powered personalities in some of these institutions. There have been suits and threats of suits for defamation involving individuals within these institutions. Accountability is yearning to be acknowledged and exorcised.

Whatever the course of the fight to combat corruption takes, I lament that it must involve a serious commission of inquiry into corruption. The article below is not the only one that I have written on this topic. Here is the article I am referring to published shortly after the UPND came to power and it was entitled.:

“Prosecute individuals but also create a broad

based permanent record as memory bank on corruption in Zambia”:

Any individual act of deviance clearly defined as a crime must result in a prosecution for that crime. Corruption in Zambia is at the top of the list. However, any event, episode or period that induces national trauma and moral panic with identifiable national Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) should result in a commission of inquiry (COI) that produces a comprehensive permanent record that would stand the test of time and to which generations upon generations of citizens would refer to in reflection on how to fight the scourge should it persist or rear its head again. Individual prosecutions and COI are not enemies or exclusive of each other. They are complimentary and serve a continuum of individual, specific and general lessons of deterrence.
Trials have served as a public shaming spectacle on the individual criminal but also a cathartic exercise on the public that vents to see criminal individuals locked away (See Sadakat Kadri, “The Trial: A History from Socrates  to O.J. Simpson”, New York, Random House, 2005 ). But individual trial prosecutions generally usually fade away in memory except for the families affected and the legal professions or unless the crime or crimes were humongous. For example, can anyone remember which individuals exactly were prosecuted and convicted for the crime of apartheid or individuals 

who were tried for the 911 episodes in the US?
Everybody however remembers that there was the televised commission of inquiry called The Truth and Reconciliation Commission which produced a report (several volumes) and can study it and comprehend in a systematic way how apartheid operated and the crimes committed under it. And how to guard against a similar happening in the future. It goes the same for the 911 catastrophe, there were congressional hearings that produced a permanent record boiled down in a publication entitled, “Without precedent”.  The torture reports on the alleged perpetrators of 911 resulted in another congressional investigation report entitled “Report on torture”. Allegations of sexual abuse of Aboriginal children by Catholic priests in residential schools in Canada resulted in a Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada which produced a comprehensive report. The attach on Capitol Hill in the United States was subject of a comprehensive Congressional investigation that produced a permanent record for posterity while individual perpetrators are being and will be prosecuted for their individual acts.
Zambia is fast losing an opportunity to do a comprehensive report on corruption through a COI and create a permanent record of same. Zambia is pursuing individual prosecutions for individual and general deterrence. A few years from now, no one will remember that a regime had been thrown out of power because of its governance through massive corruption. There will be no record of corruption under the old regime and what lessons the new regime would have learnt. There may even be scant records of individual prosecutions resulting in convictions. Zambia has a reputation of being a very poor record of successful prosecutions in corruption cases. The majority end up in acquittals or nolle prosequis. Zambia loses on two fronts: scanty convictions and no permanent comprehensive record on how corruption operates. There are individual seizures of property involving houses, money and vehicles but there are no systematic reports of how these were acquired and no leads as to how to prevent such corruption in the future.
The World Bank produced a book that looks at how corruption operates in various sectors: education, electricity, procurement, transport, financial services, revenue collection, forestry, agriculture etc sectors. ( see ” The many faces of corruption: tracking vulnerabilities at the sector level” edited by J. Edgado Campos and Sanjay Pradhan, Washington, The World Bank, 2007).

That is one model to follow in a COI. It is easy to fight and defeat corruption when you know how it operates sectorally. The TRC in South Africa used the individual and institutional approach: individuals were summoned or voluntarily came to give evidence and institutions like political parties, the media, the army and police, the judiciary and legal profession etc testified on their role under apartheid. Individual, sectoral and institutional aspects promote the same end, to unearth corruption. Corruption has to be fought systematically in order to defeat it systematically. In Zambia there is no record of how corruption operates that one can refer to. The reports of the Financial Intelligence Centre(FIC) are useful but they contain raw data which needs further sifting. The reports may never even be acted on. The identities of the perpetrators of corruption are not disclosed in the reports.

A comprehensive COI that will produce a comprehensive report to stand the test of time is called for. A great book on COI is entitled, “Commissions of Inquiry: Praise or Reappraise?” edited by Allan Manson and David Mullan (Toronto, Irwin Law inc.2003). It looks at different typologies, aims and results of COIs with examples from several countries. One advantage of COIs is that they tap into the various knowledge repositories of renowned experts in various fields, experts local and foreign in origin. Zambia has underutilised the vast local and foreign expertise it has in the fight against corruption. Let’s do it. Without a COI that will leave a living tree record on corruption and its modus operandi in Zambia, a COI that will raise the consciousness of Zambians to be whistleblowers because they will recognise what corruption is, the battle against corruption may be still-born and the new masters will simply adorn the shoes of the old masters with a flip of the sign on the outside door stating that the fight against corruption is on when the happenings inside the offices, go unabated from the previous regime. An COI will signal true regime change. The case is submitted.



Prof Hamalengwa writes a lot on Justice and the Judiciary. One of his books is a 589 page book entitled, “The Politics of Judicial Diversity and Transformation”. He  teaches Criminal Law and the Law of Evidence. Email: munyonzwe.hamalengwa@zaou.ac.zm