Seizure of Esther’s flats

By Daily Revelation Editor

Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ) general secretary Fr Emmanuel Chikoya says the Church mothe body supports the decision of the Financial Crimes Court over the seizure of 15 flats belonging to fomer first lady Esther Lungu.

Fr Chikoya said those entrusted with power must be able to explain and be accountable on how they accumulated the wealth that they have, and that no one should actually have a problem doing the same.

But he warned current serving leaders to learn from what was happening against the former leaders as the whole thing could boomerang on them.

We agree entirely with the observations made by Fr Chikoya. Indeed, leaders must be able to explain how they ended up accumulating the property they have accumulated. Esther and her children argue that they were provided with the resources to build or accumulate the properties they have accumulated by the former head of state, and that he was ready to explain how the same happened. Esther said Lungu was ready to explain her wealth accumulation as it came from him. His son Dalitso has also said that the 69 vehicles plus other properties were given to him by his father. Surely, despite all the privileges a president accumulates, there is actually no harm questioning or even explaining how certain things were accumulated. And we believe it should not be a problem for Esther and her other relations to explain how they accumulated the same. Zambians must certainly demand so.

Zambians also demand to see a situation where current serving leaders will start to be arraigned before the courts on some of the crazy properties they have accumulated in the short period they have been in office. Zambians know for a fact that the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and other investigative wings have been investigating senior officials in the UPND administration. Certainly, Zambians would want to see those investigations reach a conclusion and so that the matters are taken before the courts of law. It can’t be that no progress has been made by the investigative wings on all the cases they have been probing involving government officials. The fact that people are not seeing any movement in the probes involving current corruption, renders credence to arguments that the whole thing has been launched to punish only the corruption which happened in the former administration.

If you are someone who claims to hate corruption and are more readily willing to pay a blind eye to the corruption happening in your own house while opening your eyes to the corruption happening in your neighbour’s house, then you are actually the most corrupt individual ever. It’s like trying to clean the dirty on another person’s bed while sleeping on your own filthy bed. It simply doesn’t make sense. We support the fight against corruption, but one fought wholesomely. 

Surely, Esther and her family, and by extension Lungu must explain how they accumulated their wealth as this is one of the many reasons Zambians voted the PF out of office. In voting the PF out of office, Hichilema promised to fight corruption, past, present and future and even warned officials under his tutelage that they would be on their own if they engaged in graft. However, while we have heard him celebrate the cases involving former leaders who served in the PF, he has been conspicuously quiet on the investigations against his own officials.