Corruption must be front and centre in the campaigns, but it isn’t!

By Daily Revelation Editor

Citizens First (CF) leader Harry Kalaba is urging Zambians, telling them that this is their chance to choose a leader who abhors corruption, as opposed to them electing leaders who will use public office to engage in ‘tenderpreneurship’ by seeking public contracts instead of working to improve people’s livelihoods.

“This is their chance to choose leaders that abhor corruption, a leader that will look after their interests and not the leaders interests,” said Kalaba. “They need a social worker there in State House. They need someone who will listen to them and not them listening to tenderpreneurs.”

We know it’s campaign time and many promissory notes are being dished out like manna from heaven by political competitors who are trying to outdo each other to win people’s hearts and minds ahead of the August 2026 general elections.

But it’s commendable that Kalaba is able to consistently speak about an important subject matter which politicians would at all cost avoid venturing into. We would wish if more and more politicians can begin to draw attention to this matter or to be drawn to it, because corruption is one vice that has continued to infect politicians from one administration to the other. It’s a vice that continues to inflict huge pains on the country, as poor and ordinary Zambians are mostly denied their fair share of the public cake owing to the nchekeleko mentality that has so permeated the public system to cancerous levels.

One would think it would attract amongst the highest priorities on the to do list for those seeking public office. When Kalaba talks about politicians engaging in massive tenderpreneurship, which in most instances disadvantages ordinary Zambians who may not hold the same levers of political power, he is very right. It was a system that was so rampantly common in the administration he resigned from as Foreign Affairs minister when he said that he had resigned because of the swelling corruption under the PF administration he served under. And the same vice persists even today in the UPND administration, of public officials scavenging for public tenders.

Kalaba has also in this very election cycle been the only one to have publicly declared his assets and liabilities he declared before the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), arguing that no honest leader should actually have a problem with doing the same.

Of course, critics have argued that Kalaba is dancing to the public gallery by doing what he is doing. That is a possibility as the political motive in politicians to advance their cause cannot be discounted. But even if what he is doing were motivated by politics, at least he is politicking over an issue that is critical in as far as this nation’s standing is concerned. No one can deny that corruption is not an issue in this country. And if there are people out there who have come to accept the same to be normal, then it just confirms how rotten our society has become that  such a destructive vice can be normalised. It is  something that has of course been normal especially with those who live off corruption and their beneficiaries. But the fact that one benefits from corruption doesn’t take the evil from the vice. It just precipitates a corrupt political system where leaders and their beneficiaries seek public office in order to perpetuate personal greed at the expense of other majority Zambians.

Because corruption is rampant in this country, we need to hear politicians, particularly the leading contenders, speaking to it and how they hope to fight graft vigorously. They need to assure Zambians that they and their supporters are not seeking public office in order to take over the public tendering systems. They must assure Zambians that the systems would be transparent so that all the Zambians who seek to participate in the process can enjoy equal opportunities in terms of public tendering.