PRESS STATEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
22 JUNE 2022
REACTION TO THE ACB REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT ON CORRUPTION: OUR CALL VINDICATED
We the Mbadwa Zokhudzidwa would like to come out clearly that our call to have Martha Chizuma leave her office is now vindicated with the recent development.
Firstly, the ACB Director General is at all times expected to respect the statutes that establish her office, besides respecting her oath of secrecy.
Let us begin by citing section 4 of the Corrupt Practices Act:
“1. There is hereby established a body to be known as the Anti-Corruption Bureau which shall consist of the Director, the Deputy Director and such other officers of the bureau, as may be appointed under section 9.
- “The bureau shall be a government department and the finances of the bureau shall be charged to the consolidated fund.
- The Bureau shall exercise its functions and powers independent of the direction or interference of any other person or authority.
- The Director shall submit reports to the president and to the minister regarding the general conduct of the affairs of the bureau.’
According to the foregoing, Chizuma has gone ahead to give the president not a general report of the affairs of the bureau, but a half-baked report of the bureau’s investigation, consequently leading the president to take an action on some individuals even before they have been accorded any right to be heard contrary to principles of natural justice. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that the ACB Director General has breached the very statute that creates her office by violating section 4, subsection 4 of the Corrupt Practices Act.
Apart from this, the ACB Director General has gone ahead to share the half-baked investigations report with the Chief Justice and the Speaker of Parliament in violation of the above cited statutes.
She has not stopped there: sub-section 3 above empowers the ACB to exercise its functions and powers independent of the direction and interference of any other person or authority yet it has taken a special directive from the president to see Chizuma act on suspects as if she has no mandate to execute the very mandate her office empowers her to act.
It is unfortunate that the people’s darling is the same one who was talking casually to an unauthorized person in the leaked audio on matters that are supposed to be handled with the secrecy she swore to adhere to.
As concerned Citizens, we would like to point out to the nation that we have finally been vindicated as we spoke against the unprofessional conduct of the ACB Director. We are glad the President through his speech, ably demonstrated the lack of seriousness and shabby dealings of the director.
While others are busy glorifying the ACB Director General that the President does not have powers to demand a report from her office, we are convinced the President also had to push Chizuma for him to deal with a matter of national concern by demanding a detailed investigations report which the Director half cooked upon realizing that she is only supposed to submit a report regarding the general conduct of the affairs of the bureau.
It is also unprofessional and lack of respect for the director general to have shared the special report with officers she was not meant to share with, for that report was demanded by the President and was not the last report she would have issued had the other organs demanded of the same.
It is evident that the ACB Director General has just copied and pasted what the intelligence agency in the United Kingdom has compiled and the half-baked report submitted to the president can be misleading. If the public officers have been suspended or fired based on a substandard report, then the one submitting that report is also substandard and the only way to make amends is to allow her to go so that the office is occupied by a person with integrity as we have always said in the past, and we demand that those fired based on a substandard report must be reinstated.
Members of the press, we are announcing today that we are proceeding with our plans to seal the Director General of the ACB’s office on the 28th of June as the president has failed to fire her albeit accepting that she is compromised on several occasions.
We are not going back on this demand and it is the beginning of action on public officers that breach people’s trust and the warning must spread out in waves like ripples in a pond.
Signed and endorsed by:
Redson Munlo
Agape Khombe
Mike Mbalale
Martha Duma
Gift Matsimbe
Esther Maliwa
