Audio exposes rot in Zambia’s judiciary – M’membe
By George Zulu
SOCIALIST Party (SP) president Dr Fred M’membe says the revelations by a member of Parliament to bribe a South African High Court judge has exposed how deep-rooted corruption is in the Judiciary in Zambia.
Dr M’membe said the alleged conversation between a minister and the MP who has close ties with State House was damning and reveling.
He said this when he addressed journalists at the Lusaka Magistrates Courts Complex in Lusaka yesterday after his seditious practice case was adjourned to October.
“Yesterday, Mr… held a press briefing. Yesterday, there were revelations of a conversation between Mr … and Honourable….. A lot of things were revealed. Twelve missed phone calls, 20 missed phone calls, talks about the bribing judges in South Africa, talks about staging up a protest by people, and so on,” he said.
Dr M’membe said the plan to bribe judges in a foreign country exposed governments anger to run a corrupt judiciary.
He said now Zambians were doubting the outcomes of politically charged arrests of opposition leaders and judgments by courts in Zambia.
“If our authorities here can try to manipulate the judicial processes in South Africa, where does it leave us here where they have got direct control? Can we get fair adjudication in our courts, especially those which are political? You can see that the arrests, the prosecutions and the imprisonments are for people who are not with them, who do not belong to them,” Dr M’membe said.
He said the conduct of the United Party for National Development (UPND) and the recent exposure by the State House envoy highlighted how the leadership had procured and implemented a selective justice system.
“But we know that there is no one section of a nation, of a community, that has got all the vices, and another, all the virtues. It doesn’t happen that way. When that happens, you know there is a problem in the administration of the criminal justice system, and there is,” Dr M’membe said.
