By Philos Zambianos ([email protected])
You apply for land or title deeds and your file mysteriously goes missing and when you offer to pay the clerk something, they suddenly remember that they saw your file the other day and in five minutes they find it. You need a passport for a trip in 48 hours and you find yourself forking out two hundred pin to get it because it will normally take several weeks to get it. Then there is tender procedure which is always circumvented, behind-the-scenes deals having been struck prior to the advertisement of the tender. This is the reality of corruption in Zambia.
Despite the late president Levy Mwanawasa’s gallant “fight against corruption” crusade, the problem has become more entrenched and as was revealed in a 2007 publication called “Show Me The Money! : How government spends and accounts for public money in Zambia.” by Transparency International Zambia (co-authored by the Post Newspaper columnist Edem Djokotoe and Pamela Chama),it is alleged more money went missing in government during Mwanawasa’s first term in office than the entire ten years of former president Frederick Chiluba.
We all heard last year about the 36 billion Kwacha (more than US $7million) that was unaccounted for and for me, the funniest part (which is not so funny) was that in 2006, K40 million allegedly went missing from the Auditor General’s office! I seriously think that GRZ should be renamed CRZ (Corrupt Republic of Zambia).
Most of us Zambians believe that corruption is wrong, even though we engage in it in various forms during our lives. Whether it is paying off a traffic cop after over speeding or getting a drivers license without getting tested, we have all gone though the CRZ system. But I have come to the conclusion that engaging in corruption in a society like Zambia is not necessarily always wrong or immoral.
Now before you cast stones at me for promoting or tolerating corruption, let me hasten to say that I am resolutely against it. I have been the victim of it many a time during government tender procedures in which a three-month-old company is awarded the contract despite my company being vastly superior and more experienced. Moreover, corruption is wrong on moral grounds as it gives one party unfair advantage (which they did not earn by merit) over others.
I may appear to contradict myself since I have also stated that it is not necessarily wrong to sometimes engage in corruption in a country like Zambia. There is no contradiction and the reason is simple; you cannot practice full morality when force is used against you. The normal rules of morality cannot be fully applied to an immoral situation or system. A few examples will suffice to make this point clear.
Someone related a story of how he made a stop over in Lagos, Nigeria sometime in the early 80’s during a flight to Europe. He presented his passport to the immigration officer who flipped through it and gave it back saying “There is a page missing in your passport”. “What do you mean?” he asked the officer. “Next please!”
As the person stood there confused wondering that was going on, a Catholic priest behind him whispered in their ear, “He wants you to put some money inside your passport”. “Why should I bribe him just to stamp my passport when it is part of his job?” he asked. “Just do it unless you want to be here locked up for days”, came the reply. He grudgingly did what they were told and voila, the officer stamped the passport in triple quick time with a grin on his face.
Imagine you are arrested and detained by the police on some trumped up charges by someone who has paid the cops to lock you up. You know whatever they are holding you for is false and you are innocent. Do you sit it out in Zambian jails full of disease and starvation or do you also bribe the same (or more senior) cops to let you out?
You apply for a mining license and follow all procedures to the letter but some bureaucrat who wants a bribe sits on your application for months (or years) and in the meantime your preliminary operational costs keep increasing and all your competitors get their licenses quickly (having paid the bribe).
As you can see in all these examples, the common principle is that the situations fall outside the normal rules of morality because someone is using force against you. As one philosopher put it, “Morality ends at the barrel of the gun”.
If someone runs at you with a huge knife with the express intention of killing you, you have a right to self defence that supersedes the right to life of the person trying to kill you. If you kill them in defending yourself, we cannot say you have done an immoral thing by taking the life of another human being.
The bad guy lost his right to life the moment he decided not to respect your right to life by trying to kill you. This goes back to the principle of morality application I have explained above. The attempted murder situation is an immoral situation and we cannot apply normal morality rules. Otherwise every murderer would simply go out and kill everyone knowing that the victims could not fight back to defend themselves.
So the crux of the matter is this. If you live in an immoral system like Zambia where you have to bribe people to get things done (something which is not your fault), stop feeling guilty about it and start playing by the rules of the system. If you are a company, open a special “oil and grease account” and make it very fat because the higher up the food chain you go, the more rusty bureaucrats and other decision makers are. If you do not agree, get the hell out of Zambia. If you stay and decide not to play, be prepared for lifelong misery to your grave.
But this does not mean your soul should become corrupt by thinking it is normal to bribe people in all situations. Always avoid corrupting people if you can and only do it when force is used against you. If you are caught over-speeding on the road, pay the fine as an honest person and refuse to pay the traffic cop if they try to solicit a bribe from you (there is no force being used against you in this situation).
If you leave Zambia and go to a normal civilized society where merit is what counts, never try to bribe anyone.
