“Amend constitution to legalise drug trade” was the amazing headline which appeared recently in the Zambian Weekly Post newspaper.
“If I were the president’s advisor,” wrote columnist Jowie Mwiinga, “I would persuade him to amend the constitution to legalise the drug trade.”
“Legalising drugs would make us a more honest, open people. No more dark comer transactions or unconvincing denials,” Mwiinga wrote. “We’d all be so rich we would never need the consultative group again,” said Mwiinga, concluding that what he found most gratifying was that everyone could then afford to wear Pierre Cardin suits.
The column, of course, was very tongue in cheek. The Weekly Post has long been in the forefront of a campaign against alleged Zambian drug barons and traffickers, some of whom it has named.
The consultative group of donors, to whom the newspaper referred, were highly unamused when they metbin Paris a few days later. If Zambian President Frederick Chiluba did not purge his Cabinet of alleged drug dealers and corrupt politicians, they would withhold desperately needed aid, they bluntly told the Zambian delegation.
Soon after that meeting, Foreign Minister Vernon Mwaanga resigned, protesting he was a victim of a campaign of vicious innuendoes. A few days later Community Development Minister, Princess Nakatindi Wina, and her husband, deputy Parliamentary Speaker Sikota Wina, also resigned protesting their innocence.
All three, along with two other Members of Parliament and a number of prominent businessmen, were among 25 people detained in 1985 by former President Kenneth Kaunda in connection with alleged drug trafficking.
In late 1991 when Chiluba and the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) resoundingly defeated Kaunda and his United National Independence Party (UNIP), Chiluba promised clean government.
After an initial honeymoon period, in which Chiluba’s election victory was hailed by many – including former US President Jimmy Carter — as a major victory for democracy, rumours began to abound about increased drug trafficking and corruption.
Prior to the 1991 election, Zambia was perceived to be a transit country for drugs, mainly the “buzz” pill Mandrax, from India via the Gulf States to South Africa. Those involved were quite blatant about their actions. They accused Kaunda of arresting Zambia’s development through his 1985 crackdown, because monies earned from Mandrax sales to South Africa no longer flowed back to Zambia, resulting in high-rise building projects being stalled.
They were not harming Zambians through their drug trafficking activities, they argued, because the drugs were only being sold in South Africa. On the contrary, Zambia was in fact benefitting as a result of the influx of drug development money.
But in 1992, a year after Chiluba took power, Zambia’s Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) warned: “Zambia is no longer a transit country for drugs, but a consumer country.”
Zambian newspapers reported a few months ago on a court case involving the illegal importation of three mandrax-rnaking machines into the country. Two of the machines had been recovered, but the third was said to be “missing”.
Zambians travelling abroad face mounting suspicion by customs officers, and 25 were detained or arrested outside the country in 1992, including a sister and a cousin of Nakatindi, a DEC report to Parliament said.
Launching the International Day Against Drugs and Alcohol Abuse in May last year, Chiluba admitted that cases of 114 drug addicts had been recorded in Lusaka alone and that six people had died from heroin overdoses.
Despite all these warnings, when the DEC Commissioner, Kamoyo Mpundu, sought permission to take a warned and cautioned statement from Nakatindi, Chiluba’s response was to fire the Commissioner.
Home Affairs Minister, Newstead Zimba, stunned Parliament at about the same time by stating that drug trafficking was undermining the country’s security and sovereignty.
“Illicit traffic in narcotic drugs generates financial profits and wealth, leading to criminal gangs penetrating, contaminating and corrupting the structures of government at all level,” he said. “Illicit drug trafficking and its related money laundering activities is already causing distortions in our economic and budgetary planning for sustained social development.”
Throughout all this furore Chiluba defended his suspected Ministers, demanding that “evidence” be produced to substantiate the charges. Detailed reports and tape recordings have been supplied to Chiluba by Western intelligence agencies, the Weekly Post said recently, quoting State House sources.
“Zambia under Chiluba”, said columnist Fred M’embe recently in the Weekly Post, “has already qualified to the World Drug Trafficking Cup finals to be held in Medlin, Columbia.” And if the country’s present coaches were not changed then Zambia was assured of reaching the semi-finals, he said. (SARDC)
