PURPOSE OF ENTRY: TO WIND UP AND LEAVE THE COUNTRY

Today Brendan Manning, shareholder and manager of a company holding an investment certificate under the Investment Act, with an investment in rural Zambia over four years of $1.6 million, received a temporary permit extension at a cost of K2.5 million (kwacha @ 3850 to the $ dollar) or $649 - although the TP only admits to the payment of K2 million. This permit - supposedly issued on 24 October and valid to 24 January 2008, despite Immigration receiving a lawyers letter and a personal visit to ensure that the TP be valid up to the holding of the court case, is but six days short of the High Court case, one in which he and his father and mother have their judicial review hearing against the Minister of Home Affairs and the Chief Immigration Officer on the matter of the latter's refusal to extend the Mannings self-employed permits. Judge Musonda, having on 30 November admonished the Immigration Department for arrogance and disrespect of the High Court in that they have been issuing short-stay permits despite a judicial stay being in place, something which supersedes any action, may now wish to deal with a state body which ignores him.

The matter is not simply that Immigration require money to pay the Chinese contractor for his attempted repairs to the notorious Kent House, but that the executive and the civil service - paid for by tax payers and the ubiquitous donors - including my own fatherland, not least all the IT equipment supplied by USAID, appear to hold the High Court in contempt. I think, however, that in Judge Musonda they may have found their match.

Today came news of a divorcee on a work permit with a young child of 4, who, enrolled at a private school, and has been told that she should pay K500,000 for a study permit for the child.

NGOs in Zambia...

The Zambian State and civil society do not very often sing from the same hymn sheet - and increasingly so in Zambia. But this is not a particularly Zambian malady: government everywhere always grows increasingly intolerant of criticism, be it from the media or from that product of western pluralism, the non-government organization. And one cannot cavil at the man who is the citizen's protector - the Minister of Justice, saying that there needs to be a legal framework in place for the protection of society from unregulated NGOs - some of them undoubtedly not of charitable intent. The Charities Commission in England oversee many thousands of NGOs, making sure that they serve society. It is a difficult job, and they have a legal framework, based - as is ours, on English Common Law. But they also protect NGOs from the Government.

Zambian NGOs clearly see the NGO Bill as a move by Government to stifle opposition to government policies and their implementation through Acts and Statutory Instruments, and as an instrument to divide and conquer the myriad groupings of charitable intent which might coalesce into hard political opposition. The Bill does of course not much consider the protection of the NGO from a Government, one that does not hesitate to order the OP surveillance team to keep a close watch on it. As Joyce MacMillan remarks, the restrictive definition of an NGO would pose a threat to those of us working in human rights, social and economic justice - if you are trying to do charitable works in a rural area, something impossible to avoid.

What this bill would deliver is the establishment of a Government controlled quango , yet another one, to oversee the common herd. By all means let us have a commission, but one appointed - unlike the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission, by civil society.

All free men and women need to restrict the powers of the elected government over them.