Justice being done in Zambia…

Today, I and my son, Brendan, attended a judicial review in a Lusaka High Court judge’s chambers, together with our attorney, Wynter Kabimba and a legal officer from the Attorney-General’s office. The matter of course has to do with the refusal of the Minister of Home Affairs to renew our self-employed permits - as is our right as holders of investment certificates under the Zambia Development Agency Act of 2006, giving as his reason that “Your business is not viable”, even though we are only into our third year and have already invested $1.6 million in our Luembe Conservancy – a partnership with our Luembe community, which includes the purchase of the hunting concessionaire in our conservancy, Mbeza Safaris.

The judge showed some irritation at a move by the Government who today presented an affidavit to have the review cancelled, having had time since we last appeared before the same judge on 4 September to present it. Our attorney then, given the fact that he had had no time to consult us, requested an adjournment. This was granted, the date being set for 30 January, 2008.

Then the matter of the Immigration Department’s refusal to understand that a stay of execution granted us on 4 September meant just that. But of course Immigration do not have much understanding or respect for the law, being filled with the hubris of their most powerful position to grant ‘life and death’ in Zambia to investors, be they illiterate Chinese labourers whom we encounter every time we attend Immigration, putting their crosses on the receipts for their entry permits, something denied most investors, even the husband of a chum of mine who has been on a work permit since 1975. There are four of us: my wife and son and I (all executive shareholders of the company holding an investment certificate), and my aged mother, so Immigration is quite happy to have us paying our $500 application fee for a temporary permit for a few weeks or months, even though they know the date of the judicial review and could easily issue us with a free report order. After all they should have some rudimentary understanding of the fact that a stay of execution granted by a High Court judge supercedes everything. I tried explaining this to the Immigration legal officer a few days ago. But he clearly thought he was an expert, denying that a stay meant any such thing, then turned on my wife who has been on a report order, saying that unless she paid for and received a temporary permit, he could arrest her for being in the country illegally. This was abuse in its most basic form, something you have to get used to when dealing with the Kent House brigade.

Our problems with Immigration were put to the judge, who stated that the Immigration legal officer was clearly being ‘disrespective to the court, and being arrogant…” With great restraint, he suggested that the Government legal officer have a word with the Immigration legal officer so that he would not be forced to come down on her with a court order!!

Today on the 31st October, we delivered a letter to The Chief Immigration Officer from our attorneys, which dealt with the question, writing as follows: "your (Immigration's) office has continued to act in disobedience of the judicial order granted to them (Mannings) by a competent court by issuing them at times with report orders for a period of 3 days or a Temporary permit for a period of a month. It was the view of the judge (Honourable Mr Justice Phillip Musonda) that your conduct constitutes an affront to the judicial order granted and M/s Mpamba as legal officer was expected to be well versed in court matters and advise your office accordingly. The judge directed that we implore you to obey the court order in order to facilitate a fair trial or in default to promptly report to the court for appropriate action. In this regard you may wish to refer to the case of Kabimba Vs the Attorney General and Lusaka City Council (1995/97) ZR, 152 for the definition of a stay and its effect in judicial review proceedings."

It was concluded by a receptive and polite senior hierarchy at Immigration - and by our attorney, that we should be issued Temporary Permits for three months - for which we would have to pay.

Foreigners flood Zambia reports ZNBC...

"The Immigrations Department says Zambia has recorded an unprecedented influx of foreign nationals due to investment prospects in the country. Chief Immigrations Officer, Ndiyoyi Mutiti said government's resolve to woo investment into the country has attracted many foreign nationals. Mrs. Mutiti also refuted allegations that more work permits are being issued to Chinese nationals than other foreigners. She said her department does not discriminate when issuing work permits. There has been reports that Chinese nationals are awarded more work permits than other foreigners."

Evidence of Zambia's Development and Immigration divide...

That Minister of Commerce, Trade and Industry, Felix Mutati complains of an influx of Chinese labourers into Zambia - labourers almost daily to be found squatting on the pavement outside the Lusaka airport awaiting their buses, but further confirmation that the Ministry of Home Affairs and its Department of Immigration are implementing a plan which Commerce and Industry have no control over. As I have an Immigration Department official on record as saying that it is they who decide who comes to - or leaves, Zambia, clearly investors have a problem, being lead down the garden path by the Ministry of Commerce - through its Zambia Development Agency, and abandoned to the the vagaries of a heavily politicised Department of Emigration. Chinese and miners be welcome, others beware!

On Tuesday 30 October, the High Court of Zambia will decide on just such a case. Watch this blog... and as a reminder of the problem, here is repeated part of a blog of some months ago dealing with the 'Adequacy of Zambia's Legal and Policy Framework' which I contributed to the Committee on Economic Affairs and Labour of the National Assembly, Zambia:

INTRODUCTION
The Zambia Development Agency Act No. 11 of 2006 takes the place of the repealed Acts: Investment Act; Privatization Act; Small Enterprise Development Act; Export Processing Zones Act; and the Export Development Act, creating the quango: The Zambia Development Agency

THE ACT’S ADEQUACY:

i) The national investment objectives
These are articulated based on generally accepted international norms. However, it is clear that, in their making, they are not the result of true consultation with civil society conducted in a transparent and participatory manner as they do not address the cultural and socio-wellsprings of society, and therefore will remain an idealistic goal ever unattainable. In plain terms, the objectives are not the views of general society.
ii) Government responsibilities to foreign investors
These are poorly delineated, leaving the investor, should anything go wrong, at the mercy of the Arbitration Act, a process anyhow avoided by a Government Executive in which power remains highly centralized, where foreign investors are able to be deported under emergency powers introduced to deal with a state of emergency under a previous regime. There therefore needs to be introduced a special committee of the judiciary, set apart from the Executive, to deal with matters affecting investors who are targeted by corrupt elements.

A backdrop to the conservation battle in Zambia...

Nicholas F. Benton: China’s Resource Grab in Africa
Thursday, 25 October 2007
nfbenton@fcnp.com
My exclusive interview this week with a leading health official from the U.S. working on the AIDS crisis in Zambia, Africa, revealed conditions on the ground there almost too horrible to describe. There is no one critical problem there that is not interlinked with at least a half-dozen others and the conventional wisdom is that the best case scenario for a turnaround is at least 40 years away. But as far as the U.S. or any Western interests are concerned, that day will likely never come, since their current foreign policy vacuum in that region has left it to strident and persistent advances by the Chinese.

China is moving into the most ravaged areas of Africa with no humanitarian intent. On the contrary, the Chinese are capitalizing on the corruption at the top of governments there to trade financial payoffs for titles to massive chunks of land rich in untapped natural resources. The U.S. has turned its back to this process, from combined diplomatic, geopolitical and financial aid standpoints, because of its preoccupation with Iraq, the official said.

So the unspeakable human crisis there is not only a matter of concern for the people in that region, but for the wider global interests of the U.S., as well. The U.S. is stuck in the Iraq quagmire, having expended over $500 billion there to date, in an intended oil grab against perceived Russian and Chinese designs. Yet because of that, it is permitting access to even more vital resources in Africa and elsewhere to the same strategic competitors, over the poverty-stricken and disease-riddled rotting bodies of millions. It is impossible to imagine anything but a massive shift of focus by the U.S. and its allies to turn this regrettable inevitability around.

As it is now, up to 40 percent of the population of Zambia and surrounding countries is infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS. In Zambia, because of AIDS, the average life expectancy has dropped from 57 to 37 years of age in 20 years. One out of every two children born there today will die from AIDS-related factors before age 24. The death rate has created a massive displaced children problem and the local government has no interest in setting up orphanages. Instead, these AIDS orphans either move in with extended family members, live on the streets or are periodically rounded up into military camps.

These children are then either recruited into the exploding trend of child soldiers used as fodder in genocidal tribal wars, or into global human trafficking networks, shipped around the world and forced to become sex workers. The primary destinations of these networks are the large coastal urban centers of the U.S., the official said. Neither condoms nor AIDS drugs are working in arresting the spread of HIV in Zambia, she added, noting that cultural mores and a pervasive sense of despair make them ineffective. People living in conditions of extreme poverty have no energy to think beyond how they’re going to eat from day to day, and have no sense that they could work for a better future for themselves, or their children, in the long term. There is simply no notion of opportunities for a better life. Foreign aids organizations are treated with great suspicion, with Afro-Americans from the U.S. being considered “white.” The suspicions are fueled by local witch doctors whose prescriptions for virility encourage sexual practices by adults with young children too heinous to describe explicitly. Polygamy, without the formality of marriage or commitment, is the norm.

Corrupt local leaders hold aid efforts at bay, demanding huge bribes and diverting resources for their own uses. And there is simply no way the U.S. or any other outside nation can carry out programs in those countries without the blessings of those leaders. There appears to be no sweeping proposal for a “silver bullet” to fix all this. The only way to start, however, would be for the global community, most importantly the U.S., to begin fixing its gaze on what’s happening there, not only from a humanitarian but from a geo-strategic standpoint.

BAA corporate members at the African front...

As a tiny corporate member of Business Action for Africa (BAA) actually working in the field as an investor and holistic developer in an isolated part of Zambia where some 5,000 or so people live on about 25 cents a day - in a country where Government over the last 20 years only spent 16% of its national expenditure on agriculture, health, education and local government, and where corruption is kept alive by the very process of donor aid, any effort to encourage corporates on the Corporate Social Responsiblity (CSR) front is laudable (I am trying to recruit corporates to invest in conservancies, based on a trust structure, where they can get involved on the ground). However, not much is being done to support us and the 25 centers in the field, all the endless talking, thumb-shakes and cocktails being swilled in London far from the front. Corruption is a case in point. BAA makes much of its anti-corruption stance, even reporting to the G8 on what a fine job it has done in Zambia, yet I see nothing of them here, nor do they bother to reply to my letters asking what it is they actually do here – let alone for their own members, one of whom is the subject of surveillance and harassment by the state security and immigration apparatus simply because he stands up for the poor and opposes illegal land alienations. But are they listening?

The donors and the multi-nationals, the quangos and international organizations are simply in bed with the Government, massaging the slumbers of the poor. These be the waPajero, a new species. What to do?

Zambia’s Wildlife Authority Board Chairman threatens investor...

Since the Mulungushi Truce Conference of 3 January, 2007 (see Bush Telegraph) - a meeting of hunting concession Community Resource Boards, safari operators and ZAWA, called by Minister Pande of the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources in order to arrange a truce in the mounting criticism of Government's handling of the hunting and conservation industry, only one meeting of the industry has been held, and that without the Community Resource Boards being present. If Government does not confer with its private sector partners, with its community partners, if it ignores its problems, is unsympathetic, then criticism will appear in the media, particularly in the greatest liberating influence known to mankind, the Internet.

The letter from the Chairman of the Zambia Wildlife Authority is chilling: "...show cause why the Board of ZAWA should not deal with your menacing behaviour in a manner and style that should put the scourge to complete rest, decisively and once and for all." Sounds like a death threat.

My reply follows below:

3 October, 2007.

Walusiku Lisulo
Chairman of the ZAWA Board
Your ref: WL/JJ/889

Dear Sir,

Your letter of 26 September was received by hand today.

Your charge that I am posting articles on the internet which are libelous of ZAWA, its Board and the Director-General, requires investigation. As you are making a general accusation, I would presume that you have at hand those articles you consider libelous and could point them out to me. Once we have something with which to debate, I will gladly attend a meeting with the ZAWA Board, attended of course by my attorney. You, of course, already have details of my dissatisfaction with ZAWA and its Board and are, I am sure, ready to supply answers and explanations – something long sought after and promised by you at the Mulugushi Truce meeting in January of this year, and at two subsequent meetings.

I must state for the record, that although I am not required to attend any meeting on the command of ZAWA, or the full Board, I shall do so in the interests of the truth and of conservation. As a conservationist of long standing in Zambia, what I do is only in the interests of Zambia, its people and its wildlife. I am prepared to defend that.

Your sincerely,


I.P.A. Manning

cc. The DG. ZAWA.
cc. The Minister. MTENR.
cc. W.M. Kabimba & Associates

Zambia’s Wildlife Authority again rides rough shod over hunting safari investors…

Zambia’s newspaper, ‘The Post’ of 3 October 2007, carries a Zambia Wildlife Authority tender for the granting of a “ Safari Hunting Concession in Nyampala Hunting Block: Munyamadzi Game Management Area”. Nothing unusual in that you might say, except for the fact that there still exists a legal concessionaire of Nyampala, Leopard Ridge Safaris. ZAWA appears to have forgotten that they removed the concession from Leopard Ridge without due process, that the concession was re-instated by the Lusaka High Court in favour of Leopard Ridge, and that they then appealed to the Supreme Court – the case which is to be heard on 23 October 2007. ZAWA’s legal advisor appears not to have informed his Director-General that such a tender prejudices the Supreme Court appeal.

And one must not forget that the Nyampala Community Resource Board, the partner in the Hunting Concession Agreement - along with ZAWA and Leopard Ridge, had obtained their own High Court injunction, allowing Leopard Ridge to continue hunting, later overturned on purely procedural grounds in the Supreme Court, a terrible blow against rural residents of hunting concessions. Of course, when this happened, ZAWA sent in a force of paramilitary and their own schutztruppe at 4.00 am into one of Leopard Ridge’s camps, ordering Leopard Ridge to close down and depart the area. I wonder what the client whom they had hunting thought of it all.

And Leopard Ridge is also due to appear in court again – along with a few other companies, including our own, in yet another action brought by the National Movement Against Corruption against us, despite them having already lost in the High Court (with costs) and, the Supreme Court. The case? We had overshot our game hunting quotas they charged, something unproven and untrue. But NAMAC, it appeared, believed that their real intention was to expose some corrupt elements in ZAWA who had done nothing about bringing us miscreants to justice. It is all a little far fetched.

As we speak, our lawyer awaits a bundle of documents from the NAMAC lawyer so that the fresh action may commence.

So, it appears that NAMAC, rather than fighting corruption, is an unwitting part of it. If you look at Leopard Ridge’s situation and the case of Ed Smythe – an operator who simply had his concession removed and given ‘administratively’ to someone else, it is hard to dispute. And who is it that funds NAMAC, supposedly there to fight corruption itself? The Danish Government.

Are they aware of how their money is being mis-used?