Jesus, Politics and Zambia’s Dirty Cup

“Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, while inside they are full of extortion and intemperance. Blind Pharisee! Clean the inside of the cup and dish first, so that the outside may also be clean.” — Matthew 23:25–26.

If Jesus had been among Zambia’s voters on 13 August, he might have had similar words for the country’s politicians in the aftermath of the election.

The very practices that the ruling United Party for National Development (UPND) condemned while in opposition are, in many instances, the same practices it now appears to have embraced in government. The faces may have changed, but some of the conduct it once denounced has not.

And this problem goes beyond the UPND.

Too much of Zambia’s politics is about cleaning the outside of the cup while leaving the inside untouched. Parties promise change when they are outside government, condemn the excesses of those in power and demand stronger institutions. Once the political tables turn, however, reform suddenly becomes less urgent.

Now it is the turn of some former Patriotic Front (PF) leaders and members to cry injustice and seek public sympathy. But that raises an uncomfortable question: how did those who wielded power under the PF conduct themselves when they were in government?

Did they defend the institutions they now want to protect them? Did they speak against abuses of power when those abuses affected their political opponents? Did they demand the same standards of justice, accountability and respect for rights that they are demanding today?

These questions do not excuse any injustice being committed against anyone today.

Wrongdoing does not become acceptable simply because its victim may once have tolerated, defended or even benefited from similar conduct. The rule of law must protect everyone — including those who may have failed to defend it when they held power.

But this cycle helps explain why it is sometimes difficult for ordinary citizens to sympathise with politicians when the political tables turn against them.

Zambia cannot build a democracy on the principle that something is wrong only when it happens to us.

That is precisely the hypocrisy at the heart of Jesus’ warning, polishing the outside of the cup while refusing to confront what is inside.

Our politics is too important to be cleaned only from the outside. It needs a more fundamental overhaul.

One place to start is political party and campaign financing.

Election after election, enormous amounts of money are poured into campaigns, yet Zambians know remarkably little about where much of that money comes from, what those financing political parties expect in return, or how those relationships may influence decisions once a party forms government.

A study by Transparency International Zambia, Elections and Money, provides some indication of the scale of the problem. Based on research involving more than half of Zambia’s Members of Parliament, TI-Z estimated that the average cost of winning an election in Zambia was about K3.8 million.

It also found that candidates able to spend more enjoyed greater visibility and other electoral advantages, while campaign spending varied considerably according to wealth, gender, age, location and whether a candidate belonged to the ruling or opposition party.

But perhaps the more important finding is what we still do not know.

TI-Z found that little information is publicly available about who finances political parties and their major contributors. Zambia therefore has a political system in which millions of kwachas can be spent seeking public office without voters necessarily knowing who supplied the money or what interests those financiers may have.

That matters because political financing is not merely an accounting issue. It goes to the heart of who ultimately exercises political power.

TI-Z warns that opaque donations can create relationships in which wealthy individuals, businesses or other interests finance politicians and later expect government contracts, licences, favourable policies or regulatory decisions in return. It identifies the risks as including an uneven electoral playing field, policy capture, erosion of public trust and weak accountability.

In other words, the question is not simply: Who won the election?

It is also: Who paid to help them win, how much did they contribute, and what might they expect after the election?

This is why campaign-finance reform should concern ordinary Zambians.

Without transparency, citizens risk becoming spectators in a political contest whose most consequential relationships are formed long before polling day and remain hidden long after the ballots have been counted.

The Constitution already anticipated this problem. TI-Z notes that the 2016 amended Constitution provides for matters including the declaration of party funding and limits on campaign spending, but the legislation required to give practical effect to those provisions has not been enacted. Political party campaign financing therefore remains largely unregulated.

There is an irony here. TI-Z says 97.5 percent of the MPs it interviewed agreed that it was time to act on reform. Yet meaningful legislation has remained elusive.

We have sat in meetings where political party and campaign financing has been discussed. Yet it is difficult to find politicians willing to champion the kind of transparency that would require them to disclose who funds them, how much they receive and how that money is spent.

That reluctance should concern us.

Because unless campaign financing is addressed, Zambia can change governments and political parties without necessarily changing the system beneath them.

Election after election, citizens may continue to be called upon to choose between candidates without being given one of the most important pieces of information necessary to make that choice: who is financing them?

The ballot should not be the end of the citizen’s role in democracy. Zambians should be able to follow the money before the election, scrutinise those who finance political power and, after the election, ask whether government decisions serve the people who voted or the interests that paid.

That is what Jesus’ call of the importance of ‘cleaning the inside of the cup’ would begin to look like.