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A Zambian opposition leader has described the recent South African Constitutional Court (ConCourt) ruling on President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead as a warning to African leaders abusing power, the Zambian Post reports.
Yotam Mtayachalo – a former chairperson of the Forum for Democracy and Development in the Copperbelt, and the party’s aspiring candidate for Chama North – said that Zambians should be “very careful” of politicians who were splashing out gifts ahead of the upcoming presidential elections in August.
Mtayachalo said that the continent was endowed with natural resources, but remained in bondage to poverty, disease, unemployment and corruption.
Commenting on the SA ConCourt ruling last week, that ordered Zuma to pay back some of the money used to refurbish his homestead in Nkandla, Mtayachalo said that most African leaders abused power, but always got away with it because of immunity.
He said African leaders were undermining democratic institutions, adding that even if the continent could change its leaders many times, without establishing proper institutions of good governance, development would remain an “elusive dream”.
“…Africa has not built strong and autonomous institutions of good governance that has actually led to rampant corruption and abuses because there is no one to check these leaders. They think they are above the law and above all these institutions of good governance,” Mtayachalo was quoted as saying.
