Zimpapers Logo

Khumalo appeared in court shortly after. The prosecution alleged that in November 2010, the St Mary’s CDF committee opened a bank account with Metropolitan Bank and from 12 November to 30 December, Treasury transferred a total of $50 000 into the account.
The State alleged that Khumalo, in his personal capacity as an MP and chairman of St Mary’s CDF committee and in exercise of his functions, abused his duty by corruptly using the constituency funds to purchase a Bedford lorry from United Tyre Services without the knowledge and approval of the committee and the national management committee.

Second to be arrested was Magunje legislator, Franco Ndambakuwa.  The Zanu-PF MP allegedly failed to account for $39 000 in CDF money. The commission also arrested two more MDC-T legislators, Albert Mhlanga, (Pumula) and Cleopas Machacha (Kariba) on similar allegations. 
Mhlanga was being accused of failing to account for $7 680 and also transferring $32 000 into a bank account of a company he owns, claiming the firm had supplied goods for CDF projects in Pumula, yet it hadn’t. He also allegedly deposited money into an account of a company owned by one of his friends.

Charges against him and Ndambakuwa were withdrawn before plea but cases against Machacha and Khumalo are still pending. Before the Attorney General’s Office stopped the arrests, many MPs who probably knew that their books were not in order had reportedly gone into hiding, fearing arrest. The Ministry of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs had forwarded to the ZACC names of MPs, including the quartet after it had conducted audits of 65 of the Lower House’s 210 constituencies.

It is impossible to say that public funds were indeed abused in the four constituencies whose representatives were arrested because no competent court has ruled thus, but the court of public opinion has already convicted them and many other MPs of misappropriating public money.
Constituents have in recent months been unhappy with lack of development in their areas, despite the fact that their MPs received CDF money. A constituency where $39 000 or $27 000 in development funding was misused would not expect the CDF to yield anything positive.

But going by the findings of the audit, though not proved in court, it is apparent that we have a CDF scandal indeed where MPs looted public funds to pay themselves for non-existent deliveries, transferred money into accounts belonging to friends; others simply having times of their lives with girlfriends. Meanwhile, development projects meant to benefit their electors suffered.

With the benefit of hindsight, it turns out that there were fundamental oversights that weakened the administration of the fund, right from Treasury, down to the constituency committees charged with overseeing project implementation. The founding management framework (assuming there was one) of CDF was deeply flawed. This portended disaster.

MPs chair the constituency committees and are among the signatories to the CDF account. They and their committees are expected to prioritise what projects must be done, when, why and where. However, nothing is written anywhere how they must do that, the role communities play in coming up with projects or checks and balances to prevent abuse.

The other day, Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Eric Matinenga said workshops were held at which MPs were trained in basic accounting. He reiterated that position this week telling the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal, Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs that:
“Each MP was given the (CDF) constitution and the accounting officer manual. Whether they read it or not, I don’t know, hence the adage ‘you can take a donkey to the well but you can’t make it drink’.”

As responsible minister, he assumed that a few workshops were enough capacity building in financial management to arm the MPs with skills in managing the fund and prevent corruption. Focusing capacity building efforts on MPs alone to the exclusion of other members of respective CDF committees like councillors was a key weakness. It was believed that the legislators would be able to grasp the issues at the workshops and, in turn capacitate members of their committees on sound financial management. But given the calibre of some of our MPs, this expectation was a bit too much.

Stories have been written about people who were gardeners and shebeen queens but woke up one day being legislators simply because the highest number of people in a constituency put an “X” beside their mug shot on a ballot paper. Soon, the gardener switched his back-breaking work for regular, all-expenses-paid trips to Parliament; the shebeen queen quitting her nightly job for the comfort of the august House.

It gets more curious because the former gardener and shebeen queen goes for close to a year unpaid, yet $50 000 is deposited into a bank account they control! 
On another note, the ministry overlooked the point that MPs also have, in addition to accounting, a project management function. Treasury and the Ministry of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs assumed, quite wrongly, that MPs, some without any education post-Standard Six, would become competent, incorruptible project managers overnight simply because they have been elected as legislators and undergone training in basic accounting in workshops. This was a disastrous oversight because project management is a whole discipline, for which many people spend four long years reading.

Development work is not the core business of legislators, but to legislate. While they need some accounting and project management training, which necessarily has to be sustained throughout the life of parliament, each MP has to have a qualified community development practitioner or project manager seconded to him or her to professionally manage the fund and its activities. MPs and their committees would be there to oversee. That is standard practice when funding organisations give funding for community development. They second their own technical experts to work with communities from project conception right to project closure or evaluation, whatever the case might be. The existing framework, which puts the MP at the centre of development practice overworks them and gives them a kind of autonomy they do not deserve.

Projects, more so those funded publicly, are not just implemented because they have to. There is a systematic, professional approach that is followed from community needs assessment, project initiation, implementation and monitoring and evaluation. 
During needs assessment, communities must be involved.  MPs cannot know the aspirations and priorities of their electors; so communities have to meaningfully decide what is good for them. This bottom-up approach often brings sustainability to projects and the CDF policy, which Minister Matinenga hinted on, must make this approach mandatory.

Apart from the absence of a needs assessment system and poor training, the CDF has no specific monitoring and evaluation mechanism, yet every project manager will tell you that pretending to implement a project without a pre-conceived monitoring and evaluation system is a recipe for disaster. 
Experiences from other three African countries that have a similar fund show that its performance is mixed. The shortcomings prevailing here are evident in Zambia and Uganda, but the Kenyan system seems better.

The Ugandan one was set up in 2005 to tackle poverty at the grassroots through financing development at constituency level through the elected MPs. In a paper, Monitoring the Constituency Development Fund, Ugandan organisation Africa Leadership Institute (AFLI) criticises the fund for lacking a regulatory framework, yielding malpractice as we are witnessing here.

“The country needs an enabling legal framework to regulate the CDF disbursement and effective utilisation of the funds,” the organisation says.
AFLI suggests an all-inclusive approach where all stakeholders, particularly communities, are involved in its formulation and implementation as a way to promote accountability, transparency and relevance of the projects to people’s needs.  This reduces conflicts and corruption too.

Zambia has had a CDF since 1995. The Government allocates development funds annually to all constituencies under the control of the local MP. The fund has been abused and frequently used as a political tool, not a community development instrument. The Zambian government has had difficulties mainly due to political factors and interferences in the use of the fund. MPs and their party functionaries manipulate the funds for their personal use and in certain cases had even shared or connived with council officials either to steal or to misapply funds. In 2008, Zambia mooted a proposal to strengthen the guidelines on the utilisation of the funds and the audit unit through provincial local government officers who would routinely check on the performance of CDF.

Established in 2003 under the CDF Act, the Kenyan model appears to be the best-run.
It is properly structured at multiple levels. At the top is a board, a corporate body responsible for the effective and efficient management of the fund. Among other structures, the Kenyan model has project management committees that assist in project identification and documentation, fund account managers who prepare and submit books of accounts and other operational and financial reports to the board, not MPs. This reduces corruption. Furthermore, the model has an established monitoring and evaluation system, with the CDF board maintaining an up-to-date website that provides information about the fund.

One rather strange reason being advanced by Minister Matinenga as to why it is presumably impossible to prosecute CDF abusers is that there is no law that establishes the fund, how it must be administered and penalties on those who fail to do so.
But why is it so difficult to prosecute cases of abuse using existing legislation? We already have adequate laws to punish corruption at whatever level and in whatever form.  Why are we questioning the adequacy of our anti-corruption laws now? Prior to the CDF scandal, the laws were regarded as tight enough to fight corruption, but suddenly they have become not good enough to punish an errant MP who swindles his electors of their money and well-being.

Perhaps it is for lawyers to answer but every layperson out there does not think we need a new, specific law to punish politicians who abuse CDF. Their thinking is not misplaced; because they have seen many politicians who have been penalised under existing laws for abusing public funds or facilities meant for the public good. It is only commonsensical but the law is a donkey, is it not! 
If every fund that the Government sets up must have a specific law backing it up to facilitate prosecution of abusers, why do we not have a Dimaf Act, for instance?

A partly government-partly private sector re-industrialisation initiative, Dimaf can be abused as we have seen with CDF, but that has not stopped the Government and CABS from allocating it, though frugally.

Appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Industry and Commerce this week, CABS managing director, Mr Kevin Terry told Parliament that Dimaf does not exist at law. Since it does not exist in law, but money is being allocated regardless, what will be done to firms in the event that they do not use it for the reasons they obtained it? Come up with a Dimaf Act so that we are able later to prosecute those who abuse the fund? 
If the argument that there would be no penalty for corruption because a legal vacuum prevails, as it looks to, it means that legislators who abused their first CDF allocations have escaped prosecution as laws are not applied retrospectively.

It turns out that Mr Gabriel Chaibva, a former MDC legislator was right when he argued that the haste with which the CDF was put in place, with no legal framework or management system was an effort by one party to benefit “its poor” legislators.