To reveal or not to reveal Cashgate names?

There was a time when the audit report related to Cashgate was presented to government. Former president Joyce Banda’s government then decided to ‘hide’ names mentioned in the report. The reasons were many, but chiefly because revealing names would compromise investigations. Many citizens demanded the names.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) then, in opposition, promised to get to the bottom of Cashgate. The Peoples’ Party (PP) did not jump on to this promise to release the names and ‘steal’ the elections from DPP. They thought their good points resonated well with the electorate. What with Mudzi Transformation, some donor goodwill that oiled government machinery, a promise to the families of July 20, a youth for a running mate and government largesse? The rest is, as they say, history. The public chose the political party which promised to reveal Cashgate names.

Cashgate has been discussed in the House of Lords in the UK. But Cashgate, the rot that we all knew was there all along, but did not know just how organised it was (except those who benefitted of course) has become a new term in the political and criminal lingua of this country.

Although Bingu distanced himself from Jesus in his “I am not Jesus speech, running a government is like being Jesus. “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ You don’t release the names that are in the Cashgate document, they say you are protecting your friends, your sons and possibly your own political career.

Now they see you have not benefitted from the lack of release they wonder what was the benefit of hiding after all? You release the name, they say you have just compromised critical investigations. They go on to even suggest that people will be queuing at the High Court claiming compensation for slander, character assassination and defamation. When you did not release the names, they argued that they are afraid their own people are in the report, after all Cashgate, if it was a child, would be in Standard 4 or 5 but past kindergarten certainly.