Ndola — RECENT revelations that the Zambian Judiciary has become a breeding ground for corrupt practices are a major threat to the country's successful anti-corruption drive.

According to the recently-launched Global Corruption Report for 2007, an annual analysis by Transparency International of the corruption levels among the nations of the world, "About 40 per cent of households and 25 per cent of business managers (in Zambia) reported that bribes were paid to speed up legal proceedings.

This has led to a notable erosion of confidence in the justice system over 80 per cent of the households surveyed reported that they needed to use the court system, but decided not to, and just over 60 per cent of businesses said the same."

Analysts say such revelations if not checked, could easily erode the people's confidence in the Judiciary as already highlighted in the book: "52 per cent of business managers believed the courts were not independent from Government or economic pressures, and that justice was not administered fairly or transparently.

"While some commentators have suggested that judges are independent from the executive, the survey findings indicate that court users feel that in reality they are not."

Zambia Episcopal Conference (ZEC) secretary general, Joe Komakoma, said recently that judicial corruption was counter-productive to the development of the country. "Judicial corruption undermines citizens' morale, violates their human rights, harms their job prospects, undermines national development and compromises the quality of governance.

"A government that functions on behalf of all its citizens requires not only the rule of law, but an independent and effective judiciary to enforce it to the satisfaction of all parties," said Father Komakoma.

Transparency International board member Kavwanga Yambayamba said corruption had become endemic in the Judiciary, resulting in prolonged cases for people who could not pay for their justice.

"The period taken by the court systems in dispensing justice for certain cases leaves much to be desired. It is a very long-taking process of up to five or six years in some instances before the cases are disposed of. We have proved that the judiciary is really involved in corruption," he said.

Opposition Liberal Progressive Party president, Sakwiba Sikota, said Zambia's anti-corruption fight would only begin to bear fruit once the Judiciary was cleansed because "the judiciary has been very docile, it is not as pro-active as the legislature in terms of promoting good governance especially in the way certain cases are decided upon.

"The current Parliament has been very balanced and independent of the pressure of the executive but I don't feel so about the judiciary," he said.

While acknowledging corruption could be rampant in the Zambian court system, Judicial Complaints Authority chairperson Judge Frederick Chomba, however, blamed the vice on what he termed "supportive staff" and not the judges or magistrates as alleged in the report.

In a recent appearance on ZNBC TV, Justice Chomba said, "We are also very much concerned with the reported high levels of corruption in the judiciary; we have many case records going missing in very suspicious circumstances throughout the country.

"This continuous missing of the records is putting the entire court system in disarray because if the accused person is charged with an offence and all the evidence is lost, it means there's no basis for convicting that person.

"The question of money exchanging hands can't be disputed but I am given to believe that some of our support staff do actually engage in bribery whereby they receive some monetary gain to facilitate some irregularity in the judicial machinery," he said.