PRESIDENTIAL GIFT

IT is interesting that neither the Law Association of Zambia nor indeed the many critics that have condemned the Eswatini land gift have commented on the land that Chief Mujimanzovu gifted Swazi king Mswati. The chief has clearly stated that he gifted the king 250 hectares of land for him to use in whichever way he chose. This position has not been controverted or indeed questioned or condemned by any party because the chief used his discretionary power to gift away the land. That is why the debate over the Eswatini land is an exercise in malevolence because it seeks to codify a practice that has no precedence in as far as the Zambian leadership is concerned. The truth is that there is no precedence to either events. In many respects the leakage of the land gift has achieved the intended controversy premised on perpetuating the perception of a graft ridden leadership. The fact that our statutes do not codify the nature of gifts that the president can receive has not deterred the detractors from drawing conclusions to the extent that one of our more respected lawyer and politician Elias Chipimo went on a complete tangent citing non-existent laws that the President had breached section 36 of the Anti-Corruption Commission Act. The law association of Zambia has done well to debunk Chipimo’s statement but has unfortunately not gone far enough to make a more categorical prescription of what should constitute a gift to the president. Sadly the LAZ case is founded on hostile media reports, a practice which the learned men of the cloth would ordinarily frown upon. The issue of gifts is not peculiar to Zambia alone. It has taxed many governments including the United States of America where specific laws have been passed to control the value of gifts that the President can receive. This has not always been the case and indeed many other people do not agree that there should be a limitation because gifts as an expression of friendship and solidarity are purely dependent on the giver who may share a particular affinity with a colleague to whom the gift is proffered. One author, Seth Barrett Tillman, a lecturer at the Maynooth University department of Law, in Ireland, has argued that constitutional restriction on foreign gifts do not apply to Presidents. He cited American antecedents where foreign gifts clauses were given an early construction by George Washington who as a sitting president received gifts from the French government which he accepted and never asked for or received congressional consent. He argues that the President as an elected official was not an officer under the United States therefore the foreign gift clause and its operative office under the United States language did not apply to the presidency. In our case the Supreme court has already ruled that the President is not a Public officer. Of course the USA has changed. Subsequent presidents who have always received gifts of varying value have kept some while others have been surrendered to the State and over the years a combination of the tradition and statutory enactments have more or less evolved into a policy where, “a tangible gift of more than minimal value accepted for reasons of protocol or courtesy may not be kept as a personal gift, however, but is considered accepted on behalf of and property of the United States, and in the case of such a gift for the President or the Presidents family is handled by the national archives and record administration. According to practice such gifts are stored in the national archives while they are in office and once the term has ended the collection moves to a presidential library. In some cases the President may not want to part with a particular item in which case they are given the opportunity to purchase it back at market value. These practices have taken long to develop and that is why we are a trifle disappointed with LAZ for not making an effort at assisting the government evolve policy in this regard. It has instead become reactive to a situation deliberately fomented by government critics. Time has come when LAZ must be in the forefront of seeking law reforms that will create benchmarks and standards of ethical and moral consideration.