Zambia’s ex-President Chiluba acquitted

The 'not guilty' verdict handed down by a Lusaka court yesterday, Monday, to ex-President Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, who had been accused on six counts of theft, corruption and general financial chicanery during his ten years in office, has been described as surprising. It isn't.

Anyone who has watched Zambia's ponderous legal system in action knows that there was never any real chance that the diminutive Chiluba - five feet in his stacked heels - would not get off.

Speaking figuratively, ex-President Fred knows where the bodies are buried. Speaking literally, Fred also knows where the bodies are buried. If he went to jail, he'd take far too many others with him.

I never witnessed the hundreds of pairs of designer shoes, suits, and watches, which Fred allegedly garnered during his years as President. But I did see the spoils that his wife of the time, Vera Chiluba, collected.

Chiluba (above, with current wife Regina) dumped Vera back in 2000, while he was still President. When she left Lusaka's State House it was said that she took three container-loads of personal effects with her. She moved the lot to her house in the northern city of Ndola.

In the squabble that accompanied the divorce, Vera claimed that Fred had left her penniless, To back up this assertion, she announced a house sale of all her worldly goods. The sale was slated for the Saturday. Viewing day was Friday. On Friday night she cancelled the sale, which was never a serious proposition in the first place, but not before I had seen what was on offer.

I counted hundreds of designer handbags, hundreds more pairs of shoes

There was a lot. I counted hundreds of designer handbags, hundreds more pairs of shoes. Objets d'art – the sort of stuff you see in shops off Bond Street and can't imagine anyone ever buying – littered the floors and crowded the shelves. And, stacked one on another in teetering piles were innumerable suitcases, bought by Fred and Vera to haul back to Zambia the fruits of their frequent visits to Harrods and elsewhere.

While still marvelling at this cornucopia of consumerism, I heard one of those glorious rumours that entertain those of us who tough it out in places like Zambia. It went like this:

When Vera complained to her ex-hubby that she was short of cash, Fred, in a rare fit of generosity, told her to collect a briefcase from a safe deposit in New York. In the case, he said, was 10m. Ten million Zambian Kwacha works out at well over £1,000, so Vera arranged for the briefcase to be picked up by a friend who was returning from the USA to Zambia.

The friend duly arrived, Vera opened the case with the combination Fred had given her, and found herself staring at ten million good old US dollars.

Vera knew that the banks would report the haul to the government, and that if she kept the cash in the house it would be stolen, and that if she handed it to friends it would be spent. So she was last seen rocketing around the countryside in her 4x4, visiting the only people she could trust - the various missionaries, nuns, priests and ministers in the area - and leaving a million dollars at a time in their safekeeping. ·