By COLLINS MAMBWE
The ruling by a South African court in which they have directed that the liquidation process be halted needs sober reflection.
In my previous articles I saw a long legal battle coming over this process.
Our government must try by all means to avoid taking steps that may result in us Compensating Vedanta after all the anguish they have made us go through.
While it’s true that foreign judgments are supposed to be registered in our country before they are enforced we must not shy away from what the contract stated in case of disputes.
If arbitration was stated clearly and that it should be held in South Africa then the best we can do for now is to appeal the case since we accepted to be part of the hearing process.
By taking part we legitimized the process so in the meantime an appeal is needed as it will mean the status quo remains.
However if we as a country feel strongly that disregarding South African court process is something we are ready for then we can go ahead with liquidation process.
We need however to weigh the pros and cons of our decision and ensure posterity does not judge us harshly.
From the word go it was not going to be easy to wage a war against a multinational company knowing their craftiness in coming up with contracts that favours them.
However our government needs to be supported in this process. The cardinal point is that we need to follow the legal process to the latter to avoid compensating the aggressor as well as avoiding creating a wrong picture in the eyes of prospective investors.
In the meantime every patriotic Zambian must not celebrate the court’s decision because we must all be resolved to kick out Vedanta because it has caused more harm than good especially that they claimed to have recouped profits in record time after buying KCM for a song.
We also need to learn serious lessons from this process and ensure in future we sign favorable contracts because this agreement has shown a lot of flaws in our judicial system and the law stalwarts.
