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The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has urged political parties in the country to reject the politics of illicit, unverified funding and the engineering of electoral violence.
ACC Director General Daphne Chabu said politicians should remember that public resources whether state vehicles, public funds, or institutional leverage belonged to the taxpayers of Zambia, not to a campaign machinery.
Speaking at the inaugural Anti-Corruption Symposium on Elections held at Mulungushi International Conference Centre on Thursday, Chabu warned that the rule of law does not take a holiday during campaign seasons
She said the Commission was actively scaling up its preventative and investigative footprints across the country ahead of the August elections.
“We are intensifying our surveillance, deploying localized reporting desks, and leveraging our anonymous online whistleblower platforms to ensure that any citizen, anywhere in Zambia, can report electoral corruption securely and without fear of retaliation,” Chabu stated.
She added that the objective of the Commission was simple as it was to make the 2026 General Elections the cleanest, most transparent election in the modern history.
Chabu said the trade of cash, food items, or materials for votes insults the dignity of the Zambian citizens and that the Commission was deploying specialized monitoring units across the country to detect and disrupt vote-buying networks.
“In collaboration with the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) and law enforcement agencies, we will rigorously enforce the provisions of the Electoral Process Act and the Anti-Corruption Act,” she said.
Chabu warned that the Anti-Corruption Commission would enforce the law with total, blind impartiality and there were no safe havens or exemptions based on political affiliation.
She said while the ACC and ECZ stood on the front lines, law enforcement alone could not secure electoral integrity, adding we need an all-society approach.
“Our collaboration must be airtight. The ACC, the Zambia Police Service, the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), and the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) must form an unyielding wall against electoral malpractices,” Chabu stated.
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Chabu noted that corruption and malpractices threatened electoral integrity and that by uniting the efforts to prevent the issues, the country could foster a sense of shared purpose among all stakeholders, essential for credible, peaceful, and inclusive elections.
“Elections are the cornerstone of a democratic society. They represent the sacred moment where power is derived from the consent of the governed. However, when corruption infiltrates this process, the democratic contract is violated,” she said.
She argued that when citizens believed that an election had been bought or manipulated, trust in governance collapses and this disillusionment was the primary fuel for political violence and public unrest.
“Exorbitant, illicit election spending creates an uneven playing field. It systematically shuts out women, youth, and persons living with disabilities who may possess incredible leadership capacity but lack access to illicit financial networks,” Chabu said.
Chabu concluded by warning that if the country did not decisively combat corruption and malpractices now, it risked undermining the historic democratic progress it had built over the years.
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