Zambian government leaves human rights on death row
Jason Mwanza, a 28-year-old unemployed youth activist in Zambia, has been in police detention without charge for almost two weeks. His offence? Conducting a peaceful lone protest against acute unemployment, continued high-level corruption in government, the cost-of-living crisis, rolling power blackouts lasting a minimum of 21 consecutive hours a day, and the perceived failure of President Hakainde Hichilema to honour his campaign promises on these issues.
After completing secondary school in 2016, Mwanza, who grew up in an orphanage in Lusaka after his father died when he was nine months old, went on to study hospitality management and graduated in the expectation that he would find a job. In the 2021 election, he voted for Hichilema, at the time Zambia’s main opposition leader, who had promised to create employment opportunities for young people like him. Three years later, he remains unemployed and has had to withdraw from further studies because of financial constraints. Deprived of a formal job and with his ability to make ends meet curtailed by crippling load-shedding — officially, electricity is guaranteed to Zambians for only a maximum of three hours a day — Mwanza notified the police, as per the law, about his intention to hold a one-person peaceful protest against the status quo that threatens his life.
As if to convey an enlightening statement, he chose the Freedom Statue as the venue for his lone protest. The 3.6m artwork — designed by British sculptor James Butler and constructed after the achievement of independence from Britain in 1964 to represent Zambia’s triumph from the chains of more than 70 years of colonial subjugation — was the same place where Hichilema, then in opposition, had conducted a lone protest before the 2021 election to draw attention to the same issues that Mwanza now sought to bring to President Hichilema’s attention. Unlike Hichilema, who was not arrested for his lone protest or for stating that corruption, load-shedding, unemployment and high cost of living are a result of poor leadership, Mwanza was arrested on accusations of unlawful assembly and seditious practices.
Two other people — Thomas Zulu and a 30-year-old unemployed female graduate of the University of Zambia named Chanda Chikwanka — who later expressed support for Mwanza’s right to protest, in the belief that they live in a liberal democracy that provides for free expression — were also arrested. They too remain in police detention without formal charges and have been denied police bond.
These latest infringements on fundamental freedoms have been aided by a pliant judiciary that effectively operates as an extension of the executive and sees its role as that of pushing the president’s agenda. The latest infringements also come in the wake of recent damning reports from the United Nations Human Rights Council and Human Rights Watch on the worrying state of human rights in Zambia today. The reports show growing intolerance for political opposition and dissent, cases of arbitrary arrests and detention, and continued violations of the rights of expression, peaceful assembly and protest.
Embarrassed by the bad publicity generated by these reports, the Zambian government, instead of stopping its actions that feeds the bad publicity, tried to dismiss the UN report, claiming that it was misleading and false. Yet, when the government spokesperson was extolling its supposed commitment to protecting human rights, the police were arresting Mwanza, Zulu and Chikwanka for reminding Hichilema to fulfil his election campaign promises.
To its credit, the Hichilema administration has abolished the notorious law on defamation of the president, long used by successive incumbents to deter legitimate criticism through the threat of arrest and numerous convictions. But the administration has since employed other repressive laws that remain on the statutes to suppress human rights. A key example is the Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Act that inhibits the right to free speech. When he was campaigning to be elected, Hichilema condemned this “bad law” and vowed to repeal it, if elected: “Our first task once you elect us this August”, Hichilema wrote in August 2021, “will be to repeal this bad law.”
In power, his administration has used this same law he had previously denounced to arrest and imprison critics and political opponents on charges of hate speech, among others. The government has even announced plans to expand the restrictions of this law to curb what Hichilema recently called “the abuse of social media in the name of democracy”. As shown in greater detail elsewhere, the Hichilema administration has also regularly used the Penal Code Act, a colonial-era relic, which contains provisions that criminalise free speech, to arrest critics and political opponents on charges ranging from sedition and the use of insulting language to criminal libel.
The modus operandi of these arrests is generally the same: arrest the activists and opposition leaders, keep them in detention for a period longer than authorised by law, and either release them on police bond without ever taking them to court or drop the charges after a court appearance. Even members of the clergy have not been spared from this continuing onslaught on human rights. For instance, in January this year, police in the industrial Copperbelt arrested and detained Pastor Duncan Simuchimba, of Kings Church, for speaking out in defence of marketers.
Arrests and court cases have a demonstrative effect; it strongly discourages people from challenging the government. Activists and members of the opposition are made aware that at any time they could have their lives upended and spend weeks or even months in detention and protracted legal cases.
For a long time now, several civic institutions and prominent individuals have repeatedly raised alarm about the increasing restrictions on human rights in Zambia. For instance, in March this year, the highly-regarded retired archbishop of Lusaka, Telesphore Mpundu, petitioned the United States to impose targeted sanctions on state actors seen as primarily responsible for this sustained assault on political and civil rights.
Earlier, in November 2023, the influential Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a strongly-worded pastoral letter in which it reprimanded the government for exhibiting authoritarian tendencies and failure to guarantee fundamental freedoms. A month before, in October, a consortium of 12 civil society organisations expressed deep concern about the spiralling infringements on human rights.
Yet the government remains unrepentant. Under international human rights obligations, the Zambian state has three responsibilities: (a) to ensure that all people under its jurisdiction enjoy their rights; (b) promote human rights and investigate violations; and (c) punish violators of human rights. Hichilema is later this month scheduled to address the UN General Assembly at which he is expected to extol his human rights record. This realisation might explain why his administration is desperate to discredit the fairly accurate UN report, even as the repressive actions of the Zambia Police Service continue to paint a more realistic picture.
Sishuwa Sishuwa is a senior lecturer in history at Stellenbosch University. @ssishuwa.