COMPROMISED BY POLITICS? A RESPONSE TO ‘THE JUDICIARY OF ZAMBIA’
.... continuation from yesterday
Iwas not surprised when my village folks informed me about this disturbing development because I had several months earlier been tipped by prominent civil rights campaigner Brebner Changala that several senior UPND figures had complained on a WhatsApp group about my criticism of Hichilema’s administration and called for a probe into my ethnic roots.
It is true that I am considered a traitor by those who think in narrow ethnic terms, including intellectual and professional elites from my region (lawyers, academics, economists, journalists, activists, etc.) who were critical of the governance pitfalls of former president Lungu but have maintained a deafening and incriminating silence on Hichilema’s transgressions. I worked with Tonga and Lozi colleagues at the height of the PF misgovernance. Their academic criticism of the regime was top notch. We were all doing it together and so happily because it was the right thing to do. I am now discovering that many of these were just staunch supporters of Hichilema who have now been accorded various privileges. Their mouths are now shut even to the very concerns they opposed under the PF. Under the UPND, it is harder to find a Tonga or Lozi who stands up to Hichilema’s leadership failures.
One or two may be disgruntled here and there, but many are fanatical supporters of the president, largely driven by ethnic-regional cleavages and loyalties. While those originating from my ethnicregion community had no issue with my criticism of Lungu’s rule, they now find fault in nearly any substantive criticism that I raise against Hichilema’s leadership. As well as weaponising intellectual and moral positions to advance personal and political considerations, members of this community treat me as a traitor whose criticism of Hichilema’s leadership actions risks undermining their cause for ethnic-regional supremacy.
I normally tend to ignore these ad hominem attacks, which is precisely what I did with those who responded to my 19 January article with personal attacks or insults. I have sympathy and special understanding for those among us whose capacity for reason never extends beyond formulating ad hominem attacks. I suppose they cannot help it, even if they tried. Tolerating such undesirables is part of the burden we must bear for being human.
About a week after the publication of my article, I came across a press statement from the judiciary, dated 24 January, in response to my article. It contained a list of cases involving PF members to be heard in Zambia’s several courts. At a glance, I welcomed the institution’s intervention in the belief that it was out to deliver clarity on how the allocation of cases is done.
Ordinarily, the judiciary does not react to statements made outwside the courtroom; it speaks though its judgements or judicial opinions. For them to depart from this precept, I told myself before reading the statement, they must have recognised the significance of both the immediate and wider issues I am raising through the questions I posed. A closer reading of the judiciary’s press release subsequently shows that providing clear answers to the questions I posed was the least of its objectives. The body was far more interested in politicking, as the below paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of its response, shows. The body starts its reaction to my article, titled ‘Judiciary emphasises impartiality and commitment to the rule of law’, by deleting the identity of the person whose questions had caused the entire institution to issue a rare press statement.
The Judiciary of Zambia:
“The Judiciary of Zambia wishes to dispel assertions circulated by some individuals and certain media houses that suggest the institution’s alignment with individuals, particular tribes, or political parties and particularly that “Judges are being cherrypicked to hear PF cases”.
Comment: We learn from this paragraph that the response is not coming from an individual office such as that of the Chief Justice or a respective High Court-judge in charge of the cases under discussion. It is coming from ‘[t]he Judiciary of Zambia’, which, according to Article 120 of Zambia’s constitution, consists of the Supreme Court, Constitutional Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, subordinate courts, small claims courts, local courts, and any other courts as prescribed by Parliament. The implication here is that all these courts sat, and this press release is a communique from that meeting. It is very sad and simultaneously frightening that the judiciary, the entire judiciary, is responding publicly to assertions by individuals and media houses who are unspecified. The judiciary deals with the law and specific facts from identified parties. It does not engage in rumour-mongering and has the responsibility to help the readers of their statement to know where their response is coming from. The decision to deliberately conceal my identity – even when anyone sane would know that the body were responding to what I said – appears to have been motivated by two considerations.
The first is to escape potential litigation since the judiciary knew that they were issuing a malicious statement over which they can easily be sued. The second is to create the false impression that the matter of case allocation had been raised by different people and institutions, and consequently warranted a general response. This way, the judiciary hopes to dissolve my identity into the generality of the population, including a lower layer of people who lack any basic understanding of how the judiciary works. The irrefutable fact is that I am the only person on earth who authored the article whose substantive contents the State institution found worth quoting. The Daily Nation, The Mast, and the Zambian Whistleblower, the only media outlets that carried my piece, simply republished it, and must be left alone. If the judiciary found what I said to be worth responding to, it should deal with me and have both the courage and decency to reference me as a human being. I have a name, a history, a clear identity.