—•–‹…‡ ƒ Š—ƒ ”‹‰Š– ˆ‘” ƒŽŽ

(indvodza ayikhali).

No matter what pain he goes through, he is expected to brave it and not cry because that is perceived as a sign of

Sir,

In my previous life as a facilitator on legal and human rights, my experience has been that in a group of 100 participants in a community, it was a rare as a hen’s teeth for five people to confess to knowing the country’s Constitution, let alone any piece of legislation. I always found this disturbing for several reasons, chief of which is the legal principle; ignorantialegis non excusat (ignorance of the law is no excuse).

The importance of this universal principle is that it can never avail as a defence for anyone to claim they offended or breached the law simply because they were not aware of it. This legal principle clearly serves the purpose of not giving blanket impunity to people who have a brush with the law, especially the criminal code, as doing so would potentially give rise to abuse of the law with people hiding behind the cloak of ignorance and this would surely lead to chaos.

However, this principle is perfectly enforceable in a context where it can be reasonably assumed that the general population is able to participate either directly or through some proxy, in the process of law-making. After all, the law is assumed to be an expression of the society of how it desires to be regulated in different spheres.

This also presupposes that the ordinary

person, once the law has been promulgated, has reasonable access to it if they desire to acquaint themselves with its contents to be able to order their conduct accordingly and to conform to its dictates, know when it has been offended and what mechanisms to have recourse to for redress.

For some reason, government has never prioritised this and efforts to fill in the gap by civil society organisations are limited by external funding. This means even after laws are passed and enforced, most people, across the entire spectrum of society, never know them as they never get to be unpacked. Another huge barrier in this regard becomes language. Even for the reasonably well educated, our laws are not easy to comprehend.

Concerned citizen