Journalists rally in support of Fred M’membe and Bright Mwape, jailed for criticising the Zambian government. Justin Pearce reports
Newspaper editors from South Africa and Namibia are to visit Zambian president Frederick Chiluba to demand the release of the two Zambian journalists who were arrested this week. The journalists face an indefinite prison term if a court application to secure their release is not successful.
South Africa’s Black Editors’ Forum, Conference of Editors and Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), the South African Chapter of the International Press Institute and the Media Institute of Southern Africa have asked for a meeting with Chiluba to protest against the arrests.
Fred M’membe, editor-in-chief of The Post, and managing editor Bright Mwape were arrested on Monday on the orders of Dr Robinson Nabulyato, the speaker of Chiluba’s Parliament, who also ordered they be detained “for an indefinite period” without trial. They are to appear in court on Tuesday after a habeas corpus writ, which limits the right of the state to detain prisoners without trial, was served on Wednesday this week.
Until then, they remain in custody. On Wednesday, Zambian Home Affairs Minister Chitalu Sampa published a statement in the state-owned Zambia Daily Mail saying the journalists were common criminals and would not be released.
The speaker is empowered to order a detention in terms of the Protection of Parliamentary Privileges Act, a law inherited from British colonial rule. Lawyer Sakibwa Sikota believes the law has not been invoked in Britain since the 18th century, and that it is at odds with civil liberties provisions in the present Zambian constitution. The law will be tested against the constitution at a supreme court hearing in May.
Last week, the speaker ordered the arrest and detention of M’membe, Mwape, and columnist Lucy Sichone, in connection with a column written by Sichone. Sichone did not report to Parliament for arrest with her colleagues on Monday, and her whereabouts are still unknown.
In the column, published on January 29, Sichone defends a supreme court ruling which served to strike down as unconstitutional certain sections of Zambia’s Public Order Act, which limited the right of citizens to hold public gatherings. Vice-president Godfrey Miyanda spoke out in Parliament against the court’s decision. Sichone’s column lambasts Miyanda for questioning the authority of the court, particularly since it was the only courageous judicial intervention which secured Miyanda a fair trial when he was detained.
The arrest of M’membe and Mwape is the culmination of an increasingly acrimonious relationship between The Post and the Chiluba government.
When Chiluba’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) was campaigning for the 1991 elections, The Post’s recently-founded predecessor The Weekly Post was one of the few newspapers which was with him in his denunciation of corruption and incompetence by the Kenneth Kaunda government.
If Chiluba ever thought The Post’s opposition to Kaunda would make the paper a natural supporter for his own government, he was wrong. The Post demonstrated its independence by refusing to let the new rulers get away with corruption or hypocrisy.
The result was what The Post’s staff see as a systematic campaign against the paper, which ranged from members of the MMD youth league storming The Post’s office and threatening journalists, to a catalogue of criminal charges against the paper’s employees. Sikota said he could not remember exactly how many charges were still outstanding against M’membe, in addition to the decree by the speaker, but there were at least eight. The most recent was a charge of criminal libel after the paper suggested that one of Chiluba’s aides was untrustworthy.
Mosautso Phiri, who is acting as editor in M’membe’s absence, said the harassment of the paper began in earnest in the middle of last year, when The Post suggested Chiluba had been born in Zaire, not Zambia. This followed attempts by the government to keep Kaunda out of future presidential elections on the grounds he had been born in Malawi.
The circumstances of M’membe and Mwape’s detention were also extraordinary. Normally, the commissioner of prisons decides where prisoners are to be held, but in this case the chief inspector of police intervened and ordered Mwape be imprisoned in Kabwe, more than 100km from Lusaka. Sikota believes the government is deliberately trying to keep M’membe and Mwape apart.
In its haste to secure an arrest, Zambian police last week arrested two Post photographers and a security guard — all male — claiming to have mistaken them for the wanted journalists, despite the fact that Sichone is a woman.
The government mouthpiece the Zambia Daily Mail also accused the German embassy in Lusaka of sheltering the journalists — an accusation denied by ambassador Peter Schmidt.
Also, while the speaker claims to have the powers to impose an “indefinite” sentence on the journalists, Phiri says the law under which they were arrested does not allow for more than a year’s jail sentence.
South Africa’s Department of Foreign Affairs has also expressed concern over the arrests, as have opposition parties in Zambia. A member of the Zambia Democratic Congress said: “Chiluba is a worse dictator than his predecessor, who, at his very worst, never did what his government has done this week”.