her
With a 2-million kwacha (R8 000) price on her head, two of her colleagues already in prison, and police searching her friends’ homes for a clue to her whereabouts, Lucy Sichone still managed this week to publish her regular column in the outspoken Zambian newspaper The Post.
Dr Robinson Nabulyato, speaker of the Zambian Parliament, ordered the arrest of Sichone along with The Post’s editor-in-chief Fred M’membe and managing editor Bright Mwape after the newspaper criticised parliamentarians’ opposition to a High Court ruling which outlawed certain sections of Zambia’s Public Order Act.
M’membe and Mwape reported to Parliament for arrest last week, but Sichone has avoided arrest for reasons which she set out in this column, written while in hiding:
Last week’s news was devoted to the surrender and committal to an indefinite term of imprisonment of Fred M’membe and Bright Mwape. The sentence was passed by Vice-President Godfrey Miyanda and Speaker of Parliament Robinson Nabulyato because Fred, Bright and myself did not acknowledge the infallibility of these two godheads.
I am still ”at large”, with a 2-million kwacha price tag on my head. I take issue with the description of being ”at large” and with the price tag on my option not to submit to Nabulyato’s unconstitutional decree.
Article 28 of the Constitution tells me that if any of my rights have been, are being or are likely to be contravened I should apply to the High Court for redress.
When Nabulyato issued his unlawful edict, application was made to the High Court that my right to personal liberty, protection of the law, and right to freedom of expression had been contravened. But the deputy chief justice doesn’t believe that a contravention of my rights should move the court. He set the date for May 7 and advised that in the meantime we go and serve a prison sentence which offends against the Constitution, natural justice and plain common sense.
I asked myself: if the institutions which are supposed to ensure my rights and freedoms are unwilling to discharge this duty — who is going to save me?
The answer points to an individual — me. If today, Nabulyato can sign a warrant not provided for under any law, depriving me of my personal liberty, and I succumb, tomorrow, Nabulyato will sign a warrant for my execution.
It is such actions that define the sanctity of the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and make it a sacred duty for me to defend them to the death.
My right to personal liberty won’t be taken away without the due process of the law. If I am found tomorrow it must be understood that I, an unarmed woman with a baby on her back, will have to be executed for resisting the unlawful deprivation of my personal liberty.
My life will be my contribution to the struggle against all forms of slavery, dictatorship and tyranny. This is why I object to the cheapening of the issues involved in the Nabulyato saga to 2-million kwacha. Freedom is priceless: that is why Fred and Bright surrendered to imprisonment. It sows the seeds for Zambia’s own collective dream of a government established on the principles of human rights.
Meanwhile I am not ”at large”: I am protecting my constitutional right to liberty, protection of the law, and freedom of expression until the matter comes before the courts.
(This is an edited version of the column, which appeared in The Post)