Zambia’s Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the deportation of a British writer who described President Levy Mwanawasa as a ”fool”, saying the punishment sought was ”disproportionate” to the offence.
The full Bench of the court said Roy Clarke should be allowed to stay in Zambia, but warned the writer to desist from writing offensive articles as a foreigner.
”The punishment was disproportionate,” said Judge Peter Chitengi on behalf of his five other colleagues, who included the country’s chief justice.
Clarke was issued with a deportation order in 2004 after he wrote a satirical article in the privately owned daily Post in which he referred to Mwanawasa as ”Muwelewele”, a word for a fool in local dialect.
The deportation order was blocked in the High Court, as it was said to contravene freedom of expression as enshrined in the Zambian Constitution. This, however, did not deter the government from appealing to the Supreme Court.
In the Post article, Clarke invents a fictional state called Mfuwe, in which the ”Great Elephant Muwelewele”, apparently a thinly disguised caricature of Mwanawasa, delivers a Christmas message to the ”distinguished elephants, honourable hippos, mischievous monkeys, parasitic politicians, bureaucratic buffaloes and other anonymous animals”.
He goes on to tell the assembled animals that ”it was only you, my friends from the game park, who went out there and brought in 29% of the vote. The snakes of the Shushushu slithered into the ballot boxes and stuffed them with votes. The horrible hyenas were our trusted party cadres who chased away the opposition voters. Our reliable rhinos moved the polling stations to unknown places in the forest. And our merry monkeys played hide-and-seek with the voter’s cards!”
The government was not amused and issued Clarke, a British citizen, with a deportation order in 2004 for being a ”danger to society”.
His daughter, Yaliwe Clarke, said: ”We won the case. Democracy has triumphed in Zambia. It’s worrying that the government took it this far. It’s a waste of time and money but it shows that democracy exists and that it prevails.”
”There is a bit of political intimidation, even now when the High Court ruled that my father will not be deported,” said Clarke.
Sara Longwe, his wife, explained that she and Clarke had gone into hiding in 2004 when the deportation order was given, as the minister of home affairs in Zambia was going ahead with the deportation without waiting for the High Court injunction. ”We were in hiding for eight days,” she said.
Clarke is an active commentator in Zambian politics. He first came to Zambia in 1963 and worked on the copper mines. Disgusted at the attitudes of fellow white miners, he became an English teacher.
He has worked as a magazine editor, a curriculum officer and a lecturer at the University of Zambia, and currently is a gender and development consultant in partnership with his wife.
”He’s a typical British father, always telling us stories with lots of humour. Very bubbly, and [he] always analysed the government even before he started writing,” said Yaliwe.