Maravi

There was no other way for them

There was no other way for them
Written by Editor

The dropping of charges against Fr Frank Bwalya was inevitable. There is no way the state would have reasonably or meaningfully proceeded with such silly charges against Fr Bwalya.

The charges against Fr Bwalya of publishing articles intended to cause divisions between communities are ridiculous and cannot stand before any of our courts of law. And in fact, we don’t believe they were in the first place intended to stand.

We don’t think from the very beginning those who arrested and detained Fr Bwalya had any intention of going beyond this. The arrest and detention was not intended to lead to a prosecution but to torture, intimidate and humiliate Fr Bwalya.

And there is no way the Director of Public Prosecutions would have allowed these charges to be taken before court and be prosecuted in his name.

Of course, the Director of Public Prosecution has powers to drop any criminal charges against anyone before judgment is passed. And this power is not questionable but the reason he has given can be questioned. It doesn’t seem honest to say that the charges against Fr Bwalya have been dropped for security reasons. If this was the case, then all what one needs is to be popular before one commits a crime. We say this because if one is popular, people will rise to his defence if he is arrested, regardless of the gravity of the crime he has committed.

But we know that the Zambian people are not so irrational. Frederick Chiluba used to be very popular but when he was arrested for stealing public funds, there were no demonstrations or looting in his defence or support. The Zambian people are capable of distinguishing between a politician who has abused his office to loot the public treasury and an innocent Catholic priest who is exercising his freedom of expression in line with his faith to serve his congregation.

Clearly, there is no issue of national security that can be meaningfully invoked to justify the dropping of charges against Fr Bwalya.

The arrest and detention of Fr Bwalya was politically motivated by an insecure and unpopular political clique that is trying to secure itself in office by intimidation, threats and other tyrannical methods. And it is this that drove the people of Kitwe to defend Fr Bwalya against the injustices of this criminal regime that does not only rely on electoral fraud to win power but also on the use of force or rather abuse of the police and the entire judicial process to keep it.

But how else can such an unpopular and inept clique keep itself in office if not through intimidating the whole population and silencing everyone?


If the swiftness with which they moved on Fr Bwalya was extended to their management of the economy and other social problems, despite their crookedness, our country would stand a better chance in these very difficult economic times. But these characters seem to be at sea with what is going on in the economy. The kwacha has gone mad, jobs are being lost in the mines and other enterprises, the maize planting season is in disarray and they can’t even put the politics of the country and of their own political party in order. Everything about them and around them is going mad. Yet they had the audacity to start new problems on the Copperbelt which they had no capacity to peacefully manage. This is how dangerous, desperate people can be to themselves and to others.

As the things get more difficult for them, they will increasingly resort to abuse of the judicial process. And there is hardly a more powerful weapon which can be abused in the hands of such desperate characters in government than that of arresting, detaining and initiating or discontinuing prosecutions. They will abuse the judicial or prosecution process by harassing opponents – real or perceived – of their fragile regime through unjustifiable arrests, detentions and prosecutions.

The judiciary, at whatever level, may find itself confronting such abuses and may find itself subjected to enormous pressures to accept them. Often, if the process is legal but unfair, there is little that a magistrate or a judge can do.

We know that after Fr Bwalya was arrested, many statements were made by members of this government, its party and other desperate politicians from the opposition who have offered to be their servants or rather puppets. Some of them accused the media and some priests in this country of trying to foment genocide. Southern Province minister Daniel Munkombwe went as far as saying that some church leaders were being arrested because they were becoming political agents of genocide: “some people are being assisted by churches, which have become more political. This is why some church leaders are arrested. These church leaders have become agents of genocide.”

This clearly irresponsible statement was not disowned by this equally clearly irresponsible government. This is what Fr Bwalya was arrested and detained for. But surely, can this clearly false and malicious accusation stand in our courts of law? Can anyone really expect the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute such a case?

And it is hypocrisy of the highest order for some politicians who were sharing a campaign platform with Rupiah Banda to accuse Fr Bwalya of trying to cause divisions between communities. We say this because these hypocrites, these political mercenaries know what Rupiah said in Chipata when he asked the people of Eastern Province to chase away politicians who do not hail from that province when they come to campaign there and tell them to go back where they come from. This was extremely divisive. And if one was looking for utterances that could lead to genocide and arrest those behind them, Rupiah should have been arrested. Rupiah’s utterances were highly divisive, excessively tribalistic.

Rupiah was preaching a type of regionalism that our country had never before heard from a presidential candidate. But these hypocrites saw nothing wrong in this but are capable of seeing genocide in Fr Bwalya where it doesn’t even exist. Anyway, where there are benefits, even visible things become invisible; even what stinks is mistaken for the sweet smell of roses. But time will come when some of these stinking hypocrites will have to answer for their double standards, for their criminal behaviour and for their injustices against innocent people like Fr Bwalya. It’s cruel to arrest and detain an innocent man, and a priest for that matter, just to show where power lies or who is in control of the state apparatus.

The arrest and detention of Fr Bwalya was without merit, was out of malice. But what have they gained from it, politically or otherwise?

But we know that since these characters started their campaign for power, their main target was the media – the media that didn’t support them, that which opposed them. They intimidated community radio stations and they issued countless threats against The Post. And these are the same elements that got Fr Bwalya arrested. But no one should cheat themselves that what these characters are doing will bring any good to this country or even to themselves. This same intolerance they are exhibiting will tomorrow devour them. They will be consumed or destroyed by their own evil acts. In their attempt to intimidate, humiliate or even destroy the media that stands up to them, they will be destroying themselves. They think they are doing what only psychotics do. They are confusing illusion with reality.

But whatever happens, we urge Zambians to defend at all costs the rule of law. And the rule of law requires equality before the law, or equal protection of the law. This is fundamental to any just, fair and humane society. Whether political ally of those in power or opponent – all should be entitled to equal protection before the law. We know that the state cannot guarantee that life will treat everyone equally, and it has no responsibility to do so. But under no circumstances should those in power impose additional inequalities; they should be required to deal evenly and equally with all the citizens.

And we have learnt that in every society throughout history, those who administer the criminal justice system hold power with the potential for abuse and tyranny. In the name of national security, individuals have been arrested and detained, and have been tortured without legal justification. No fair, just and humane people can tolerate such abuses.

Every state must have the power to maintain order and punish criminal acts, but this should not be done in an arbitrary manner and should not be subjected to political manipulation by those in power.


What happened to Fr Bwalya should not be allowed to happen to any citizen of our country again. We don’t encourage violence but we are not so stupid not to realise that violence comes in many forms and that violence begets violence. We will not condemn the people of Kitwe for what they did although we highly regret and detest it. The ones we condemn for that violence are those who started it with the arrest of Fr Bwalya. The arrest and detention of Fr Bwalya was an act of violence against the people of Kitwe and their priest. Fr Bwalya is part of that community and has been at the service of the people of Kitwe. And Kitwe people have proved that they know how to defend or support those who serve them. They were capable of feeling on their own cheeks the injustices committed against Fr Bwalya. This is the only rational way to explain that solidarity that resulted in responding to the violence of those who arrested Fr Bwalya with violence.

Again, we urge the people of Zambia to avoid violence. But the surest way of avoiding violence is by making sure that acts that lead to violence, in the first place, are opposed and stopped. It is not fair to commit crimes against the people, to deceive them, to cheat them, to humiliate them and when they react to all these violent acts, the same perpetrators of this violence turn round to accuse them of violence. This is not acceptable. Let’s condemn violence in all its forms. The tribalism of Rupiah cannot be better than any other divisive utterances. Those who are responding to Rupiah’s tribalism cannot be accused of being divisive by the same people who have throughout kept quiet about Rupiah’s corrupt, tribal, regional and divisive politics. Anyway, in future the people will be able to discern more clearly who stood where on these issues.

Labels: FRANK BWALYA, FREEDOM OF SPEECH

posted by MrK @ 11:24 AM