By Andrew Banda, Lusaka Zambia
As Zambia joins the rest of the world in celebrating the International Day of Democracy it is imperative that we talk about legislation that strengthens democracy and provides a framework for sustainable development which civil society organizations including the ACA have been advocating for. These are
- The Public Order Act
- Cyber Security and Crimes Act and
- An Access to Information law
Let’s dive right in!
The public order act is a law that is meant to facilitate not regulate our right to freedom of expression and assembly in the physical. This, as stated, is your right, and governments around the world including that of Zambia do not give you this right. As with other rights, you are born with them, they are part of you, and you cannot willingly or unwillingly give them. The government of Zambia as with other government around the world are merely supposed to (1) facilitate your enjoyment of this right or (2) create an enabling environment that allows you to exercise this right on your own. Zambia has lacked a public order act that is facilitatory in nature, that is, one which allows me and you to easily gather and express our views on the decisions that government has or has not taken. Instead, a colonial law has been used to silence divergent views from citizens, civil society, and political parties.
We cannot have a thriving democracy if citizens cannot have the right to assemble and express themselves about government actions or lack thereof, further Zambia cannot develop if citizens like you and me are afraid of expressing our views over corruption or mismanagement because of the consequences that we might face, it destabilizes our democracy and more importantly, our developmental gains start to appear in their negatives. It must be added that the UPND government has expressed interest in giving us a public order law that facilitates our rights rather than regulate, and consultations are in an advanced stage.
CSOs and other stakeholders however have been concerned about the slow pace and low importance placed upon this process considering of how critical it is to have for our democracy. Gains we have made in the economic agenda can easily be undone if those who might want to express themselves over a particular direction or against a foothold of mismanagement and corruption are silenced using a law colonial Britain used to silence our freedom fighters.
The second and equally important piece of legislation that is required to strengthen our democracy is a rights-based Cyber Security and Crimes law. Yes, we just wrote that, your eyes are not deceiving you, you might be confused about us writing this considering the then ruling party branded most CSOs who didn’t want the Cyber Security and Crimes bill from being enacted into law as supporting Cyber Bullying and related. That is far from the truth, most CSO did and have come to agree with the concept of having such a law in place.
In fact, the world over, various regions and governments have enacted such laws in view of the times we are in and its implications. At its basic level, a Cyber Security and Crimes law wants to protect citizens and ICT infrastructure against malicious attacks, harassment, bullying, scams, and related by putting in place institutions, personal etc. who can be able to repeal, investigate and sensitize citizens against such attacks and actions.
However, what we have currently is merely a shadow of such aspirations, instead of a law that protects the rights of citizens, this law has instead gotten itself the nickname of the Cyber Public Order Act because it brings the retrogressive nature of the current public order act to cyberspace. The act in its current form like the Public Order Act can and might be used to stifle citizen voices raised and scare the other half away from holding the government accountable for its actions. It makes whistleblowing a dangerous trade while giving cyber officers huge powers to essentially do as they please while penalizing you if you dare refuse to help them in their work. This law grossly violates your right to privacy, expression, and assembly because as the bush protest showed us, we can now gather online. This law is active now, and just like the defamation of the president law has been used against citizens this law may be used against you, and at any time, you just have to offend the right person. Like the Public Order Act, the government has committed and has started the process to amend this law but as with the public order act it has not been given a higher priority as it should, and just like the POA, this law can undo all developmental gains we have been making.
The final and equally important law is the freedom of information law, which unfortunately Zambia has never had. Efforts to have this very critical law have proved futile since its early start during the rebirth of multiparty democracy in Zambia. All presidents whether implicitly or explicitly in President Chiluba have made promises of finally bringing this law to life and facilitating the right to know that every Zambian has.
One of the most important pillars of this law is very simple, you have put people in power to manage the affairs of the country on your behalf, and because of this, you have the right to know how they are managing these affairs by having access to information wherever public money is spent. This right is very critical to any thriving democracy and a country such as ours which seeks to achieve vision 2030. One of the early signs that a country is heading down a dictatorial path is when a government increasingly becomes more secretive and grossly refuses citizens access to information that will enable them to be held accountable.
Corruption and mismanagement thrive where there is no free movement of information, freedom of information allow me and you to not only call out corruption and mismanagement, but it also allows us to protect our democracy. Freedom of information is empowerment, it gives you and me the confidence to easily walk up to a government institution and get information that will enable us to plan, engage or advocate on issues that we believe in. Freedom of Information is key to help the prudent resource utilization and anti-corruption drive by the new administration to succeed because oversight institutions such as the Office of the Auditor General and Anti-Corruption Commission are not everywhere to see the corruption and mismanagement that might take place. But you, me and every Zambian are everywhere, we are best placed to see something and say something. The UPND government has on this as well promised action, but this has been the slowest of them all to the detriment of our democracy and sustainable development.
On this very symbolic day, as we call to mind the numerous sacrifices individuals and institutions have contributed to ensuring that Zambia’s democracy does not fail, we call upon the UPND administration to protect their developmental gains and democracy by ensuring that these laws are high up in their agenda to raise the bar.
Let us not be the final say on these issues, be curious enough to read more about them.
About writer
Andrew Banda works for the ACA as the Information and Advocacy Officer, he enjoys development communication and creative advocacy.