One of Zambia’s legal giants, Rodger Masauso Alivas Chongwe, died on Tuesday this week aged 86. Born in Chipata on 2 October 1938, Chongwe attended primary school in the same district before he went to St Marks in Southern Province for his junior secondary school education. He then proceeded to Munali in Lusaka where he completed his secondary school education after which he secured a job as a court clerk in Kabwe. Afterwards, he was promoted and transferred to Lusaka as a native court assistant. Just before independence in February 1963, Chongwe was awarded a scholarship to study law in Australia where he met his future wife, Gwenda Fay Eaton (married in 1967), with whom he bore two children, a son named Njalikwa who is a ceramic artist and Wajipha, a daughter who specialises in hospitality or hotel management.

Chongwe returned to Zambia in January 1969 as a qualified lawyer and went on to have a very successful legal career over the next two decades. Initially, he worked as an assistant solicitor at Martin and Company, a legal firm where he rose to the position of Partner in late 1969. He left to establish with another lawyer named Mwisiya a firm named after the two lawyers, Mwisiya Chongwe and Company, in 1970, and remained there until 1977 when he set up his own firm, Rodger Chongwe and Company. Chongwe had a very successful private legal career under the one-party state and gained great recognition in the legal world.

In Zambia, he was elected president of the Law Association of Zambia, which regularly held the government to account on governance and human rights concerns. But he was also highly regarded internationally. For instance, his peers on the continent elected him president of the African Bar Association. Beyond Africa, Chongwe was later in 1990 elected president of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association. So he was a real giant in the legal profession. It was because of his outstanding achievements and standing in the legal world that President Kaunda conferred on him the rank of State Counsel (SC). This was at a time when lawyers did not have to apply to the President to have the status of SC conferred on them, the way it is done today. One’s exemplary works in the legal field spoke for them and presidents simply confirmed what everyone else knew, unlike the way the case is today when that honour has lost its meaning since presidents confer it on partisan or political considerations.

Chongwe’s career in the public service took off in earnest after the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) won the 1991 election. Chongwe was elected member of parliament for Mandevu in Lusaka. President Frederick Chiluba appointed him Minister of Legal Affairs at a time when he was still president of the African Bar Association. Chongwe was a good example of the many individuals in Chiluba’s first cabinet for whom joining politics or public service was truly a sacrifice. In recent years, those who have ended up in politics and as ministers are mainly individuals for whom that title is their main achievement and source of income. Not Chongwe’s generation. The individuals who filled up Chiluba’s first cabinet, to which Chongwe was a great example, were already successful in their fields before going into public service and had sufficient levels of formal education, leadership experience, distinguished track records, and proven competences or skills which they brought to the government.

In addition to Chongwe, there were others such as vice-president Levy Mwanawasa, Guy Scott (Minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries), Ronald Penza (Commerce, Trade and Industry), Emmanuel Kasonde (Finance), Ben Mwila (Defence), Akashambwatwa Mbikusita Lewanika (Science and Technology), Vernon Mwaanga (Foreign Affairs), Gen Christon Tembo (Tourism), Arthur Wina (Education), Humphrey Mulemba (Mines), Newstead Zimba (Home Affairs), Baldwin Nkumbula (Sports), Godfrey Miyanda (Minister Without Portfolio), Ludwig Sondashi (Labour and Social security, Andrew Kashita (Transport and Communications), Boniface Kawimbe (Health), and Stan Kristofer, a Yugoslav-born Zambian who was appointed Minister of Information.

Chongwe remained Minister of Legal Affairs until August 1993 when Chiluba transferred him to the Ministry of Local Government in the same capacity. He stayed in the role for about two years until 1995 when he resigned in protest against rampant corruption, undemocratic tendencies and human rights violations under the Chiluba regime. His resignation demonstrated his loyalty to principle as well as his refusal to be bound by the principle of collective responsibility on issues that he did not agree with. He was one of a number of senior Cabinet officials who resigned from cabinet on principle at different intervals during Chiluba’s presidency. Others included Mwanawasa, Sondashi, Akashambatwa Mbikusita Lewanika, Simon Zukas, Dipak Patel, and Baldwin Nkumbula.

After he left government, Chongwe formed an opposition party, Liberal Progressive Front on whose ticket he hoped to challenge Chiluba in the 1996 election. After former president Kaunda, who had retired from politics after his defeat in 1991, made a political comeback in 1995, Chiluba panicked, fearing potential defeat to his predecessor. As a result, the MMD administration passed a constitutional amendment that effectively barred Kaunda from standing in the 1996 election. In response and in protest against Chiluba’s manoeuvres, Kaunda and the former governing party, the United National Independence Party, boycotted the election. In solidarity with the excluded Kaunda, Chongwe joined other opposition parties in boycotting the poll. Pitted against smaller opposition parties, such as the Zambia Democratic Congress under Dean Mung’omba, National Party under Humphrey Mulemba, Agenda for Zambia under Akashambatwa Mbikusita-Lewanika and the Movement for the Democratic Process under Chama Chakomboka, Chiluba easily retained power.

After the election, Chongwe remained in opposition politics and became chairperson of a 13-party alliance of opposition parties that started working together more closely. On 23 August 1997, in a move that highlighted the government’s increasingly violent suppression of civil liberties, police opened fire on a mass rally called by Chongwe’s opposition alliance, nearly killing him and founding president, Kaunda. Chongwe needed emergency surgery after the same bullet that wounded Kaunda hit him. Chongwe successfully sued the Zambian government in Australian courts and also took the matter to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. He was awarded about US$2.5m in compensation but successive Zambian administrations refused to pay him. It is unclear if he was paid this money before his death.

Three months after the attempted assassination on Chongwe and Kaunda, the government arrested several opposition leaders such as Kaunda, Mung’omba, and Princess Nakatindi Wina on allegations that they were connected to the unsuccessful military coup attempt against Chiluba in October 1997. The MMD falsely claimed that Chongwe had held two clandestine physical meetings with Kaunda at Sikota Wina’s home in Lusaka in October to plan for the coup, but evidence showed that Chongwe had left the country a month earlier and had not yet returned when the coup occurred. The government’s desperation to implicate him in the coup forced Chongwe to remain in exile in Australia from 1997 until March 2003 when he returned to Zambia under Mwanawasa’s presidency. Over the next 22 years, he kept out of public life though he occasionally took up public engagements such as in 2012 when President Michael Sata appointed him to chair the commission of inquiry that was appointed to investigate the Mongu 2011 deadly riots that happened over the Barotseland Agreement. Chongwe also participated in public discussion forums organised by News Diggers ahead of the 2021 elections on Zambia’s democratic backsliding.

At a time when many Zambians are dying en masse at a relatively young age, Chongwe lived until 86, thanks to a disciplined and intentional lifestyle and choices. His public career teaches us several lessons such as the value of formal education, the importance of family and community, the need to always defend democracy, the constitution and to remain loyal to one’s principles, the benefit of leading a clean life when in government (he faced no legal challenges resulting from his time in power after leaving public office), and that, perhaps, politics is not for everyone. In a way, and for all that was good that he gave to politics, Chongwe was messed up by politics, for his professional career would have continued rising had he stayed away from it. Overall, Zambia is richer for his having been one of its citizens.

Chongwe’s life teaches us to go to school; to find a job that give us a sense of purpose and satisfaction, ideally one that also makes the world a better place to live in; to find a partner whom we love, and who loves us back; to have children if both partners wish, who will grow into decent men and women because their parents are decent; and to make time for good friends – true, genuine friends rather than dozens of superficial acquittances.

It also challenges us to ask ourselves two important questions: What do I need to do to be ultimately satisfied that I have lived a good life? How can I make the greatest differences in areas that matter most?