On 17 July 2017, the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) issued a press statement on the legality and extent of the threatened state of emergency declared by President Edgar Lungu 12 days earlier and subsequently approved by Parliament for a period of 90 days. In the statement, LAZ made three important observations. One, the association...

Strengthening and deepening democracy involves more than the holding of regular elections disputed or otherwise. There is a long of list of other checklists and benchmarks which must be met continuously. Of more immediate importance, is the autonomy of the three arms of the state, namely the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, which must...

Speaking upon his return to Zambia from the AU conference in Addis, President Edgar Lungu asked the nation to bare with him as his government investigates the fire that gutted Lusaka City Market recently. “If it means taking measures which are unprecedented we will do just that, some people will have to lose their rights....

What do Zambia’s intellectuals (those trained in a particular discipline and attached to a university faculty) think about the pitiful state of our existence today, including what is happening in North-Western Province, where we, as a country, have allowed the re-creation of spatial apartheid in the new mining areas? Much like during the colonial era,...

On the occasion of Heroes and Unity Days Our country has come a long way to get to where we are today. Our founding fathers and mothers sacrificed so much for all of us to be what we are. Every generation has got its own heroes and this has been so since time immemorial. These...

The headline is no exaggeration: the war on cannabis currently being waged by the Drug Enforcement Commission and Zambian judges and magistrates is completely insane and deeply immoral. Consider the sad case of Shakapeter Mzumala, a 52-year-old security guard in Chipata. Mr Mzumala was caged by DEC in September 2016 for “trafficking in 2.5 grams...

On 13 June 2017, Speaker of the National Assembly Patrick Matibini suspended 48 opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) members of parliament for 30 days for missing President Edgar Lungu’s state of the nation address to the National Assembly on 17 March this year. The UPND MPs had boycotted the event on the grounds...

Imagine sitting in your living room watching TV and noticing someone outside looking in your window. How would you feel? What if that stranger is looking in the bedroom window at you and your lover? What if that stranger is a police officer, a judge, a pastor? What if they are getting ready to pounce...

Cultural conservatism is once again rearing its ugly head in Zambia, in strange and somewhat contradictory ways. First there was that bizarre bit of  news, which we later heard was fake, where Zambia Police spokeswoman Esther Katongo was accused of issued a statement that police will start arresting any members of the public found to...

Africa Freedom Day is an important day set aside by our founding fathers to mark the day when the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) -now known as the African Union - was founded on 25th May, 1963, in Adds Ababa, Ethiopia, to launch among many other objectives, the struggle against colonialism and apartheid on the...