ARCHBISHOP Telesphore Mphundu has appealed to leaders in the country to use this Easter period and reflect on the many social injustices that citizens are facing due to oppressive laws that have been imposed.

In his Easter message to the Zambians, Bishop Mphundu urged citizens to be hopeful that better days were coming even though the COVID-19 pandemic was still around.

“We go through all kinds of problems and difficulties, it’s like now during this time of COVID-19, a whole year, we have lost so many people, people have relatives and friends but we have that Christian hope that that life is the final winner, in Jesus, the final winner, death has been conquered by Jesus. So let us think about it. Even this COVID-19 is going to pass and we will be back to the normal life, as normal as it can be. But especially good times are coming and we should have good feelings for one another, we have gone through a lot of suffering,” he stated.

“And those that are elected to power, let them learn from the histories of the past, including this particular situation where you have someone who was condemned to death falsely and executed by the state instead of reproving this man, so many areas of injustice which are judicial injustices. Such is a time for those who lead us, whom we elect to lead us to reflect on some of the laws that are unjust, laws that are oppressive, instead affirming people, they opposed people. So these are some of the reflections that I have been going through myself,” he said.

He added that laws such as capital punishment should be done away with so that people don’t have to die like Jesus did.

“Now, when you look at the situation in our own country, just Africa and the whole world at large. When we look at capital punishment, capital punishment, people who are condemned try to escape, some of them not all, some of them are falsely condemned but the principle is life belongs to God, two wrongs don’t make one right. If someone has, for example, killed and done terrible things, you don’t need to kill that person, two wrongs don’t make a right, why don’t you have a long sentence at the end if which this person repents and so on and so forth. Life belongs to God but also what we are talking about this time is now Jesus coming out from grave even though it was sealed because life is very important and life is going to win,” said Bishop Mpundu.

“We are talking about times which are very difficult when we look at Good Friday for example, we are looking at someone, Jesus, who was condemned to death, he was falsely accused and witnesses rose, they were all liars against him and finally he was condemned to death by a high official who was just afraid to lose his position. ‘I don’t find any fault in this person, so there is nothing’. And he was a high court judge and a military commander, the man called Pontius Pilate. But they said ‘you have to crucify him’.”