By Thompson K Luzendi
A DANGEROUS LAW: WHY ZAMBIA’S REMOVAL OF BAIL FOR RAPE ACCUSATIONS IS A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.
Zambia’s Parliament has just passed a law that should worry every single Zambian not just those who have been accused of rape, but every person who values fairness, justice, and the simple idea that you are innocent until proven guilty.
The new Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Act has removed bail and bond for anyone accused of rape, defilement, and incest. On paper, it sounds tough and progressive. In reality, it is a law that could destroy the lives of innocent people while doing very little to actually stop sexual violence.
Here is the basic problem. Under this law, the moment someone accuses you of rape, you go to jail. Not because a court has found you guilty. Not because evidence has been presented. Simply because someone pointed a finger at you. You are then locked up, in a police cell or prison until your case is heard and concluded by a court of law. In Zambia, where the justice system moves slowly, that could be six months, a year, or even two years. All of that time, you are in custody. All of that time, you have not been convicted of anything.
Let that sink in.
Think about a man who runs a small business in Chelstone. He has a disagreement with a woman he was once in a relationship with. She is angry. She goes to the police and accuses him of rape. He is arrested. He cannot apply for bail. His shop sits closed. His workers go unpaid. His children ask their mother where daddy is. A year and a half later, the case comes to court. The woman cannot produce any medical evidence. Her story does not add up. The man is acquitted. He walks out of custody a free man but his business is gone, his savings are finished, his reputation in the community is in tatters, and his children have grown up visiting him through a prison window. He did nothing wrong. The law failed him completely.
This is not an impossible scenario. This is what this law makes possible.
Zambia’s own courts have long recognised that false rape accusations happen. This recognition is so serious that it led to the development of what is known as the cautionary rule, established in the case of Katebe v The People back in 1975. This rule says that a court cannot convict someone of rape based on the word of the complainant alone, without other supporting evidence. The courts put this rule in place because they knew, from experience, that people do make false accusations sometimes out of anger, sometimes out of revenge, sometimes to settle scores. Nothing has changed about human nature since 1975. People still have disputes. Relationships still break down badly. And now, anyone with a grudge has the power to have someone locked up for years simply by walking into a police station and making an accusation.
Think about what that means in your own life. You are a landlord who has a dispute with a tenant who refuses to vacate your property. You are a businessman whose partner wants to dissolve your company and take the assets. You are a man going through a bitter divorce and a custody battle. Any one of these people, if they are willing to lie, now has the ability to have you imprisoned indefinitely without a single piece of evidence being tested in court. That is not justice. That is a system that can be abused, and it will be abused.
The law also ignores a basic medical reality. Evidence of sexual assault, if it exists, can disappear within twenty-four to seventy-two hours. Many rape cases go to court without any medical evidence at all, and the truth only emerges during the trial itself. Under this law, the person accused is already locked up long before that truth comes out. They are sitting in Kamwala Remand or a police cell while their case is being investigated, while witnesses are being found, while evidence is being gathered. By the time the court says “not guilty,” that person may have already paid an enormous and irreversible price.
And what about when they win? What does Zambia offer the man who spent two years in custody for a crime he did not commit? There is no compensation. There is no apology from the state. There is just a gate that opens and a world outside that has moved on without him. His job is gone. His relationships may be broken. His name carries a stain that will follow him even after acquittal, because in most communities, people remember the accusation far longer than they remember the outcome.
It also has to be said that the inclusion of theft of street lights in the same non-bailable category as rape is deeply troubling. Stealing a street light is a property offence. The fact that it sits alongside rape and defilement in this amendment suggests that the people who drafted and passed this law were not thinking carefully about what they were doing. It raises a serious question about the depth of debate and analysis that happened in Parliament before this bill was voted into law. Did our legislators fully understand what they were passing? Did they think about the innocent person sitting in remand for a year? Did they think about the business that would close, the family that would suffer, the life that would be upended, all on the basis of an accusation?
The goal of protecting victims of sexual violence is right and it is important. Nobody is arguing that rape should be treated lightly. It is a horrific crime that deserves serious consequences. But locking up everyone who is accused, before any evidence is tested, before any court has made a finding, is not how you protect victims. It is how you create new victims, innocent people crushed by a system that has decided an accusation is the same as a conviction.
A better approach would be to keep judicial discretion intact. Let the courts look at each case individually. If there is a genuine risk that the accused will interfere with witnesses or harm the victim, deny bail. If there is evidence of flight risk, deny bail. But do not take that decision away from the courts entirely. Our judges and magistrates exist precisely to make these assessments. Removing their ability to do so does not make the justice system stronger. It makes it blunter and more dangerous.
Zambia deserves laws that are tough on crime and fair to the innocent at the same time. This law is tough but it is not fair. And a law that is not fair is not justice. Parliament needs to go back, think harder, and do better.