THE LAW DIDN’T FAIL THE INNOCENT. IT FINALLY STOOD WITH THE VICTIM.
*A response to the concerns raised about Zambia’s Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Act No. 4 of 2026*
My learned colleague Simon raises a fair question. But I believe he is asking it from the wrong end of the courtroom.
He worries about the man who might be falsely accused and held for a year before being acquitted. I understand that fear. It is real.
But let me ask you a different question.
What about the girl who reported her rapist, watched him walk out on bail, and then sat in terror every single night waiting to testify?
Because that story is not hypothetical. It has been happening in Zambia for years.
1️⃣The bail system was not neutral. It was failing one side.
Across Southern Africa, research consistently shows that a significant number of sexual violence victims withdraw their complaints, not because they lied, but because they were intimidated, threatened, or simply too afraid to continue after seeing their accused walk free.
In South Africa, a country whose criminal justice experience closely mirrors ours, studies by the Medical Research Council found that witness interference and victim withdrawal are among the leading causes of rape case attrition. The accused being at liberty was a direct factor.
Zambia is not different. Our courts know this. Our prosecutors know this. Any legal practitioner who has handled sexual offences cases knows this.
When we gave bail freely in rape cases, we were not being constitutionally noble. We were making it easier for perpetrators to silence their victims before trial.
2️⃣The presumption of innocence does not require freedom pending trial.
This is the most important legal point that tends to get lost in this debate.
Remand in custody is not punishment. It is a lawful measure used in criminal justice systems across the world, including in countries with some of the strongest human rights records. The United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa, Kenya — all maintain categories of offences where bail is either restricted or denied entirely, precisely because the nature of the crime and the risk it poses justify it.
Zambia is not inventing something radical. We are aligning with the lived reality of how serious sexual offences must be treated.
A man held on remand who is later acquitted has suffered an injustice, yes. That injustice must be addressed through compensation mechanisms, prison conditions reform, and faster case processing.
But a woman raped, then silenced, then watching her case collapse because of bail-enabled intimidation? There is no compensation for that. There is no acquittal that restores what she lost.
3️⃣On the “false accusation” argument — let us be precise.
False rape allegations exist. Nobody serious denies that. But the data, globally and regionally, shows they are a small fraction of reports — estimated between 2% and 10% in most studied jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, underreporting of genuine sexual violence remains one of the most stubborn problems in criminal justice. Victims stay silent because they do not trust the system to protect them.
A law that shifts the risk slightly toward the accused in exchange for a system that victims can actually trust is not injustice. It is a policy choice, and given the scale of the problem, it is a defensible one.
4️⃣The alternative measures proposed are not enough.
Bail conditions. No-contact orders. Protection measures. These sound reasonable in a legal textbook.
But in a country where many survivors live in the same compound, share the same water point, or depend economically on the accused, a no-contact order is a piece of paper. It does not stop a knock at the door at night. It does not stop the accused’s family from applying pressure. It does not stop a community from turning on a young woman who “got a man arrested.”
We have tried the discretion model. We have watched it fail survivors quietly, case by case, for decades.
5️⃣What we must now do is make the law work, not retreat from it.
The answer to slow courts is faster courts. The answer to remand conditions is prison reform. The answer to wrongful accusations is a rigorous trial process — which, I would remind everyone, the law still guarantees in full.
Amendment Act No. 4 of 2026 is not perfect. No legislation is. But it represents a serious country finally saying, loudly and clearly: The victim’s safety during trial is not negotiable.
That is not punishment without proof.
That is long overdue protection.
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Zambian Angle