Wed, 08 Mar 2017 09:47:52 +0000
By Expendito Chipasha Chipalo
| In the days gone by, the fight for human rights epitomized the legal profession in Zambia. We nicknamed the late President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa “Ichibumba” (the Wall); not The Great Wall of China or Donald Trump’s soon to be built Great Wall of America. Mwanawasa was the wall that stood between oppression and the people’s freedom. |
And there were many other lawyers who chose to pay the high price of principles by defending political prisoners and detainees at little or no cost. I recall the bravery of Peter Aniefield who tenaciously defended Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe and Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula.
I recall the morality of Mundia Sikatana who refused to defend rich multinational corporations when they tried to rob Zambians of their employment and constitutional rights. He was defense counsel when I sued my former employers over my personal to holder car.
We only had one hearing at which I presented my evidence and as soon as I finished, he notified the court that he intended to discontinue the matter and for sure after three weeks, we received a letter from BP Zambia offering me the car with a request that I ask my lawyers to present their bill which they did and the matter was closed.
When 235 of us sewed BP Zambia, Mr. Sikatana refused to defend the company out of principle because the scheme rules were clear and needed not intervention from the court before they could be implemented.
Today, ethics, morality and principles are strange values to our lawyers. Human rights have become secondary in the legal practice in Zambia. The lawyers who took over from Mr. Sikatana used all kinds of dirty tactics to delay the matter including attempts at forging the rules of the pension scheme.
I have been out of the country for some time and I was shocked when I learnt through the media that the Law Association of Zambia has decided to defend lawyer Nchima Nchito in the case of contempt and impersonation in which he is jointly charged with the owner of the Post Newspapers in Liquidation Mr. Fred Mmembe.
How deeper should the Law Association of Zambia be allowed to sink before the lawyers act to rescue their own profession?
For sure the core objective of creating the Law Association of Zambia was the protection of the profession from abuse by its practitioners. The LAZ was not created to protect individual lawyers from prosecution for wrong doing.
The LAZ does not offer any immunity to any of its members but is instead supposed to oblige its members to serve their clients transparently and to the highest level of the standards required by the profession.
The LAZ Act also demands the highest standards of civility or public conduct from the lawyers and the stance of the current executive to be seen to be condoning insolence, impunity and indignity among its ranks calls for a serious rethink over the regulation of the legal profession in Zambia.
There are a lot of other professional bodies in this country such as the Zambia Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Zambia Institute of Marketing, The Engineering Institution of Zambia, The Institute of Local Government Administrators in Zambia, the Medical Association and so on.
These associations have never rallied behind any of their members that face charges before our courts of law. Why should the LAZ behave like a sacred cow? Lawyers are not angels; they should face justice like every other Zambian does; if they are found guilty let them go to jail, if they are acquitted, let them walk the streets with their heads held high.
Zambia lawyers today have become the agents of human rights abuse and it is no wonder the current executive is acting as it wishes. All their members are entrapped in misconduct and none can raise a finger to complain.
We have the true story of one former Attorney General and Chairman, or is it President, of the Law Association of Zambia ignoring an instruction from the Supreme Court. They appealed against a High Court judgment and failed, for a period of two years to file their Heads of Argument and Record of Appeal. The period allowed by the Court is 60 days.
The Supreme Court wrote appealing to them to file the necessary documents, but they ignored the letter completely until the intervention of one former cabinet minister. The minister was appalled that the Court was pleading with lawyers instead of setting a date of hearing and proceeding with the matter. Impunity at that level!
In an equally appalling circumstance, a senior State Counsel went to court to represent a company in which he had interest. The rules of the court demand that a lawyer must declare interest if he is going to represent a company in which he has shares or sits on its board and our good State Counsel was the Board Chairman of an affiliated company of the client he came to represent.
In another immoral and unethical situation, a State Counsel took over a matter at assessment stage and presented a document which was full of lies in a bid to repudiate the judgments in the High Court and the Supreme Court of Zambia.
Many cases in our courts are stuck because the lawyers are using immoral tactics to delay judgments. Connivance between plaintiffs’ and defenders’ lawyers has become the order of the day.
In one instance which I personally witnessed, a lawyer shouted at his client for inquiring over progress on his matter. The lawyer felt irritated at any suggestions that pointed to expeditious completion of the matter.
The conduct of the Law Association of Zambia and the general attitude of our lawyers is no longer a matter of conjecture; there is solid evidence which justifies immediate government intervention.
Our lawmakers; our Parliament, must consider amending the LAZ Act so that the few good lawyers remaining in our country can opt out of the association. It is not right that we should allow such a corrupt, selfish and directionless body to be the sole issuing authority for legal practitioners’ Licenses.
The government must also speed up the judicial reforms so that Zambians can represent themselves because cases must be decided on facts on procedures that only serve to perpetuate corruption and human rights abuse.
Troubleshooter is urging the government to bring back all accused persons through extradition. They should be allowed to cause trouble with the moneys they store from our treasury and hived away in offshore accounts.
It is surprising that the men who wielded so much “power” can exhibit such cowardice. Come back and prove you fight for Zambians’ rights and not your own selfish interests.
Yours truly
ecchipalo@yahoo.co.uk /pentvision@gmail.com / ecchipalo@icloud.com
