The president of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, Friday assented to the Penal Code Amendment Bill Number 25 of 2022 which abolishes the Death Penalty and the Criminal Defamation of the President provisions in the Penal Code.
The two penalties have been in Zambian laws since the pre-independence era.
The president’s office confirmed the development in a statement seen by Pindula News.
Hichilema also posted on Twitter on Friday saying he kept the promise to abolish the laws that inhibit democracy. He said:
Today we assented to Penal Code (Amendment) Bill number 25 of 2022, abolishing the death penalty in #Zambia & the offence of Criminal Defamation of the President. Promised to amend laws that inhibit democracy, human rights, good governance & basic freedoms.
The death penalty was a mandatory sentence for people convicted of capital offences while Defamation of the President had seen many people sentenced to jail terms for insulting the President using various platforms.
There have been reports that more people have been arrested and jailed for defamation of the president in Hichilema’s first year than were under six years of Lungu.
In September this year, Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa, a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Zambia, said on average, a Zambian is jailed every month for insulting President Hichilema.
He said all these arrests and jailings of Hichilema’s critics were happening because the legal architecture that enabled the authoritarian tendencies of Lungu and previous leaders remained unchanged under Hichilema.
There are some who believe the death penalty is appropriate for some crimes. One commentator suggested that it wouldn’t be fair for “convicted murderers to serve out the rest of their life at the expense of taxpayers is human rights? What about the human rights of the victims and their families?”
Proponents of the abolishment of the death penalty argue that many people are wrongfully convicted and it sometimes takes years to prove one’s innocence and it would be unfair to be found innocent when one has been killed already.