Cyber Bill Assent "Sin Against Zambia" – Laura Miti

It is expected that Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Bill will soon be enacted into law, with President Lungu having 21 days after the Bill has been presented to him to assent to it. It will then be up to Minister of Home Affairs Stephen Kampyongo to operationalise the new law.  

Ahead of its assent the three church mother bodies have appealed to the conscience of President Lungu to not sign the bill into law. The Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ), the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (EFZ) and the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops (ZCCB) noted the concerns of Zambians including the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ), political parties and a number of CSOs regarding the bill. 

Alliance for Community Action (ACA) Executive Director Laura Miti has gone further and has warned that President Lungu will be committing a sin against Zambia if he does assent to the bill. 

“Most of President Lungu's failures have been sins of ommission. Actions he has refused to take thus harming Zambia,” Miti writes. 

“Like refusal to prevent and end PF cadre lawlessness and violence, sitting quietly as his government borrowed the economy into the ICU,” she continues. 

“Those are the kind of sins that can maybe be put to weakness, insecurity, incompetence, but not malice,” Miti explains. 

“Signing the Cyber Crimes Law will, however, be a sin of commission against Zambia. Like Bill 10 would have been. A deliberate, clear-minded act to fundamentally regress our democracy for no reason other than political self-interest. The kind of crushing acts of tyranny unapologetic dictators like Museveni and Albashir did against their countries. Not the kind of acts one wants on the judgement sheet to be passed on to posterity,” she concludes. 

Musician and social activist Fumba Chama, popularly known as PilAto, has also criticised the recently enacted Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Bill, calling the legislation “dangerous” and “wholly anti-democratic”.