All three top posts in Zambia’s judiciary held by women – Chief Justice Irene Mambilima

18 October 2019 · Carmel Rickard

As many African states struggle to increase the number of women on the bench and in leadership positions, one country in particular can boast of the substantial progress it has made in this area. Zambia’s Chief Justice Irene Mambilima spoke about the issue in a speech she delivered last week. She disclosed that all of the three top judicial posts are now held by women.

Read speech

Chief Justice Irene Mambilima of Zambia, invited to address the country’s women accountants, said that the theme of the symposium which focused on women in leadership roles, was one dear to her heart.

The judiciary as an institution in Zambia ‘fully embraces’ the policy of having as many women as possible in leadership positions. This was partly in response to the Southern African Development Community’s Declaration on Gender and Development, to which the government of Zambia is a party.

Initially the aim of the declaration was to ensure that the decision-making structures of member states included at least 30% women – a figure now revised to 50%.

Zambia’s own national gender policy and legislation also pushes all public and private bodies towards a 50% representation of women.

The CJ was particularly pleased by the advances made in the judiciary: She was the first female Chief Justice of Zambia, she said. But in addition, the President of the Constitutional Court and the Judge President of the Court of Appeal were also female. So is the chief administrator of the judiciary.

‘In terms of gender parity on the bench, out of 76 judges of the superior court, 40 are female, representing 52% and 36 are male. Of the 17 Registrars in the various court, eight are women, representing 47%.

There were a total of 218 magistrates, 79 – or more than 36% - of whom are female. And she was confident that these figures would improve across the judiciary, she said. There were four women on the Supreme Court; four of the seven judges on the Constitutional Court were female; the Court of Appeal had seven women out of 12 judges and of the 45 high court judges, 25 are female.

Women were also well represented in Zambia’s other public institutions. The Cabinet had nine women out of 21 members, among them the country’s first female Vice President. The 40% of women in national government leadership figures is up from 12% in 2011 and 25% in 2016.

But women still faced problems in taking their rightful place. These problems ‘include discrimination on the grounds of sex, lack of resources to pursue an education, gender stereotypes and cultural beliefs. Chief among these is the patriarchal culture fueled by cultural beliefs.’

‘Male dominance is often entrenched by cultural values and inculcated into children from a very early age. These beliefs make women believe that they can only play a subservient role in life.’

‘Over the years, it resulted in many girls giving up on school. The net result was that there were more educated men than women. This was the justification for affirmative action to enable more girls to attain higher education. In this respect, efforts to stop early marriages of girls are highly commendable: Education is the key. It can open many doors. It certainly opened the door for us.’

Carmel Rickard

About the author

Recent articles by Carmel Rickard

‘No justification for the unjustifiable’: Lesotho’s ombud slams grand-scale torture, assault in Maseru prison

22 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

Lesotho’s national ombud, Tlotliso Angelina Polaki, has issued a scathing report on massive-scale torture and assaults that took place in Maseru’s central correctional institution during December 2023, leaving about 95% of the inmates of the prison injured, one dead and one who is now wheelchair-bound and will never walk again.

Major court decision on image rights benefits Ugandan soccer players

21 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

Members of Uganda’s national soccer team from the period around 2007/8 have just been awarded a payout against MTN Uganda by the commercial court. The telecom giant had a year-long contract with Proline, the players’ originating development soccer club, allowing it to use the players’ images for advertising. But MTN had continued to use their images even after that contract expired on the basis that it had a sponsorship agreement with Fufa, soccer’s governing body in Uganda. The players then challenged MTN in court, through Proline, and have now won a significant damages award. But the judgment exposed some serious flaws in the way that Fufa has approached the question of using the image rights of its senior players, and the court commented that this is a ‘case study’ for why Fufa needs to sort out its contractual arrangements with senior players.

Executive interference in Ugandan court decisions continues – this time by the justice minister

21 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

Uganda’s minister of justice, Norbert Mao, has taken a leaf straight from the book of the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni. This week, the minister wrote to the principal judge of the Ugandan high court, asking that the judge directly intervene in a matter that has been brought to his attention by an MP on behalf of a constituent. Mao asked for the ‘immediate administrative intervention’ in the matter by the principal judge. Earlier this year, Museveni wrote a similar letter to the chief justice of Uganda, also requesting intervention in a matter, and the CJ later indicated that this was not the first time it had happened.

Is rape by family members treated too lightly by the law?

19 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

The high court has sent the case of a Malawian teenager, charged with raping his 89-year-old grandmother, back to the magistrate’s court for a possible re-trial because the court had wrongly prosecuted a case of rape instead of incest. If convicted in a re-trial, however, Malawi’s incest law could see the accused sentenced to a mere five years. Malawi’s penal code provides for a significant difference between the sentence to be imposed when a man rapes a close family member, and in a case where the two are not related. When they are unrelated, the code provides that a rape offender ‘shall be liable to be punished with death or with imprisonment for life’ (However, Malawi has had what amounts to a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty since 1992.) By contrast, ‘incest by males’, is categorised in the code as a ‘felony’, and anyone convicted ‘shall be liable for imprisonment for five years’. There is an exception: if it is proved ‘that the female person is under the age of 16, the offender shall be liable to imprisonment for life’.

Prominent SA advocates lose battle over conviction in Namibian courts for working without a permit, misleading immigration officials

6 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

Two prominent South African advocates have just lost their last hope of squashing their convictions in the Namibian courts. Johannesburg advocates, Mike Hellens SC and Dawie Joubert SC, had been found guilty on two counts, first, working as legal practitioners without an employment permit, and second, giving false or misleading information to immigration officers when they entered the country in 2019. Though they had gone to Namibia to appear in court in a bail application, they told the immigration officials they were there for a ‘visit’ and for a ‘meeting’. Both appealed against their conviction but they had also asked for a judicial review of the decision. In the high court they lost their appeal but won on the review. The outcome in both matters were taken to the apex supreme court for a final word. In December 2023, they lost their appeal at the supreme court. What would that same court say when the state appealed against the review finding? The supreme court has now given its answer: it found the review, that had favoured Hellens and Joubert, was wrongly decided, and set it aside, awarding costs against the two advocates in both the high court and the supreme court.