INspire

Our IG is a disappointment

by Mazuba Mwiinga

I am really disappointed to the root of my heart at the blatant lies said by the Inspector General of Police Francis Kabonde (The Post January 20, 2010) that threatening violence is not an offence.

Kabonde has clearly failed the nation by trying to protect someone who has breached the law. He has thrown away his Police ethics of protecting the Constitution by supporting a person who has publicly committed a crime.

Kabonde should know much better than many of us about crime and criminality. He should be very much acquainted with the law he is seeing to it that it’s enforced. But in his effort to try to run away from his duty as a law enforcement officer, he stands head up trying to hood wink us into believing in lies.

Those who read law tell us what constitutes a crime. There is an element known as Actus Reus. A Latin word which means the physical element of committing a crime. This element can either be by action, or by a threat of action or an omission to act. And in this vain, Chris Chalwe’s actus reus is that of a threat of action. And there is an element they call Mens Rea, which is an intention to do a wrongful act. And Chris Chalwe publicly told us that he intended to gang-rape Ms. Nawaki. This is what the books of criminal law say.

But more specific, our own criminal statute, Chapter 87 of Laws of Zambia; that’s The Penal Code Act, Section 90(a) (Threatening violence) reads: “Any person who threatens another with any injury to his person or property with intent to cause alarm to that person, or to cause that person to do any act which he is not legally bound to do, or to omit to do any act which that person is legally entitled to do, as a means of avoiding the execution of such threat is guilty of a misdemeanour and is liable to imprisonment for five years”.

This is what our criminal law says. And for the Police Chief himself to refute that threatening violence is not an offence, leaves us wonder what kind of people we have in offices of our law enforcement system. Actually according to the second part of the above quote "......or to omit to do any act which that person is legally entitled to do, as a means of avoiding the execution of such threat is guilty of a misdemeanour......" clearly tells us that, Kabonde and his Police team who are legally entitled to take action against Chalwe, are already held liable to this matter by ommitting to take this action against Chalwe in order for them to prevent Chalwe's execution of such a threat on Ms. Nawaki.

This matter will go down in history of our country where a Police Chief stood refuting a criminal liability of someone for whatever reason, when our criminal statute clearly states in black and white for any one to see that threatening violence is not just an offence but a punishable crime too. What Kabonde has shown to us is so scaring because we are seeing selective justice in play; and such system is a dangerous machination to the future of our nation’s justice system.

Copyright: January 20, 2010 mazuba mwiinga