Nkrumah Law and Policy Research Society

Our Head Research and operations, Ack Kabamba emerged as overal winner of the National essay writing competition of the Zambia Bureau of Standard (ZABS) annual essay writing competition.

we extend our profound congratulations to Mr Kabamba for flying our flag higher, his win is a deep reflection of how excellent and profound our team is when it comes to research and writing.

When the Law Cannot Name the Crime, The Mpulungu Maid Case and the Legal Blind Spot on Boy Child Sexual Abuse in Zambia.

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The Case That Exposed a Legislative Gap
In a ruling that has quietly sparked debate among Zambians in Zambia's Northern Province, a domestic worker from Mpulungu was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment after pleading guilty to forcing a 16-year-old boy to engage in s*xual in*******se with her. The case, which passed through the courts with relatively little public fanfare, raises a profound and uncomfortable question: does Zambia's law truly protect the boy child from s*xual abuse? and if so, why did the perpetrator receive a sentence so drastically lighter than the 15-year minimum that would have applied had the victim been a girl?

The answer lies buried deep in the architecture of Zambia's Penal Code and it is an answer that should trouble every legal mind, child rights advocate, and parent in this country.

Why the Maid Was Not Charged with Defilement?

To understand the 18-month sentence, one must first understand why the most serious available charge defilement was not applicable to this case.
Section 138 of the Penal Code, Chapter 87 of the Laws of Zambia, defines defilement as the unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl under the age of sixteen years. The word "girl" is not incidental. It is the operative legal term that defines the entire scope of the offence. Defilement, under this provision, is an inherently and exclusively gendered crime: it can only be committed against a female victim. A boy, however young, however vulnerable, however forcibly violated, does not fall within its protection.
This is not a matter of judicial interpretation or prosecutorial discretion. It is a matter of plain statutory language. The Mpulungu maid could not have been charged with defilement because the law, by its very letter, does not recognise a boy child as a possible victim of that offence. Had the victim in this case been a 16-year-old girl, the accused would have faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years imprisonment, with the sentence potentially extending to life.
The gulf between that outcome and the 18 months imposed in this case is not a reflection of the severity of the act it is a reflection of the gender of the victim. The act was the same. The harm was real. The law simply chose not to see it.

The Children's Code Act: A More Inclusive But Weaker Shield

The legal basis upon which the maid was charged and convicted is rooted in Zambia's Children's Code Act No. 12 of 2022, which came into force on 24 August 2022 following its assent by President Hakainde Hichilema.
Unlike the Penal Code, the Children's Code Act speaks in gender neutral terms. Section 19 of the Act is particularly instructive. It provides that:
"A person shall not subject a child to s*xual abuse, s*xual exploitation, use of a child in prostitution or induce or coerce a child to engage in a s*xual activity or expose a child to obscene or pornographic material."
Critically, "child" under this Act read together with the Constitution of Zambia means any person under the age of 18, without distinction of s*x or gender. The Act further reinforces this in Section 7, which explicitly prohibits discrimination against children "on the basis of race, colour, s*x, gender, age, language" or any other status. A boy child of 16 years is unambiguously a child under this framework, and forcing him to engage in s*xual in*******se constitutes s*xual abuse within the meaning of the Act.
It was therefore under the Children's Code Act that the Mpulungu maid was appropriately charged. Her guilty plea removed the burden of a contested trial, and the court duly convicted and sentenced her. In that narrow sense, justice was served. But the sentence that followed reveals the second, and perhaps deeper, failure of Zambia's legal framework.

The Limitations the Law Has Not Yet Overcome.

1. A Penal Code Frozen in Colonial Thinking
Section 138 of the Penal Code is a colonial inheritance. As legal scholars in the region have noted, the defilement provision traces its lineage to the Queensland Penal Code of 1899, adopted and spread across British colonial Africa through model codes drafted in the early twentieth century. It was designed quite deliberately to protect girls from adult men. Boys were simply not contemplated as possible victims of s*xual abuse by women. That conceptual failure, baked into law nearly a century ago, has never been corrected in Zambia.
The result is a Penal Code that, in 2025, still cannot name the s*xual abuse of a boy child as defilement. It cannot trigger its own severest penalties for this category of victim. It treats the forced s*xual violation of a 16-year-old boy as a matter falling outside the most serious provisions of the law on s*xual offences.

2. The Disparity in Sentencing: 18 Months Versus 15 Years
The contrast in applicable penalties between the Children's Code Act and the Penal Code's defilement provisions is staggering, and it is the single most visible failure in this case.
Under Section 138 of the Penal Code, a conviction for defilement carries a minimum mandatory sentence of 15 years imprisonment. Courts have, in aggravated circumstances, imposed sentences as high as 30 years with hard labour. The severity of this sentence reflects a legislative recognition that the s*xual abuse of a child is among the most grievous crimes a person can commit.
The Children's Code Act, by contrast, does not carry equivalent mandatory minimum sentences for s*xual abuse offences against children. The lesser sentences available under the Act while not insignificant fail to match the gravity that Zambian society and international human rights standards attach to the s*xual abuse of minors. An 18 month sentence for forcing a child into s*xual in*******se, regardless of the child's gender, is a sentence that the legal framework should not be capable of producing. Yet it did.

The disparity sends a message whether intended or not that the law values the bodily integrity and dignity of the girl child more than it values those of the boy child. This is constitutionally untenable under a framework that guarantees equality before the law, and it is morally indefensible under any standard of child rights.

3. Failure of Harmonisation Between the Penal Code and the Children's Code Act
The Children's Code Act of 2022 was rightly celebrated as a landmark piece of legislation. It consolidated previously fragmented child protection laws, domesticated international treaty obligations, and as World Vision Zambia's Advocacy Director Carol Mweemba noted at the time of its enactment addressed the fact that the Penal Code "did not sufficiently protect children over the age of 15 from s*xual abuse" in gender-neutral terms.

Yet the Act was enacted alongside the Penal Code, not in replacement of its s*xual offences provisions. The result is a two-track system: the Penal Code governs the most serious s*xual offences, with heavy penalties, but it does so in gendered terms that exclude boy victims. The Children's Code Act covers all children regardless of gender, but with penalties that do not match the gravity of the Penal Code's s*xual offence regime.
No mechanism exists to bridge these two frameworks no provision that elevates a Children's Code Act conviction to Penal Code sentencing levels when the facts are equivalent. A perpetrator who forces a boy child to have s*x will always be sentenced under the lighter regime, not because their crime is less serious, but because the law has assigned their victim to the wrong legislative track.
This is a failure of harmonisation that Parliament has yet to address. The Children's Code Act cannot substitute for a Penal Code that refuses to see boy children as victims deserving of its full protection.

4. The Absence of Gender-Neutral Defilement Provisions
Perhaps the most direct legislative remedy and the one most conspicuously absent is a simple, gender-neutral formulation of the defilement offence in the Penal Code. Many jurisdictions in the region and globally have moved in this direction. A reformed Section 138 that reads "any child under the age of sixteen" rather than "any girl under the age of sixteen" would, at a stroke, close the protection gap without requiring any further structural reform.

Zambia has not taken this step. Bills to reform the Penal Code's s*xual offences provisions have been discussed in legal and civil society circles, but no legislative amendment of Section 138 to include boy victims has been passed into law. In the meantime, cases like the Mpulungu maid prosecution will continue to proceed under a framework that under-values the harm suffered by boy children.

Justice Partial, Reform Overdue

The Mpulungu maid is rightly serving time in prison. She committed a serious wrong against a child, and the court that sentenced her was correct to do so. The Children's Code Act provided the legal basis for her conviction, and the guilty plea brought some measure of accountability. In that limited sense, the system functioned.
But function is not the same as adequacy. A society that sentences a woman to 18 months for forcing a boy child into s*x, while reserving 15 years to life for the same act committed against a girl child, has not achieved equality before the law. It has achieved a legal architecture that protects children differently depending on their gender and that is a failure both of principle and of practice.

The Zambian legislature must urgently attend to three things: amending Section 138 of the Penal Code to extend defilement protections to all children regardless of gender; introducing mandatory minimum sentences under the Children's Code Act for child s*xual abuse offences equivalent to those in the Penal Code; and enacting clear harmonisation provisions that ensure consistency between the two frameworks when prosecuting s*xual offences against children.

Until these reforms are made, the law will continue to whisper what it should shout: that the boy child's body matters, that his dignity is protected, and that those who violate him will face the full weight of legal conscience. As the Mpulungu case shows, we are not yet there.

Disclaimer, This article is an independent legal commentary based on the Penal Code Chapter 87 and the Children's Code Act No. 12 of 2022. It does not constitute legal advice, for legal advise seek the services of a qualified legal practitioner in Zambia.

- Kashweka Demian Bihinda
The author is a Law student, Activist and researcher of law, politics , Policy, democracy, human rights and political history in Zambia, he writes for Nkrumah Law and Policy Research Society, and from his room in Kabwe, Zambia.

National Legal Aid Clinic for Women
Legal Scholars' Guild of Zambia
Laura Miti
Chapter One Foundation
Unicef Zambia
UNICEF
World Vision Zambia
Restless Development
Save the Children Zambia
Peace Child International
Plan International
Plan International Zambia

Human Rights Analysis Zambia
Zambia Law Development Commission

SUPPLEMENTARY BUDGET — KEY TAKEAWAYS

FINANCE & NATIONAL PLANNING MINISTER Dr. SITUMBEKO MUSOKOTWANE, MP, has tabled a K26.3 billion Supplementary Budget to Parliament, citing unanticipated fiscal pressures since the December, 2025 Appropriation Act.

Trigger factors include:

o Higher maize procurement costs (food security intervention);
o Public sector wage adjustment (K700/month increase per employee); and,
o External shock from Middle East conflict, costing ~$200m in foregone fiscal space over 3 months.

ALLOCATION STRUCTURE — PRIORITY SIGNALS

Agriculture (K7.4bn; 28.3%)
o Replenishment for maize purchases and FISP arrears clearance; and,
o Signals continued food security prioritization + rural liquidity injection.

Loans & Investments (K7.5bn; 28.5%)
o K2.9bn: Wage bill adjustments;
o K2.1bn: Domestic arrears dismantling (contractors/suppliers);
o K390m ($15m): Initial Lobito Corridor financing tranche;
o K610m: Contingency buffer; and,
o Interpreted as dual-track fiscal strategy: consumption support + liquidity restoration.

Social Protection (K1.3bn; 5.0%)
o Expansion of Social Cash Transfer (SCT) and drought-linked Food Security Pack; and,
o Indicates counter-cyclical welfare expansion.

Electoral Commission (K1.1bn; 4.3%)
o Driven by constituency expansion (156 → 226) and polling station increase; and,
o Reflects constitutional cost pressures.

Mining Sector (K1.1bn; 4.2%)
o Regulatory strengthening + aerial geophysical survey; and,
o Signals resource-sector pipeline development strategy.

Debt Service (K811.9m; 3.1%)
o Linked to ongoing restructuring obligations; and,
o Zambia reports 94% debt treatment coverage; >60% bilateral agreements completed.

FINANCING MIX — FISCAL STRATEGY

External & grant inflows:
o K2.1bn (cooperating partners);
o $95m IMF ECF disbursement (timing shift); and,
o $15m AfDB (Lobito Corridor).

Domestic sources:
o K1.4bn additional revenues;
o K7.5bn new domestic borrowing (securities market); and,
o K10bn expenditure rationalization (reprioritization).

Carryovers:
o K2.4bn from 2025, requiring parliamentary regularization.

MACRO & MARKET INTERPRETATION

Fiscal stance: Expansionary in the short term, but partially offset by internal reallocation and grant financing; and,

Liquidity signal: Strong — arrears clearance + SCT expansion inject cash into households and firms.

Debt narrative:
o Continued orderly progression under the G20 Common Framework For Debt Treatment; and,
o Rising cash flow obligations as restructuring agreements are finalized (transition from negotiation → servicing phase).

Growth linkage:
o Agriculture + mining + infrastructure allocations align with “stability → growth” transition phase.

External risk:
o Middle East shock underscores vulnerability to global commodity and geopolitical disruptions.

BOTTOM LINE

Zambia’s Supplementary Budget reflects a managed fiscal recalibration rather than slippage, combining:

o Shock absorption (food, wages, geopolitics)
o Economic support (arrears, social transfers)
o Forward-looking investment (mining, corridor infrastructure)

The key test for markets remains whether additional domestic borrowing and recurrent spending pressures are contained within the broader fiscal consolidation and debt sustainability framework.

***

ADDITIONAL REFERENCE NOTES

What is a Supplementary Budget?

A Supplementary Budget in Zambia is an adjustment to the already approved National Budget made during the financial year to address changes in fiscal needs. It allows Government to increase expenditure, reallocate funds, or respond to emerging priorities after the original budget has been passed by the National Assembly of Zambia. This ensures that public spending remains flexible and responsive to evolving economic and social conditions.

What leads to a Supplementary Budget?

Supplementary Budgets are typically triggered by factors like revenue shortfalls, unplanned expenditures (e.g., drought response or emergency relief), policy shifts, cost overruns, or broader macroeconomic changes such as inflation and exchange rate depreciation.

Law governing Supplementary Budgets?

Article 203 (2) of the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act No. 2 of 2016 states that “The Minister responsible for finance shall, where the amount appropriated in an Appropriation Act for a financial year is insufficient to meet expenditure in that financial year, lay before the National Assembly for approval, in accordance with Article 202 (5), a supplementary estimate of expenditure.” This Article remains unchanged in the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act No. 13 of 2025.

Source : Ministry of Finance and National Planning

Nkrumah Law and Policy Research Society, presents a public lecture on the life and times of Dr Kenneth Kaunda and his legacy on 28th of April 2026, Kenneth Kaunda Day.

Time : 20:00hrs(8 PM) CAT- 21:00hrs(9 PM)

📍Google Meet

Link : meet.google.com/umj-ffpx-osc

"We are all invited to join in a discussion of the life and times of the great Zambian statesman, what we can learn from his life and his legacy."

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬: 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐌𝐮𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐚 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞

A few years ago, the case involving Nathan Mubanga captured national attention. In this case, a Rastafarian learner was denied entry into class because of his dreadlocks, which he maintained as part of his religious beliefs. In its judgment in a case brought to court by the learner’s father, Nathan, the Court held that his right to education had not been violated, reasoning that he still had the option of attending a private school.

In a new edition of the SAIPAR Case Review, Chanda Mwape critically revisits that decision and argues that the issue goes far beyond school discipline or dress codes. It raises deeper constitutional questions about whether public institutions can enforce rules in ways that effectively exclude certain groups from accessing fundamental rights.

The commentary examines how the judgment touches on freedom of religion, equality, non-discrimination, and the practical meaning of access to education, while also drawing lessons from comparable decisions in other African jurisdictions where courts have taken a more rights-based approach.

At its core, the article asks an important question: when rules conflict with dignity and constitutional protection, what should prevail?

Read the full review and others here: https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/scr/

(Image is AI generated for illustrative purposes only)

A 93-year-old former Belgian diplomat has been ordered on Tuesday to stand trial over the 1961 killing of Congolese independence icon Patrice Lumumba, in a decision hailed as a major step towards confronting the country's colonial past.

Etienne Davignon, a one-time European commissioner and the only person still alive among 10 Belgians accused by the Congolese leader's family of complicity in his murder, stands accused of participation in "war crimes".

If the trial goes ahead, Davignon would be the first Belgian official to face justice in the 65 years since Lumumba was executed and his body dissolved in acid.

A fiery critic of Belgium's colonial rule, Lumumba became his country's first prime minister after it gained independence from Belgium in 1960.

But he fell out with the former colonial power and with the United States and was ousted in a coup a few months after taking office.

He was executed on January 17, 1961, aged just 35, in the southern region of Katanga, with the support of Belgian mercenaries.

His body was never recovered.

One of Lumumba's teeth has been recovered as the only known remains of the most revered assassinated Congolese leader. It was seized from the daughter of a deceased Belgian police officer who had been involved in the disappearance of the body.

It was returned in a coffin to the authorities in , during an official ceremony in 2022 that aimed to turn a page on the grim chapter of its colonial past.

Aspiring female Zambian politicians were asked for s*xual favours, official says

Kennedy Gondwe
Lusaka

Women are under-represented in leadership positions in Zambia
A senior Zambian government official has said that some political parties were asking prospective female candidates for s*xual favours in exchange for selection ahead of August's general election.

"I am going to appeal to all female aspiring candidates to ensure that they record all these cases," Mainga Kabika, the civil service head of the gender division in the president's office, said on Monday.

She did not name the political parties involved.

Zambia has a big gender imbalance in national politics with around 15% of MPs being women. Their under-representation at leadership level reflects "deep-rooted cultural and structural barriers", a statement from the presidency said last year.

Kabika was addressing a conference of state prosecutors when she revealed that women had been in touch with her about what they were being asked to do.

"I can confirm to you right now that I am actually receiving a lot of messages; some of them are already on record… they are reporting that they are already being asked for s*xual favours in exchange for adoption [as candidates], and this is unacceptable," she said.

"This situation is very troubling as it discourages many women from participating in politics, particularly as candidates,'' Beauty Katebe, who chairs the board of the Non-Governmental Gender Organisations Coordinating Council, told the BBC.

She added that many women had experienced what she described as "s*xtortion" during the nomination process and encouraged those affected to report such cases. Katebe, however, acknowledged the challenges faced as a result of "cultural biases and the embarrassment that the victims normally face".

She called for the establishment of a fast-track court to handle allegations swiftly and said that laws must be stiffened to discourage s*xual harassment of women.

"If they were being exposed, they would definitely stop," she said of alleged perpetrators.

Katebe argued that patriarchal tendencies in political parties have impacted women's participation.

In its statement on gender disparities last year, the president's office acknowledged that while there had been some high-profile female appointments in politics, including Vice-President Mutale Nalumango, there was still a long way to go.

It said, for instance, that 28% of civil service directors were women and out of the 36 CEOs of state-owned enterprises just five were female.

The general election is due on 13 August. Zambians will be electing a president, MPs, councillors and council chairs.

-BBC World news