Question Time: Freedom of expression, 22 February 2018

The past week saw us the media absorbed by the political earthquake of unanticipated change in the President's office. Let's take a deserved break from those events and focus on something quite tied to democracy namely, freedom of expression. Freedom of expression in our region, actually in the entire SADC region. When the African National Congress were in exile they ran the Radio Freedom radio station from Lusaka Zambia so we may have a tendency to associate Zambia with freedom. That country in 1991 was to become the first one in Africa to peacefully replace a ruling party with an opposition. In fact, since then the Zambians have replaced another ruling party with an opposition through the ballot. Thereby leading a club of only three out of 54 nations in Africa who have peacefully replaced ruling parties twice since their independence. Despite that, Freedom of expression in Zambia is under critical scrutiny. I have with me today in the studio someone who is in hiding. In hiding, because he talks or let's say he sings too much. He is one of Zambia's most popular musicians Fumba Chama. He goes by the stage name Pilato-it's a Zambianising of that biblical name Pilate. Five weeks or so ago Pilato arrived in South Africa as a self-exiled musician. He claimed to have fled death threats because of a song he sang about a rat in a pot. Some supporters of Zambia's ruling party the Patriotic Front think in that song titled "Koswe mu Mpoto" Pilato is talking about their President Edgar Lungu. For those wanting to know, the song is about rats invading a home and stealing everything. Rights group Amnesty International has described the threats on Pilato's life as an attempt to silence dissenting views. Pilato accuses the Zambian government of muzzling freedom of expression.
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