Published on: Saturday, December 24, 2022

Zambian rights activists Saturday hailed as a "huge milestone" a decision to scrap two British colonial-era laws: the death penalty and making criticism of the country's leader a punishable offence (article available here).

“President Hakainde Hichilema has assented to the penal code of 2022 abolishing the imposition of the death penalty and the offence of criminal defamation of the president, which has been on the Zambian statute books since (the) pre-independence era,” presidential spokesman Anthony Bwalya said in a statement on Friday.

Zambia gained independence from British rule in 1964. The southern African nation is home to 18 million people.

In its latest report on the use of the death penalty, Amnesty International documented that executions in sub Saharan Africa more than doubled from 16 in 2020 to 33 in 2021.

With the abolition, Zambia becomes the 25th country in sub-Saharan Africa to abolish the death penalty for all crimes.