Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC): From Harare to Dar es Salaam to Mbabane to Lusaka, governments have learned they no longer need a guilty verdict to silence critics. They need a cell, a charge sheet, and a calendar they control. When the cell will not do, there is the bullet and, for those who survive, the border. At the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), we see this pattern every other week. The question is whether the region’s institutions are strong enough to stop this crisis.
On Africa Day, while the political class delivered its annual sermons on liberation and sovereignty, former minister Walter Mzembi walked back through the gates of Harare Remand Prison. Not as a prisoner this time, he had been acquitted a fortnight earlier after more than ten months in detention on charges that ultimately collapsed into nothing, but as a visitor. He had come to see Godfrey Karembera, the activist Zimbabwe knows as Madzibaba VeShanduko, whom he called one of his ‘sons’ from his own months inside.
This tender image should make every citizen in this region furious, because Mzembi’s visit does not convey compassion; it tells the story of a practice that has become regional. Across Southern and East Africa, states have perfected a punishment that requires no conviction at all: the sentence you serve before anyone proves you did anything wrong. The verdict, when it comes, is almost beside the point, as the cage is the penalty.
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