Malawi marked 60 years of self-rule in 2024, but relics of British colonial rule persist.
The push for independence has neglected the need to review a stack of colonial laws, which have since been discarded by the Britons who brought them forth.
One of the laws long side-stepped by lawmakers is the Prison Act of 1956.
Human rights defender Victor Chagunyuka Mhango states: “The 1956 law no longer meets the needs of our modern society, but focuses on punishing offenders, contrary to the prevailing practices of justice and rehabilitation.
“Reforming our prison system is essential for ensuring that it upholds human rights, provides better rehabilitation opportunities and improves overall conditions.”
The Centre for Human Rights Education, Advice and Assistance executive director is among the campaigners for the enactment of a democratised Correctional Services Bill that President Lazarus Chakwera promised to take to Parliament last year.
However, the law is still gathering dust on government’s shelves.
Meanwhile, even prisoners, who bear the brunt of overcrowding and draconian laws, see what the President, 193 lawmakers and multitudes in the Ministry of Justice cannot.
They want radical reforms in the repressive law proclaimed eight years before the country won independence after a gruelling battle against excesses of British minority rule. The current law was imported 68 years ago to silence any native deemed a threat to Britain’s detested imperial rule, including hundreds who survived martyrdom during the State of Emergency of March 3 1959.
But the sluggish review to align the law with human rights immortalises the colonial legacy and proclaim how the greatest beneficiaries of the liberation struggle are sleeping on the job.
They include well-paid members of Parliament and other law-making institutions.
Chakwera’s administration may need jolting, but the confined population cannot wait any longer.
During the Human Rights Day on December 10, Blantyre Prison inmates petitioned for the enactment of the proposed law which includes a parole system.
They see prisons being decongested if the law allows prisoners to serve the remainder of their sentences in their communities. The prisoners can be re-arrested if they contravene parole conditions.
The inmates’ spokesperson Ganizani Simika says the forsaken Bill promotes prisoners’ rights and well-being.
Malawi Prisons Services commissioner general Masauko Wiscot concurs.
During a meeting organised by Chreaa in May this year, the prison chief said: “Currently, the only way to decongest our prisons is through the presidential pardons.
“If the Bill is passed into law, we will greatly reduce congestion in our prisons”.
But the so-called game -changer has been disregarded for nearly two decades of broken promises.
If passed into law, it will modernise the prison system, permitting authorities to release deserving prisoners before the sentence expires.
The Bill also proposes community service for people convicted of minor offences. This will ease prisons’ congestion and maximise prisoners’ productivity.
Besides, the proposed law requires all correctional facilities not just central and maximum-security prisons—to have clinics that provide quality health care.
It also seeks to establish halfway houses, where prisoners will serve part of their sentences before being released into their communities.
The law review promotes the rehabilitation of inmates, not dehumanising punishment normalised by the 1956 law.
In February 2023, the President, in his State of the Nation Address, stated: “In the new fiscal year [2023/24], we are reviewing and bringing forward the Prisons Service Bill that would be tabled to create the parole system that will usher in a more fair system for releasing prisoners before they complete their sentences.”
If he still cares about human rights, his administration must walk the talk before his tenure ends next September.
In July this year, Ministry of Justice spokesperson Frank Namangale told The Nation: “It is on our priority list, hopefully to be considered in the next sitting of Parliament.”
Priorities are not shelved for 18 years.
“It has gathered dust for long,” says Mhango. “If passed into law, the proposed law will restore the dignity of prisoners, who face a plethora of human rights abuses.”
Mhango, together with Irish Rule of Law country programme manager Susie Kiely, argue that if Malawi does not mordenise the prison system to shift the focus from punishment to rehabilitation and tackling selective justice, “the prison population will keep growing and people, both within and outside of the prisons, will keep suffering”.
The Bill was drafted in 2006 with support from the Penal Reform International, but authorities abandoned the initial text in the late 2000s as unrealistic considering the country’s socio-economic realities.
A special law commission published a new Bill in 2018.
