Freedom of religion trumps culture

A new decision by the High Court of Zambia has taken a local chief to task for his ‘vicious onslaught’ on the religious and other rights of a group of villagers who refused to participate in a harvest ceremony. The case was brought by Jehovah’s Witnesses in the far southern part of Zambia, who told the court how the local chief ‘disbanded’ the village where they lived, then reconstituted it and would only allow them back if they agreed to participate in the Lwiindi harvest ceremony. Since they steadfastly refused to agree, this left them virtually stateless, without a ‘home village’ on which various crucial documentation depends. As legal writer Carmel Rickard explains in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site, the case heard by Judge Gertrude Chawatama focused on the behaviour of the chief, the clash between traditional culture and freedom of religion, the international law obligations of Zambia and that country’s Constitution.