Wynter Kabimba SC Write to Hon. JJ Mwiimbu Minister of Home Affairs and Internal Security
On the morning of Tuesday, 07th October, 2025, I went to Chimbokaila prison to take instructions from my client,Callistus Kaoma, who was convicted by the Lusaka magistrate's court on Monday, 06th October, 2025. I arrived in front of the main front gate and announced my presence by clicking the metal ring for the attention of the guard on duty. When he opened the pigeon-hole, I politely introduced myself to him and informed about my visit. He told me to wait and slid the metal cover back in its place. After 10 minutes, I went back and repeated the ritual. He opened and peeped through the pigeonhole and told me again to wait. This went on for at least 30 minutes as I stood under the morning blazing sun.
When he finally spoke to me the third time after another attempt, he asked me for a letter of introduction from my employer, W M Kabimba and Company. I was stunned and I protested. A young female prison officer in uniform who introduced herself as legal counsel intervened. She informed me that the rules had changed and now lawyers needed to produce letters of introduction from their law firms. I asked why these new rules had not been communicated to LAZ to inform all its members, but I got no satisfactory answer.
I told her that I was leaving to go and bring an introductory letter which I would myself prepare and sign at the same time. Finally, a senior officer emerged from inside, only to come and confirm the same but told me I would be allowed as an exception for that day only. For the sake of my client, I yielded and went in. Inside the prison, there is no provision or space which allows for a lawyer-client privilege, a common principle of law. I brought this to the attention of the senior officer who insisted that the bench available, even with other people present was sufficient for the meeting with my client.
What I heard was astonishing to me. Now here is my point Hon. Minister. In the post 2015 elections, your (UPND) Lusaka Provincial Chairman, Obvious Mwaliteta, was arrested and put in the same Chimbokaila prison for more than a year on a tramped-up charge of aggravated robbery, only for the state to enter a nolle prosequi. later I went to the prison to pay him a visit, as a relative and someone I had worked with when he was deputy minister under president Micheal Sata. On two occasions I was not allowed to see him because, according to the prison officers, they were under strict instructions from the authorities not to allow any visitors for Mwaliteta.
I was more than convinced until Tuesday instant, that things had changed for the better under UPND, but I was deeply disappointed to realise that I was actually wrong. That, what you condemned as UPND while in the opposition as a vice and an injustice to both the inmate/prisoner and his/her visitors was today something right. That, while it has now become a general policy by the Economic and Financial Crimes Courts not to admit to bail those convicted, they must also together with their families and advocates suffer such injustice based on arbitrary rules of might is right. Surely, we cannot continue to govern ourselves in this manner. I do not think that what I endured on Tuesday was an isolated case, it may be the general rule which calls for your attention as minister.