In our communities in Zambia, there’s this hostility.
Mentally ill people are stigmatized.
The attitude to mental illness is really very negative.
They are being forced on drugs, being deserted, being denied, and being rejected by society.
People I’ve worked with have spent many years trying to disguise their disability
for fear of ridicule, to want to appear the same as everybody else, and not to draw attention.
In Zambia, those with mental health or psychosocial intellectual disabilities are pushed in prisons.
They are in custody over matters that they, in the first place, shouldn’t even be in there for.
I used to ask them, “Well, what brought you here?”
“My mother brought me here, and they don’t want me back.”
Family members are very keen to bring that person from their community, from their homes,
so that the burden moves from them to the government.
Community support services are in short supply, which means that people don’t get the help
with the daily living that they might need.
They state things: “Why not prison?”
“Throw these people in.
Let them be locked up.”
Anybody who’s negotiating the criminal justice system is going to find themselves up against
an overburdened system for long periods of detention, due process violations,
rights violations—all of those difficulties that people experience are moreso for people with
psychosocial and intellectual disabilities.
They are supposed to be brought before a court within 48 hours, but you look at this person,
he’s been a pretrial detainee for five years, seven years.
He’s not taken to court. He’s just sitting there.
Because he’s a person with a disability.
No one wants to represent them.
They’ll take those people to be assisted by psychiatrists, at the Chainama hospital, the psychiatric hospital.
They might find it difficult to understand what’s happening to them.
To understand the implications of their behavior.
When they are confirmed that, yeah, they can’t decide or represent themselves, then they
are taken to a place called “His Excellency’s Pleasure.”
You find cells which are meant for maybe 20, 15 people, actually housing more than 90 inmates.
You can imagine the mental agony that inmates go through.
The issues of legal capacity should come out very strongly.
It’s not all the time when they’re in that condition. There are times when they can make a decision.
Open Society Foundations has funded PRISSCA [Prison Care and Counselling Association] to go into contract
with three senior law firms in Zambia.
And when we are identifying these people, they are represented free of charge.
There’s now a really powerful effort here in Zambia.
We are pushing for the mental disorders act.
To bring positive laws that will support the rights of prisoners with psychosocial and intellectual disability.
We need to remove the outdated and archaic offenses that are contributing to this congestion and stigma.
Bringing people around the table and actually engaging in these issues
because it’s multiple layers of discrimination.
The government is joining hands with us to make sure that the law is changed.
Every human being has got the rights to have a lawyer,
and they’ve got the right to contribute to that nation.
This work has culminated in the possible development of other models which we can also use
throughout the southern African region.
It’s only the coming together of different elements of society that can actually make progress.
It’s not just about criminal justice, it’s about community support, it’s about education.
As an advocate for human rights, I’m telling you, enough is enough.
[We cannot deny the existence of mental illness.]
We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter and brighter.