The Public Order Act was not born in freedom. It was conceived in fear. Drafted under colonial rule, it was designed to control movement, silence assembly, and manage natives rather than citizens.
Its original purpose was not public safety, but political containment. Independence inherited it, but never redeemed it. Each government merely learned how to use it better.
The tragedy of the Act is not that it exists, but that every generation of leaders believes it will always belong to them. Power, when newly acquired, convinces its holder that tomorrow is guaranteed. Yet history teaches the opposite: power is rented, never owned.
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Laws forged to suppress others eventually turn inward. The Patriotic Front had its season. It promised reform but quickly discovered the convenience of control.
The Public Order Act became a weapon of order without justice. Rallies were denied, assemblies disrupted, and dissent criminalised. The law they could have reformed, they instead mastered.
They governed as if the opposition would never govern again. Expectations were high. The moral authority to reform the Public Order Act was unquestionable.
Yet 2025 revealed an uncomfortable truth: once in power, even reformers grow fond of the tools of restraint. The same law once condemned became useful again. Chinese philosophy teaches that the man who builds a cage for others must one day live in it himself.
Laozi warned that excessive control produces resistance, and that rigid systems collapse under their own weight. The Public Order Act is such a system—rigid, blunt, and rooted in mistrust of the people. What is striking is the contrast of urgency.
Laws that benefit those in power are amended with speed and precision. Constitutions are adjusted, mining regimes reshaped, cyber and insurance laws refined, all in the name of efficiency and progress. Yet a law that threatens liberty is endlessly postponed, endlessly “under review.” This imbalance reveals intent.
Reform is not delayed because it is complex; it is delayed because it is inconvenient. Control is seductive. It simplifies politics.
It replaces persuasion with permission. But it also poisons the future. Beauty Katebe’s reflections carry the quiet weight of institutional memory.
When civil society speaks this consistently, it is not noise; it is diagnosis. A democracy that fears assembly is already uncertain of its legitimacy. There is a proverb in Chinese statecraft: When the ruler fears the crowd, the crowd has already withdrawn its trust.
The Public Order Act does not preserve peace; it preserves anxiety. It signals a state unsure of its own citizens. If those in power today believe they will never sit where others sit tomorrow, they are repeating the oldest political illusion.
Governments fall faster than laws are repealed. When they do, the same Act will remain, waiting patiently, indifferent to party colours. And when that day comes, those who enjoyed its protection will cry foul.
They will call it unjust, archaic, oppressive. They will rediscover its colonial cruelty too late. Power teaches slowly, but history teaches without mercy.
A wise state dismantles the weapons it does not wish used against it. A wise leader reforms laws not for convenience, but for conscience. The Public Order Act is not a PF law or a UPND law. It is a test of political maturity.
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