Lucy Sichone

Lucy Sichone was born on 15 May 1954. She grew up with a father who had been very strict about her education. At some point her father had served as a butler for a British colonial family where he began to take a keen interest in getting his daughters educated.[5] Lucy managed to pursue her education from an all-girls convent secondary school. In 1978 she was accepted at the University of Zambia to study for a law degree. She obtained her degree in 1981 and won a Rhodes scholarship to study for an Philosophy and Economics degree at Oxford University in England.

Sichone married her first husband in 1979, after their daughter turned five years old. After the death of her husband she experienced what is called "property grabbing," a practice which is still very common in Africa. It is where all household goods are taken by the late husband's relatives.[6][7][8] The “way I was left destitute,” Lucy wrote to the Principal of Somerville College at Oxford University after winning her Rhodes Scholarship, “has given me the idea of what I want to do…start a Legal Clinic for widows and orphans.”[9]

Additionally, because she belonged to a patrilineal society, her children belonged according to traditional law to her husband's side of the family. But because of her legal knowledge and experience, she managed to win custody over the children. She had four children. Ten years after the death of her first husband, Shichone married her second husband.

Lucy Sichone represented so many clients over a wide range of issues, from government land disputes to personal issues similar to those she had experienced as a widow. The Zambia Civic Education Association (ZCEA) was formed by Shichone in 1993. This was a non-profit human rights organisation which was formed to empower the Zambian citizenry in coping with the democratic dispensation. She wanted this to assist the development of democratic process in Zambia as well as promote justice. This was to be done through increasing and creating awareness among all citizens about their duties and responsibilities under the Constitution. Sichone believed that it is in the execution of duties and responsibilities that bestow rights, privileges and equality for all before the Law.[10]

Sichone was never content with just idling by and watching the politicians desecrate the constitution, she decided to go into politics. When everyone else was running towards the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD), the party that had just won the momentous 1991 elections that removed Kenneth Kaunda from power, Sichone decided to join the United National Independence Party (UNIP). UNIP, having ruled Zambia for 27 years, had lost the 1991 elections and its political fortunes were in decline. But for Lucy, this all didn't matter. Her calculus was probably that an association with UNIP would help spread her message about safe guarding human rights and holding politicians accountable. After all, civil society organizations at that time did not have much of a following. Everyone looked up to politicians. However, she then left the party in 1994 when she started to experience problems with fellow members of the central committee.

Sichone began contributing to the independent daily newspaper The Post in 1993. As her columns challenged the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) government and its manipulation of constitutional provisions. It was during her time at The Post that two memorable events happened that thrust her into the limelight and confirmed her position as the conscience of the nation. In February 1996, Sichone wrote an article titled “Miyanda has forgotten about need for justice”. Godfrey Miyanda was then Vice President and leader of government business in parliament.[11] An order to arrest Sichone along with the newspaper’s managing editor and chief editor was issued. Sichone and two of her colleagues, managing editor and chief editor of the paper, were forced into hiding to avoid imprisonment on charges of contempt of Parliament after the Zambian National Assembly. After the order, there was a lot of international pressure from human rights groups, journalists and legal groups to absolve her because she had a three-month-old baby at that time.

The other two surrendered to authorities, but Sichone did not and remained hiding. While at large, she continued to write columns for The Post, and declared not submit to National Assembly Speaker Robinson Nabulyato’s unconstitutional decree. She wrote, “The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights make it a sacred duty for me to defend them to the death.”[12] She ended up becoming the first Zambian to win the International Women Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award in 1996 for the same article for which they were trying to arrest her for.[13] She eventually gave herself up and a sort of truce existed between her and the authorities.

Lucy Sichone died at the age of 44 at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka, on August 24, 1998. The Post, where she used to work as a columnist, published a front page memorial article for her, with the headline “Zambia mourns Sichone”. A series of articles ran in The Post after her death, showing the condolences from many political leaders, non-governmental organizations and citizens from the nation. Editor-in-chief of The Post, Fred M'membe, who was also a close personal friend to the late human rights activist, said Zambia had lost one of its daughters.[14]

Sichone's death was widely mourned. The civil society movement tried to petition the government to accord her a state funeral but, as expected, the authorities declined. We are all left to wonder what other brave and inspiring things she would have done had she lived longer. Grieve Chelwa, author of the article "Lucy Sichone: Conscience of the Zambian nation," wrote in 2015, "I had the rare privilege of meeting Lucy Sichone in 1998, the year she died, during a prize giving ceremony for students who had done a lot to advance civic education at their schools. She gave me a certificate carrying her immortal signature and asked all the recipients that day to carry her dream even further."

In 2015, Lucy’s friend and attorney Dr. Ann Olivarius, who established The Rhodes Project to study Rhodes Scholars, commissioned a portrait of Lucy to hang in Rhodes House, the Oxford home of the scholarship. The Rhodes Project also published a recollection of Lucy by her daughter, Martha Sichone Cameron.[15]