Opposition parties are planning to demonstrate on the streets and engage in civil disobedience against President Michael Sata’s suspension of judges involving K14 billion which his political allies owe the Development Bank of Zambia.
Popularised mostly by Mahatma Karamchand Gandhi, Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government.
Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance.
UPND’s announcement on Saturday morning through its political adviser to party President Hakainde Hichilema, Douglas Siakalima that opposition parties are planning civil disobedience and mass demonstrations over the judges’ suspensions.
Siakalima disclosed that the UPND plans to demonstrate and hold civil disobedience over President Michael Sata’s decision to ban High Court Judges Charles Kajimanga and Nigel Mutuna and Supreme Court Judge Philip Musonda.
He said the opposition parties are planning massive demonstrations and civil disobedience to show that things are not right in the country.
The main opposition parties had a meeting this weekend to plan how to execute the demos and civil disobedience activities.
Civil disobedience is one of the many ways people have rebelled against what they deem to be unfair laws. It has been used in many nonviolent resistance movements in India (Gandhi’s campaigns for independence from the British Empire), in Czechoslovakia’sVelvet Revolution and in East Germany to oust their communist governments, in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, in the American Civil Rights Movement, in the Singing Revolution to bring independence to the Baltic countries from the Soviet Union, recently with the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia and the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, among other various movements worldwide.
Opposition plan passive resistance over PF interference in judiciary | Zambian Watchdog.