Charles Simengwa
20 August 2007
Ndola — "I BOW down to the services of the Roman Catholic church paralegal programme that has benefited my life greatly and has saved me from early death," she started the story of her life in an interview in Luanshya recently.
Her life was more than a ruin when Margaret Chanda Nkonde lost her husband of 21 years.
The year was 2000 and she was 48 years old.
It had been a long road blighted in many parts by the couple's childlessness.
Mrs Nkonde recalls how the husband's family had tried on many occasions to push her out of what was deemed a fruitless marriage.
More inglorious moments for her were to come after Mr Nkonde's death, when his family insisted the widow was not entitled to any portion of his estate since she had not "given him" any children.
The theoretical standpoint of the family was that she could not fail to have children in more than two decades, unless, of course, she had been flirting with other men.
To accusations that she was responsible for her husband's death, through her perceived promiscuity, was added to Mrs Nkonde's bewilderment when she learnt that she was not going to get a single penny from her husband's terminal benefits.
Until she was introduced to the paralegal programme of the Roman Catholic Church, she had formed a fragile alliance with the future, unsure of who she was and what was to become of her life if she were forced out of her matrimonial house, a threat that had been communicated to her.
Now at 55, and with two houses pinned to her name, besides the accompanying benefits of wise investment, Mrs Nkonde is full of praise for the paralegal advisers, particularly Aaron Chinyimba, the district coordinator for Luanshya, Mpongwe and Masaiti, who helped her sidestep the unfair treatment.
Many other women and children are accessing the services that are daily helping to change their living situations.
Women and children are the two focal groups of the programme.
Men too are "victims of circumstances" and have been carried on the wings of the programme.
Except for criminal matters, the paralegal advisers embrace different types of civil cases.
A less obvious but possibly more debilitating problem is the inability of many people in lower income ranks to seek legal aid.
In such a state of affairs it is arguable whether a community could be said to respect justice.
Background
As conflict analysis is the systematic study of the profile, causes, actors, and dynamics of conflict, it is necessary to first delve into a brief background of Luanshya.
A conflict profile provides a brief characterisation of the context within which the intervention would be situated.
Luanshya lies about 35 kilometres south-west of Ndola, the provincial headquarters of the Copperbelt Province.
Some available records show that by the end of 2003 the town had an estimated population of 155,000 people.
As long back as independent Zambia's history goes, Luanshya's economic activities, for the larger part, rested on the back of the mining industry.
Following the privatisation exercise of the 1990s, things fell apart for many residents.
Privatisation is still the fabled monster among the locals; it is widely blamed for the drastically changed living standards since it was the hastily conducted exercise that resulted in many people being jobless.
Poverty in less than a decade of offloading the local mine into private hands lay behind the glittering facade of what once was known as the garden town of the Copperbelt.
The mask of economic stagnation is slowly falling away but the marks of desolation are still visible.
Only recently, district administrator, George Kapu, told some sections of the media that unemployment had risen to 'irksome' levels.
He blamed it all on company shutdowns.
The number of people engaged by the new mine investor is a bare fraction of the mass that hinged on the former Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, and theirs mostly are contractual jobs.
The basic needs basket for Luanshya published by the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection for the month of June indicated that a family of six needed K965, 250 on both essential food and non-food items.
That is far beyond the reach of many residents.
There is also a history of struggling employers such as the municipal council that by January 2004 had not paid its employees for 10 odd months, a situation that prompted a strike.
An inarguable fact is that poverty and conflicts are good bedfellows.
It is worth noting that the many social and economic evils in which Luanshya is still hemmed and gravitate towards girls and women.
Children are expectedly at the receiving end of the collapsed living standards.
As could be expected of a place whose means of livelihood have been squeezed out, families fast disintegrated.
Quite many children saw the last of stable family structures in the 1990s.
It was also during the lean years that the fewer men still in employment, or those who could afford to, littered Luanshya with non-marital children, or children born out of wedlock.
But what is the paralegal programme about?
Paralegal advisers
The paralegal programme is a component of the Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace (CCJDP).
It falls under the governance master programme alongside Jubilee Zambia, Justice and Peace, Economic Justice and Peace, and the Parliamentary Liaison programme.
On the Copperbelt the paralegal programme is found in Luanshya, which also covers for Mpongwe and Masaiti, and in Kitwe, whose office is responsible for Kalulushi, Lufwanyama, Chambishi and Chibuluma.
The Chingola office extends its services to Chililabombwe while Mufulira is a stand-alone.
Ndola is the head office on the Copperbelt and caters for part of Masaiti district.
Paralegal advisers and volunteers undergo a two-week intensive training programme. The components of the course are introduction to paralegal work and its ethics, democracy, the law of torts, the law of contracts, family law, police powers and the rights of suspects in criminal matters.
Others are criminal law and procedure, the law of testate and intestate succession, constitutional law, employment law, the law of social security, the Bill of Rights, and Zambia's legal system.
From the time the programme was introduced seven years ago, some trainers have included the Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education in Lusaka, the University of Zambia, National Legal Aid Clinic for Women, Law Association of Zambia, and the CCJDP.
Many people have been trained and they include police officers, priests, teachers, and traditional rulers.
Apart from those trained to run the established centres, others are trained as a way of building their capacity to handle various cases as well as equipping them with peacebuilding and conflict transformation skills.
As a good example, traditional rulers handle different cases such as child maintenance, land and marital disputes.
Therefore, training in paralegal work is important for them.
Between the year 2000 and 2005 over 300 paralegal personnel were trained.
In order to ensure the programme runs to the expectations of legal aid seekers, paralegal personnel are guided by a set of ethics, the primary one being confidentiality. For that reason, only clients whose permission was sought could have their names and cases published, as was the case with Mrs Nkonde who wants other women in a similar position to learn from her experience.
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