Africa-Press – Zambia. When Ms. Sara Kunda opened the door to visitors this week, her eyes told the story long before her words did a story of unbearable pain, betrayal, and a justice system that has failed her and her only daughter.
Years ago, Ms. Kunda’s young daughter was brutally defiled by a man known in the community as Kabinda. The case went to court, and justice seemed to prevail when the perpetrator was convicted and handed a 30-year prison sentence. But that promise of justice was short-lived.
On African Freedom Day, the convicted defiler was among those pardoned by President Hakainde Hichilema just a year and a few months into his sentence.
The mother’s face crumples in grief as she recounts the day she learned her child’s abuser had walked free.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she says, tears streaming down her face. “They said 30 years. We believed the nightmare was over.”
Instead, the nightmare has deepened. The child, now living with trauma-induced anxiety, no longer attends school. She battles severe emotional and physical complications, including vision problems and chronic pain that requires daily sanitary care a heartbreaking burden for a mother surviving on piecework.
“She can’t even look men in the face,” Ms. Kunda says. “She doesn’t sleep. She jumps when she hears footsteps.”
Despite multiple visits to the Department of Social Welfare, Ms. Kunda says no tangible help has been offered. She remains alone in her fight not only for her daughter’s recovery but now for her dignity as a mother who did everything right, only to see the system betray her.
Human rights advocate Remmy Kangwa, who visited the family, described the experience as “shattering.”
“I watched her cry and realized the person who could hear her pain the one with the power to make it right is the same person who set the abuser free,” Kangwa wrote in a now-viral social media post. “It broke me.”
Legal experts and women’s rights organizations are now questioning the criteria used in presidential pardons especially those involving convicted child sexual offenders.
“What message are we sending?” asked lawyer and child rights activist Angela Mumba. “That a child’s trauma is worth just one year of time served? That political symbolism on a national holiday overrides justice for victims?”
While Zambia’s constitution gives the president discretionary powers to issue pardons, critics argue such decisions must be guided by transparent standards, particularly when it comes to violent crimes against women and children.
Kangwa is now appealing to NGOs, churches, and individuals to step in where the system has failed. The child, he says, desperately needs to be placed in a special school where she can receive trauma-informed care and vision support. He has pledged to provide lenses to help prevent further vision loss but says more hands and hearts are needed.
“This girl deserves to know that not everyone is bad,” he said. “We have to show her that there is still good in this world.”
The call has gone out to the Vice President, who, as a woman and mother, may be uniquely placed to understand the gravity of the situation. Civil society organizations are demanding that presidential pardons be reviewed and that survivors’ voices be heard before such life-altering decisions are made.
For now, Ms. Kunda continues to cry out not just for her daughter, but for the kind of country she hoped Zambia could be.
“I want someone in power to look at my child and tell me if this is fair,” she says softly. “We are not animals. We matter.”
As the public reckons with the painful consequences of unchecked presidential powers, one child’s suffering stands as a haunting reminder: Justice delayed is one thing. But justice reversed? That’s a wound that may never heal.
©️ KUMWESU | August 14, 2025
*WINSTONE KABINDA WAS PARDONED ON MAY 22nd MAY 2020 BY PRESIDENT LUNGU NOT HH
At the time, Winstone Kabinda had been convicted of defilement.
His pardon was granted on May 22, 2020, prior to President Hakainde Hichilema taking office—President Hichilema only assumed the presidency in August 2021.Zambia travel packages
Suggestions that the current Head of State is tolerant of defilement are unfounded. President Hichilema has, in fact, adopted a strict approach to sexual offences.
A review of the most recent pardon list from May 2025 confirms that no individuals convicted of sexual offences were granted a pardon.
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