Obituary: Judge Mulembe was leading light in constitutional jurisprudence

Judge Enoch Mulembe with wife Carol

Judge Mulembe obtained his law degree from the University of Zambia in 1992

By VICTOR KALALANDA, ZIO MWALE, December 21, 2020

WHEN death lurked in the distance to victimise Constitutional Court judge Enoch Mulembe last Thursday, there was a veneer of composure in the hospital – until things fell apart.

He had taken his breakfast already, but when he lay in what would be his deathbed and rolled his eyes, his wife of 23 years, Carol, who remembers him as “loving, kind to everyone and an adorable father to his children”, had enough reason to worry.

“Baby,” she snapped, “Enoch?”

“I’m here,” he answered, his voice wobbling. “I’m not going anywhere.”

But when he saw Abigail, his daughter, he uttered what would be his last words to her: “I love you,” then the sun set to mark the painful climax of what doctors suspect to be a case of pneumonia, which can be traced back to three months ago when the 52-year-old lawyer complained of a chronic headache.

“On an ordinary day he loved beans and impwa (Ethiopian egg plants), or T-bone sometimes. When we went out to eat he loved his potato mash and steak. Even though he was a workaholic, he loved his family dearly, and he was always available,” Mrs Mulembe emotionally shares.

A leading light in constitutional jurisprudence, Judge Mulembe was at the time of his death sitting on the Constitutional Court bench, whose establishment he helped pioneer in 2016 with judges Hildah Chibomba, Anne Sitali, Mugeni Mulenga, Palan Mulonda, Margaret Munalula and Martin Musaluke, following his appointment by President Edgar Lungu.

Born to Raphael and Mary Mulembe, the young Enoch began exuding his passion for law early while growing up as the firstborn child of what would be nine children in a family that changed homes, from Choma to Mbala, due to his father’s managerial duties at National Breweries.

His parents remember that as a young boy, Enoch would stay up late in the night to catch, as his obsession, a crime TV series which featured the work of lawyers that fascinated him and planted a law seed in his little soul.

With time, he would mature into a top and distinguished Zambian lawyer who taught the law, wrote scholarly papers, managed legal institutions and delivered landmark judgments.

Though unassuming in intellect, he had one of the most perfect academic records as a best pupil throughout his primary and secondary school, sometimes getting the highest marks in a province, ultimately obtaining a place in the prestigious University of Zambia (UNZA) School of Law, where most of the lawyers he would work with in his law career were trained.

He graduated from UNZA in 1992 with the institution’s rare and exceptional merit classification for his Bachelor of Laws degree, and went on to earn admission to the Zambian Bar in 1993.

Judge Mulembe’s former UNZA lecturer, celebrated Supreme Court Judge Mumba Malila, has fresh and fond memories of his student, as he states:

“He was a very quiet gentleman but exceedingly brilliant.”

In June 1996, the justice obtained a master’s degree in International Law from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, University of Lund, Sweden.
He would later become a lecturer in the UNZA School of Law between 1996 and 2002.

Justice Mulembe, however, continued honing his skills. After a stint in lecturing, he obtained a certificate in University Teaching and Research in Human Rights from the International Institute of Human Rights/ International Centre for University Human Rights Teaching, Strasbourg, France, in 1999.

The following year, he studied for a postgraduate advanced diploma in International Protection of Human Rights from the Institute for Human Rights, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland, in 2000.

After that, Mr Mulembe served as director of the Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (ZIALE) from 2013 to 2016. And after serving the Human Rights Commission as chief of research and planning from 1998 to 2004, Judge Mulembe rose to the position of director of the commission and steered the institution from the helm for about nine years (2004-2013).

His major interest over the years had been in the teaching of human rights law. He has taught on postgraduate and undergraduate programmes in full-time and part-time capacities at various universities, including UNZA, University of Lusaka and the Copperbelt University’s Dag Hammarskjold Institute for Peace Studies (DHIPS).

On the international front, Justice Mulembe had a stint at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, USA, as a visiting lecturer in the School of Law, Department of Environmental Law, from June to August 1997.

He has also conducted guest lectures in human rights law at the Zambia Police Training College, Anti-Corruption Commission, Drug Enforcement Commission and the National Institute of Public Administration.

Judge Mulembe’s name will go down the annals of history as a distinguished lawyer who published and presented several papers and booklets in the field of human rights law. 

From June 2011 to June 2013, he served as one of the 10 pioneer international independent experts of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances, a body that was monitoring state party compliance with, and implementation of, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

And during the previous constitution review process, the judge chaired the Human Rights Committee of the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) from 2007 to 2010 and provided leadership on the drafting of a new Bill of Rights as part of the national exercise to draft a new republican Constitution.

He was a member of the Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association (CMJA)
Constitutional Court judge Palan Mulonda describes Justice Mulembe’s death as a blow to the recently formed court.

Judge Mulonda says Justice Mulembe will be remembered for his passion for human rights advancement, lecturing and his love for reading.

He recalls that Justice Mulembe and he were part of the first team to develop the first State Report on Torture in 1999 and later, together with other fellows, they established the Institute of Human Rights in 2000, with the objective to train law enforcement agencies in human rights.

Emotionally, Justice Mulonda describes Justice Mulembe as a brother, a friend and hard-working colleague.

He was so dear to me. I came to know his entire family and he knew mine too. He was not just a friend, but a brother. When he fell ill, Chief Justice Irene Mambilima delegated me with an ambulance to take him to UTH. We were all affected as ConCourt, he says in an interview.

The day I visited him, he looked okay. We talked about a number of things and plans we had for the [forthcoming] ConCourt’s fifth anniversary, but I was shocked to hear my friend had passed on, he said sadly.

Mr Justice Mulonda recalls that Justice Mulembe’s and his line of work always crossed paths.

I have known Justice Mulembe from UNZA School of Law. When I entered law school in 1992, he was in fourth year. Law school then was a very small school, so we knew each other, we became close friends. In 1994, he became a staff development fellow in the School of Law.

Later we developed passion for human rights, we were both interested in one space and that’s human rights. I remember at some point, we were part of the team that did party reporting countrywide when we collected data on human rights violation, Justice Mulonda recalls.

I worked under him at Human Rights Commission for five years until I was appointed ambassador to the United States. And again when I was leaving ZIALE, because I was director for ZIALE, he took over as director, he said.

When Justice Mulonda returned to Zambia from the USA, he worked with Justice Mulembe until his death, both of them having been appointed among the founder judges of the Constitutional Court.

Deputy Chief Justice Michael Musonda says the Judiciary has lost a solid pillar of the Constitutional Court as Mr Justice Mulembe was among the judges who pioneered the beginning of the court.

He had a lot of experience and knowledge on human rights which was necessary to develop the court. The court (ConCourt) ranks equivalent with the Supreme Court, so you are talking of the highest court in the land with a very important national mandate to deal with constitutional matters, Justice Musonda said.

The deputy chief justice describes the late judge as someone who was extremely reliable, calm and who only spoke when it mattered the most.

And when he speaks, you are bound to listen. We have lost, as an institution, a great pillar. This death has risen at the wrong time. He had a lot to contribute to the country. He had been in the court for four years now. Over these years, Justice Mulembe and his colleagues settled down the court. We were at a point when we still needed him as an institution. You know, it takes a lot to train a judge, Justice Musonda lamented at the house of mourning.

As one of the pioneering judges to serve on the Constitutional Court, Justice Mulembe was among the panel of judges that made several landmark rulings such as the recent judgment allowing remandees to vote and declaration of the stay in office of ministers after the dissolution of Parliament as illegal and ordering them to pay back to the State salaries and allowances they had earned between May and July 2016.

Justice Mulembe was also among the judges that heard the case of former Director of Public Prosecutions Mutembo Nchito when he challenged his removal from office by the President based on the recommendation of a tribunal that was investigating his alleged professional misconduct.

The Constitutional Court ruled that the President acted constitutionally when he removed Mr Nchito from office.

Apart from that, Judge Mulembe was among the judges that heard the case of the Law Association of Zambia challenging Bill 10 in Parliament.

He also participated in determining the case of Daniel Pule and others vs. the Attorney General in which the former sought the court’s determination of President Lungu’s eligibility to contest the 2021 elections.

The court ruled that President Lungu’s tenure of office from January 25, 2015 to September 13, 2016 cannot be considered as a full term of office.

Furthermore, the late judge also presided over a number of election petition cases.

Having carved out an illustrious legal career for over two decades, Judge Mulembe was a pillar in Zambia’s Judiciary and his death has certainly left a yawning void in the country’s legal fraternity.

He is survived by a wife and three children.