One reason why Hichilema is feeling more vulnerable is the growing perception in Zambia that he appears to be primarily serving two interests: his own (mainly business) and external ones, with little attention paid to addressing the domestic concerns or needs of the people who put him in office.
Were opposition parties to unite or form a coalition and field a common and credible candidate against him in 2026, they would be likely to win. Worried about this prospect — and conscious of the 50%+1 requirement, a very big change in the structure of the country’s politics that has significantly increased the chances of an opposition candidate winning — Hichilema, elected only two years ago, has launched a pilot clampdown on his political opponents.
Opposition parties, for instance, have been attempting to hold rallies and increasing their criticism of what they see as a lack of action over the cost of living. Hichilema has responded with increasingly authoritarian measures — ironically drawing the opposition closer and making the prospect of an alliance against his candidature likelier.
Over the past 30 days alone, three opposition leaders — Edith Nawakwi of the Forum for Democracy and Development, Sean Tembo of the Patriots for Economic Progress, and Fred M’membe of the Socialist Party (SP) — have all been separately arrested on what appear to be political charges.
The objective of harassing opposition leaders through frequent arrests and court cases is to keep them away from political work and stretch their already limited resources. The arrest of M’membe in particular — the third this year alone — deserves brief discussion because it is relevant to Hichilema’s coup talk. Following these arrests on charges of “unlawful discharge of a firearm, libel, and acts intended to cause grievous bodily harm”, the government, fearful that M’membe could lead the opposition resistance against Hichilema, started looking for a pretext on which to bring a more serious charge against him such as treason.
On 8 August, inspector general of police Graphel Musamba held a politically charged press conference in which he declared that socialism will not succeed in Zambia and vowed to crush SP, accusing it of “panting for violence because they want to cut corners to reach their destiny”.
Musamba further claimed that M’membe, who has seemingly cultivated close political ties with Moscow and Beijing, had used social media to comment on “the emerging juntas in West Africa … thinking that the same [can] be extended to this country. We are carefully studying the ingredients of the offence, and we will let you know in due course what his fate is going to be”.
The SP leader, arguing that Musamba went too far and had waded into political debate, sued the police chief for criminal defamation of character. Under Zambian law, privately prosecuting anyone for criminal defamation requires consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and M’membe sought this permission on 25 August.
Afraid that a court trial would expose Musamba’s partisanship and frustrate the government’s desperate scheme to arraign the opposition leader on a trumped-up charge, the DPP declined the request. In a letter dated 11 September 2023, Gilbert Phiri — Hichilema’s former lawyer in opposition — informed M’membe “that due to public interest considerations, your application to conduct the captioned prosecution (The People VS Graphel Musamba) is hereby denied”.
In a sense, this sequence of events shows the political undercurrents behind Hichilema’s coup talk and suggests that he may all along have been the power behind Musamba.
The case also lays bare the DPP’s partisanship and abuse of the power to initiate or discontinue criminal prosecutions especially on matters involving opposition figures. When one of Hichilema’s State House aides Clayson Hamasaka recently sued an opposition leader, Saboi Imboela, for criminal defamation, Phiri gave consent to prosecute, as he did when Minister of Finance Situmbeko Musokotwane filed a lawsuit against an independent member of parliament, Munir Zulu, who accused the government official of corruption.
Meanwhile, police arrested, within the last month, former president Lungu’s wife, Esther, for theft of motor vehicle in a move criticised by the main opposition PF as aimed at indirectly punishing Lungu. As they did with Sean Tembo, the police kept the former first lady in detention longer than it was necessary despite meeting bond conditions.
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