Africa-Press – Zambia. What kind of people have we become? When a nation’s leadership finds it more urgent to prepare a burial site than to allow a sick man the right to seek medical attention, we must ask ourselves whether we have lost our collective soul.
Today, we stand in mourning, but let us not pretend we are mourning in peace. We are mourning in pain, in anger, and in utter disbelief at the inhumanity shown to former President Edgar Chagwa Lungu.
A man who once carried this country through storms and uncertainty was denied his most basic human right: the right to life-saving medical attention. Not because it wasn’t available. Not because he was asking for special treatment. But because the UPND government, under President Hakainde Hichilema, chose cruelty over compassion.
Let us be clear. This was not an accident. This was not a miscommunication. This was a calculated act of political vengeance. It was power used to punish, not to protect.
And now, as the government scrambles to put together a funeral fit for a statesman, we say shame on you. You chose not to stand by his hospital bed when it mattered. You chose not to show up when there was still time to save him.
Instead, you watched as a man’s health deteriorated, and you silenced every voice that dared to call for compassion.
Let it be known, without fear or favor, that President Hakainde Hichilema personally oversaw and sanctioned the blocking of President Lungu’s international medical reviews. Not once, not twice, but three times. This was not just negligence. It was deliberate. It was engineered. It was political cruelty dressed in authority.
President Hakainde Hichilema, what you did to your predecessor, your brother in leadership, is nothing short of betrayal. A betrayal of the Zambian spirit. A betrayal of Christian values. A betrayal of the very humanity we claim to stand for.
And to those who now say, “Let’s not talk about these things during mourning,” with all due respect, no.
That principle does not apply here. Silence is not holy. Silence does not honor the dead. Silence only protects the guilty and enables the cycle of cruelty to continue unchecked.
We must speak. We must cry out.
Because if we don’t, this injustice will be repeated. Maybe not to a president next time, but to an ordinary citizen, to a loved one, to anyone who finds themselves on the wrong side of the political line.
We have watched, for years, as President Lungu has been insulted, harassed, and persecuted by this administration. Even in his death, we have continued to witness the likes of Koswe, Laura Miti, the Nigerian Sangoma and scammer known as Seer 1, and other UPND cadres who have made it their full-time job to tear down a former head of state. And now, even Chilufya Tayali, a man fleeing justice and hiding abroad, has been recruited by this government. One wonders under what conditions he was embraced by the propaganda machine.
This is not Christianity. This is not Ubuntu. This is not leadership.
A Christian nation does not use power to torment the sick.
A Christian nation does not mourn the dead while ignoring the causes of their death.
A Christian nation does not allow fear and silence to take the place of truth.
And to those who attempt to justify this cruelty by pointing to President Hichilema’s past imprisonment, please stop.
Let us remind you. President Hichilema was imprisoned after he and his UPND entourage deliberately blocked a presidential motorcade. That is a clear security threat and a criminal offense by every legal and international standard. That singular act could have ended tragically in many other nations, not with arrest, but with irreversible consequences.
Yet after his release, the case was quietly dropped through a nolle prosequi. Hichilema knows what he did was wrong. He knows the danger of that stunt. But he has never publicly acknowledged the recklessness of his actions. Instead, he now uses that episode as political currency while denying his predecessor the very mercy he once cried out for.
So no, his past suffering is not a license to be inhumane. It is not justification for vengeance disguised as governance.
Let this moment be a reckoning. Let it mark the beginning of a new moral conscience in our country. Because if we do not call out this wrong now, we allow it to be normalized.
Let the truth be known.
President Lungu was denied care three times.
He was treated as an enemy instead of a fellow Zambian.
And President Hakainde Hichilema must answer for this before the people and before God.
Never again should we witness a funeral convoy before we see an ambulance.
Never again should we bury our conscience alongside our leaders.
Never again should our silence be mistaken for peace.
Because today, it is President Lungu.
Tomorrow, it could be you.
For More News And Analysis About Zambia Follow Africa-Press
