Zambia's Hichilema Sworn In With His Rival Jailed for Treason
President Hakainde Hichilema is sworn in for a second term today after his 60 per cent election victory — with runner-up Brian Mundubile, who alleges tampering, detained on treason charges alongside seventeen others. The opposition could not file a legal challenge because courts were sealed off on the final filing day; EU observers flagged weaknesses in the count’s verification. A post-election raid on a property linked to Mr Mundubile killed a former cabinet minister.
Mr Hichilema takes his oath as the man who was once Zambia’s persecuted opposition leader — jailed for treason himself in 2017 — now presiding over the treason prosecution of his own challenger, a symmetry that measures how far the country celebrated for its 2021 democratic transfer has travelled in the wrong direction. The procedural details are the tell: courts physically sealed on filing day, a raid that killed a former minister, observers documenting a count that paused for instructions. None of it prevents today’s ceremony; all of it hollows what the ceremony celebrates. Zambia’s Western partners, who lionised Mr Hichilema as a democratic exemplar, now own an awkward silence. Watch the treason trial’s conduct — and whether any partner says anything at all.