A Rebuttal to Linda Banks, Zambia’s Dignity is Intact and President Hichilema Has Not Failed

A Rebuttal to Linda Banks, Zambia’s Dignity is Intact and President Hichilema Has Not Failed

Linda Banks’s article, “A President Who Won’t Travel Because of a Corpse” (20th September 2025), is beautifully written but deeply flawed.

It paints Zambia as a country trapped in shame, its leader “hiding” from the world, and its dignity lost. Yet the facts tell a very different story, of a President who has respected the law, exercised patience, and upheld Zambia’s democratic institutions in the face of a sensitive dispute.

President Hichilema Is Not “Hiding”

Banks claims President Hichilema skipped the United Nations General Assembly out of “embarrassment.” This is untrue. Zambia publicly declared a state funeral for former President Edgar Lungu on 7 June 2025, in line with the State Funerals,  Official Funeral policies and state obligation. Far from hiding, the President has been engaged in governance, addressing the nation regularly, and participating in international forums virtually or through senior representation when his domestic presence is required.It is undisputed fact that in today’s diplomatic world, leadership is not measured by physical presence alone but by effective engagement on multiple platforms that are available.

The “Corpse Ransom” Myth

Linda Banks’s most inflammatory accusation is that the Zambian Government has held the body of the late President “ransom.” This is simply false. The government’s consistent position has been that the late President deserves a dignified, state-led burial at Embassy Park, the official resting place for All Zambian heads of state. It was and still is the Lungu family that sought alternative burial plans outside Zambia, creating a legal impasse in South Africa.

South African courts, not Zambian politicians by the way ruled on these matters. Repeated applications by the Lungu family were dismissed, affirming the State’s position as lawful and consistent with both domestic and international norms. To call this “ransom” is to disregard the judiciary’s independent rulings and distort the truth Linda Banks.

Dignity Through Law, Not Spectacle

Linda Banks suggests Zambia’s dignity has been tarnished. On the contrary, dignity is preserved by restraint and respect for process. In many nations, disputes over state burials have led to political chaos, public violence, or unconstitutional state overreach. Zambia, however, has remained peaceful. The President has shown restraint by letting the courts arbitrate, rather than inflaming tensions or forcing the issue. That is not cowardice, it is constitutional maturity.

Ubuntu and Humanity

The charge that President Hichilema lacks ubuntu ignores his very conduct. He has consistently given the Lungu family time and space to pursue their appeals, despite the fact that the law grants the State clear authority in matters of a former President’s burial. He has avoided inflammatory rhetoric, choosing instead to allow due process to unfold. True ubuntu is not about bending the law to emotion; it is about balancing compassion with justice. That is precisely what his government has done very important.

Zambia Is Not a “Theatre of Silence”

Linda Banks compares Zambia’s current situation to Nazi-era complicity, suggesting silence in the face of injustice, wrong . This is an offensive and inaccurate analogy.

Silence is not complicity when legal processes are active. The Zambian State has acted transparently through declared policy, court participation, and public communication. Unlike the “silence” she describes, Zambia’s institutions have functioned openly and within the law, it would be better if she cited a piece of law that has been breached or violated by Hakainde Hichilema and his government.

The True Measure of Leadership

Leadership is not judged by poetic metaphors of gardens and rain, but by results. President Hichilema has preserved national peace, upheld the Constitution, and defended Zambia’s sovereignty in the face of internal and external pressure. While the matter of burial has been complex and emotional, Zambia has not slipped into division or violence. That is leadership.

Linda Banks is right to remind us that leadership requires humanity. But her article misleads readers by suggesting cowardice where there is restraint, shame where there is diplomacy, and cruelty where there is law. President Hakainde Hichilema has not failed Zambia; rather, he has shown that a leader can respect tradition, the bereaved, and the rule of law without succumbing to political theatre.

Zambia’s dignity is not in cold storage. It lives in our peace, our stability, and our Constitution.

By Tobbius Chilembo Hamunkoyo-LLB
A long-time political commentator, good governance activist, and a Lawyer, who also serves on the UPND media team. An accomplished Senior Laboratory Specialist with expertise in the Mines, he is also an entrepreneur and author dedicated to shaping impactful ideas into reality. As an engaging public speaker, award-winning first aider, and governance & management activist, he champions accountability, leadership excellence, and life-saving interventions. He is also a certified Lean Six Sigma White & Yellow Belt professional, driving operational efficiency and continuous improvement.

Linda Banks Wrote;

Zambia’s leader hides from world stages, ashamed to explain why a dead man lies in cold storage while witchcraft trials and family persecutions stain the nation’s dignity.

By Linda Banks ©️

September 20th 2025 (SUSSEX)- Rain soaked flowers, tea s

teaming in hand.It is raining in Sussex. The kind of steady, unhurried rain that carries its own rhythm, soft against the windowpanes. My garden is alive with the sound of it dahlias heavy with droplets, roses bent like mourners, chrysanthemums glistening as though weeping for reasons of their own. The chickens, my restless companions, scatter clumsily for refuge, their wings flapping wildly as they dive beneath the hedge. I watch it all from the window, my tea steaming in hand, the scent of jasmine from last night’s rain still lingering in the air.

https://www.facebook.com/ACollectionOfVoices

On my lap rests Nazi Wives, a book both chilling and profound ,a study of women who aligned themselves with monsters. Who excused, ignored, or adorned evil. Women who cloaked brutality with silence, loyalty, or convenience. Theirs was not always a loud allegiance ,often it was silence, complicity dressed as loyalty.

Reading it, I feel an ache of recognition. I cannot help but think of home, because history, however far it may seem, always has a way of repeating itself in different costumes. The world may look modern, but the dance of complicity is timeless. History is not just the past, it is often a mirror, and sometimes what it reflects back at us is too bitter to swallow.

And it is with this mixture of tea, rain, flowers, and unease that I reflect on home…..on Zambia. On a president who has managed to turn grief into a spectacle.

The funeral , cancelled prematurely. A man kept in cold storage, his family dragged through courts as if mourning were a crime. I am told …..reliably, by friends within HH’s own government, my friends. Men and women I respect ,that the president’s absence on the global stage, his absence at the United Nations General Assembly, is not diplomacy, nor scheduling, nor caution. It is in fact shame, Embarrassment. A gnawing fear that other leaders, in quiet corners of conference halls, would lean in and ask: “Why is your brother, the former head of state, still lying in a refrigerator?”

And what answer could he give? That his government has held a corpse ransom? That Zambia, once a proud beacon of dignity in Africa, now makes international headlines for medieval rituals and witchcraft accusations? That men and women are imprisoned not for crimes proven in law, but for being accused of wanting him to be with the dead? That international headlines now describe Zambia not as dignified, but as absurd? Al Jazeera has reported it. The BBC has carried it. South African papers have turned us into a regional curiosity and spectacle ,It reads like dark satire , except it is true.

Now, it’s no secret that I was never a big fan of Edgar Lungu’s premiership, my readers can attest to this. However,as a person,  I found him witty and personable. A man of the people, charismatic and charming even. So my disillusionment with HH did not come from the fact that I now prefer ECL nor did they come from my policy disputes, economics, or political manoeuvres (Umungalato) of HH alone. As I can forgive his incompetence, because of his inexperience at governance matters. My grievances with HH came mainly from something more basic: his failure to be human. To show ubuntu. To extend the dignity that death demands, not just for the departed but for the living left behind. Leadership stripped of compassion is not leadership at all, it is performance. The failure to show ubuntu is not merely a personal flaw, it is a wound to the nation. For what are we, if we cannot extend dignity to the dead? If we cannot allow the bereaved their mourning? If we cannot let compassion guide justice?

And so he hides, skipping global stages. Declining his favourite hobby, international travel. Not because of superstition, as some whisper, but because of humiliation. ..Because to sit beside his peers ;presidents, prime ministers, kings even-is to risk the question he cannot answer. The shame he cannot cloak!

So, for those who have wondered what turned my stomach against HH, hope you now understand that it was not just politics, it was humanity or rather the absence of it.

And yet  what aches even more ,are the silences. Because I know, personally, there are good people in HH’s government. Some are friends of mine. Decent, empathetic, principled people. They feel this injustice; I know they do. And yet their lips remain sealed. Fear? Loyalty? Or that ancient temptation: to remain silent because silence costs less than truth.

The rain falls harder. My chickens have retreated fully to their wooden coop, and I sip my tea, bitter and hot, feeling that same bitterness settle in my mouth. Nazi Wives lies open beside me, and I think of the women in that book, not the monsters they married, but the way they stood by, lips pressed shut, as horror unfolded around them. We are living through our own theatre of silence. And if history teaches us anything, it is that silence is never neutral, it’s alignment….It is a choice.

In Nazi Wives, the women who said nothing, who smoothed over cruelty with domestic chatter, were no less complicit than those who cheered in the open. I think of that as I sip my tea, as rain darkens the soil, as the garden drinks and my chickens return to peck at the wet ground.

HH may have inherited power from Mazoka, but dignity is not inherited , it is practised. And right now, instead of dignity, he has given us shame. Instead of leadership, he has given us excuses. Instead of empathy, he has given us theatre. And I think of the state of my mother land , a president in hiding, a corpse in a fridge, a nation’s dignity and voice crumbling under the weight of one man’s fear.

Leadership is not merely about power,it is about humanity. About rising to moments of truth with dignity. About facing questions however uncomfortable , with honesty. HH has failed in this. Instead, he has traded dignity for excuses, compassion for coldness, courage for cowardice.

In the garden, the rain begins to ease. A faint sunlight pierces through the grey. The flowers lift their heads in obedience,dripping, resilient.Nature knows how to bend without  breaking, how to endure without shame. Humanity, too, could learn this lesson…..if only our leaders chose compassion over cruelty, truth over pretence, dignity over fear.

Until then, Zambia will remain stuck. A president in hiding. A corpse in a fridge, a nation held ransom by its own leader’s failure to be human.  Zambia’s shame will not be hidden in a fridge, It will follow HH wherever he goes and even where he dares not go.

Linda Banks is a journalist covering politics, justice, social issues and international affairs across Africa and the UK.

©️ 2025 Linda Banks. All rights reserved.