AN OFFICER ATTENDS THE PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION WITH ‘BLOOD ON HIS HANDS ‘- Fred M’membe

AN OFFICER ATTENDS THE PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION WITH ‘BLOOD ON HIS HANDS ‘

The engine of the dark utility vehicle purred in the shadows of Kabulonga, its cold breath mingling with the midnight mist of a changing Zambia.

Inside, the dashboard glowed faintly, casting sharp angles across the face of a man who knew too much about the trajectory of a bullet.

For months, the capital had been a pressure cooker. It started in January, when words like extermination and fumigation dropped from the high command into the public consciousness like heavy stones into a quiet pond. At the time, the city’s coffee shops and political salons in Rhodes Park dismissed it as standard military bravado from Zambia Army Commander Lieutenant General Geoffrey Choongo Zyeele rough talk meant to scare off illegal miners in the Copperbelt.

But down in the streets, people remembered his different, unyielding warning: “Once the bullet leaves the barrel… we have no control over it.” Now, it was August. The dry winter air was a bit hard, and the political landscape was shifting beneath the feet of Lusaka’s elite.

Inside a walled compound on one of Kabulonga’s quiet, tree-lined avenues, a single light burned upstairs. Mutotwe Kafwaya stood by the window, a glass of water untouched in his hand.

As a former lawmaker and Cabinet Minister, he was accustomed to debates settled by the rap of a gavel, not the heavy thud of tactical boots. Yet, rumour had been travelling through the grapevine for days whispers of a joint security task force moving under the cover of darkness.

The clock struck 02:00hrs. The silence split open. It wasn’t the clean, orderly entry of a routine search. It was a sudden, violent intrusion that shattered the midnight calm. Shadows in tactical gear poured over the perimeter walls.

The command structure on the ground was a well-oiled machine, acting under the watchful eye of Brigadier General Moses Shapwaya, the formidable Head of the Commandos.

Leading the tactical squad directly into the breach was Major Lyempe Kapumpa, an officer whose directives cut through the darkness with chilling precision.

“State security! Drop your weapons!” a voice boomed, echoing off the concrete walls.

What happened next would be debated in Parliament for a generation. A flash of light. The sharp, deafening crack of a pistol returning fire from the shadows of the veranda. And then, the overwhelming, rhythmic response of automatic weapons from Major Kapumpa’s specialised unit, the uncontrollable trajectory that Lt Gen Zyeele had warned the country about months prior.

When the dust settled and the sirens of the backup units finally wailed in the distance, the compound was eerily still. The paperwork on the desk was scattered, catching the draft from a shattered windowpane. By sunrise, the story had already outrun the morning delivery trucks. On the front page of every broadsheet, the headlines didn’t just report a raid gone wrong; they connected the dots of a larger, invisible tapestry. The rhetoric of winter had become the reality of spring.

As the city woke up to the news, a lone journalist stood outside the Kabulonga gates, watching the police tape flutter in the morning breeze. She looked down at her notebook, where she had scribbled a quote from seven months ago. The ink was dry, but the names Zyeele, Shapwaya, and Kapumpa felt entirely wet with the morning’s harsh reality.

The barrel was cold now, but the city was just beginning to burn.

Fred M’membe