An Open Letter to President Hakainde Hichilema
Healing Requires Truth: Confronting the Injustices Against Former President Edgar Chagwa Lungu
Mr. President, You Failed Your Brother. You Drove Him to His Grave.
Mr. President,
Zambia stands wounded.
Not only by the death of a former Head of State, but also by the chilling silence that surrounded the slow, public erosion of his dignity. We mourn the passing of our sixth President, His Excellency Dr. Edgar Chagwa Lungu. But mourning alone will not suffice. Healing cannot begin until we, as a nation, find the courage to speak the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or politically inconvenient.
Mr. President, this is the truth.
You did not simply fail your predecessor.
You mistreated your brother until the very end.
You broke him systematically, publicly, and with frightening persistence.
What the late President Lungu endured in his final years was not the result of political rivalry or ideological difference. It was cruelty: deliberate, targeted, and inhumane.
Where he should have found rest and reflection, he found torment.
Where he should have been honored, he was humiliated.
Where he should have been protected, he was pursued.
And the most heart-wrenching and disgraceful act of all was that you denied him the opportunity to travel to South Africa for a critical medical review, not once, not twice, but three times. Let that truth settle for a moment.
How can a fellow human being, let alone a former President of the Republic of Zambia, be denied access to the healthcare he needed? What kind of leadership sees vulnerability and responds with vindictiveness? Denying a man the right to seek medical treatment is not merely a political decision. It is an inhumane act.
Yet you did not stop there.
You completed the humiliation when you stripped him of his security detail, exposing a former Commander-in-Chief to the very dangers your office is mandated to shield him from.
Why, Mr. President?
Why would you deliberately leave a man who once held the reins of our national defense vulnerable and unprotected?
What threat did Edgar Chagwa Lungu pose to you that justified violating the constitutional protections owed to a former Head of State?
This was not a security adjustment. It was a calculated act of degradation, a political punishment meant to diminish him publicly and psychologically. And you, Mr. President, allowed it through deliberate silence.
Zambians have not forgotten the images of Dr. Lungu being harassed while jogging. The surveillance. The media attacks by state-aligned platforms. The whispers and slander designed to chip away at his legacy. The cloud of legal threats that hung over him. A campaign of persecution that drove him into political exile within his own country.
Let us say it without fear.
You mistreated him to the grave.
His death was not merely a medical event. It was the culmination of sustained psychological warfare. He died not only with illness in his body, but with pain in his heart—pain inflicted by the very government that should have treated him with honor.
To those now speaking out, do not be afraid.
You are not traitors.
You are patriots.
You are truth-tellers.
And Zambia needs you now more than ever.
We must build a nation where justice is not selective, where leadership is not a license for revenge, and where those who have served, even if flawed, are treated with the human dignity every Zambian deserves.
Mr. President, this moment will follow you for the rest of your life and into history.
You failed Edgar Chagwa Lungu.
You failed the sacred brotherhood of leadership.
You failed the millions who believed your promise to unite, not divide.
Now he is gone.
A man of resilience.
A statesman.
A husband.
A father.
Silenced by a hostile political system. And yet, in death, his silence roars louder than the voices that tried to bury his truth.
Let this be a turning point, Mr. President, not just for you but for Zambia.
Let this be the last time that power is used as a weapon against a fellow citizen.
Let it be the final time a leader is punished simply for existing.
Dr. Edgar Chagwa Lungu deserved better.
Zambia deserved better.
And to you, Mr. President, history will remember.
It will remember how you treated your brother.
It will remember how you wielded power.
And it will remember that, in the end, you drove a former President to his grave not with violence, but with sustained cruelty and political indifference.
Let us rise from this darkness, not with vengeance but with courage.
Let us speak.
Let us mourn.
Let us never forget.
May his memory ignite the conscience of a nation and compel us never again to mistake power for purpose.
Sincerely,
Thandiwe Ketis Ngoma
A Grieving and Awakened Zambian
So his treatment of the current president, to you was nothing? The departed was the worst president Zambia has ever had. These words are unnecessary, but because of your warped reasoning, I had to say this truth.
Dying at 68, given his alcoholic lifestyle, is not premature. The man damaged his health even before he became president.
If he he was treated the he treated HH he would not have lived even to 60 years.
Lungu knew the consequences of getting back into active politics. He was stripped as per the constitution of all perks and items of a former head of state. To now start twisting this simple narrative in the direction of this stripping being personal persecution is down right schyopet. No one is going to buy that kind of nonsense. You, the parasites that surrounded him, misled him because your only concern was for your stomachs. And the scraps he would throw at you. His clearly already deteriorating health and the acceleration in the deterioration of his health as a direct result of getting back into active politics was none of your concern. And today you want to cry kulokodylo tears? You have no shame…………you……………………….
Guys tone down this is not the time for demonising people
If this was not the time, this girl should not have written such a thing. All Zambians know Lungu. That’s the reason they voted him out. Yes, let’s tell the truth, he was a gangster President. You don’t expect people to keep quite when you write nonsense just because it’s morning time. You will get a response. This thing shall come to pass in a couple of days time regardless of the drama. People will move on. Even those at the Secretariat will soon realize they need to get back to their merchandising to feed their families.
That Thandiwe Ketis woman must slow down. She spews rubbish at will. You saw you man wasting and finishing and the only thing you were happy to sing was alebwelelapo, so sing now, I want to see something. Interrogate your faculties and find out whether you are normal or not. There will be no more crumbs to pick on the table. Be real and get a life.
Well narrated Thandiwe, it is only the truth and nothing but the truth which will bring true healing to our land. HH is guilty, an accomplice and a perpetrator of everything that happened to ECL up to his grave. ECL was denied medical attention outside the country not once, not twice but three times due to reasons better known and understood by HH himself. He is definitely a scared president. His actions will haunt him for the rest of his life because blood speaks. No matter how much he tries to console himself and the nation, Zambia will never be the same again. The nation is not only mourning , but the nation is in distress, the nation is in pain and the nation is divided on how inhumane man can be to his fellow man. ECL had his own flaws but he never and truly never deserved to be treated like this ba Kateeka. We wish you well from the Diaspora as you continue the rest of your remaining term in office. The Zambian people who gave you that job will soon be calling you for interviews and on that day the powers given to the Zambian people to either fire you or re-engage you will be put to full display. May the painful departed Soul of ECL rest in peace. Concerned Zambian in the Diaspora – UK
Yes, he is gone. So is your pay check. PF is gone and dusted. Those remaining scroungers have already started defecting.