An Open Letter to President Hakainde Hichilema

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