Brian Mundubile accuses state of moving to block election petition as deadline nears

Opposition leader Brian Mundubile has accused the Zambian government of working to derail his planned Constitutional Court challenge to President Hakainde Hichilema’s re-election, with the seven-day window to file the petition closing on Monday, 24 August.

The Electoral Commission of Zambia declared Hichilema winner of the 13 August vote on 18 August, with 2,965,326 votes, or 60.49 percent, against 1,856,217, or 37.87 percent, for Mundubile. Under Article 103 of the Constitution, a presidential petition must be filed within seven days of the declaration, after which the Constitutional Court has 14 days to determine it.

Mundubile has rejected the result, saying his campaign documented serious irregularities in the counting, transmission and declaration of results. He has gone further, alleging that soldiers entered some totalling centres and interfered with the count. Government has not addressed that specific claim, and it has not been independently verified.

His legal team is understood to have engaged senior lawyers, among them Chifumu Banda and Bonaventure Mutale, to build the case ahead of the deadline. Reports suggest the effort has come at considerable cost to Mundubile’s campaign, a sign of how far he intends to press the challenge despite the pressure closing in around him.

That pressure, his camp says, now extends to the petition itself. Mundubile’s team alleges the state has moved to disrupt preparations through the arrest of lawyers and officials involved in assembling the case, and points to reports of heightened security around the Constitutional Court grounds as the deadline nears. Neither claim has been confirmed independently, and government has not responded to them directly.

State House has taken a different public line. It says Mundubile remains free to pursue his challenge through the courts. Clayson Hamasaka, State House Communication Specialist, has separately rejected broader claims of arbitrary arrests, describing the government’s post-election operations as lawful investigations rather than a campaign against the opposition.

The petition is also exposing strain within Mundubile’s own alliance. Zumani Zimba, Secretary General of the Tonse Alliance, has distanced himself from the court challenge, warning it risks deepening division rather than resolving it, while other alliance partners have already conceded the presidential result.

To understand why Mundubile believes the petition itself is under threat, the story has to go back eleven days, to the night the count began. On 14 August, the day after the vote, a security operation at Mundubile’s Kabulonga residence turned violent. Government says officers encountered gunfire when they moved on the property; Mundubile says his group was unarmed and fired upon without warning. Former cabinet minister Mutotwe Kafwaya, 49, was shot and killed during the operation, in what Mundubile says happened in his own presence.

Eleven people found at the scene that night were subsequently charged with treason-related offences: Bishop Trevor Mwamba, George Chisanga, Patrick Mwansa, Jackson Mutyoka, Brazil Soko, Bernard Chewe, Simon Phiri, Richard Banda, Francis Mulenga, Emmanuel Mulenga and Darius Mwila. President Hichilema has since accused Mundubile of forming a militia, an allegation Mundubile rejects as an attempt to obscure his claims of a manipulated election. Police have issued a call-out for Mundubile and Zulu to report over treason and insurrection allegations, and Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has urged Zambian authorities to halt arbitrary arrests and ensure due process for those held.

It was that raid, and its aftermath, that sent Mundubile and Zulu into shelter at United Nations premises in Lusaka, where they remain. Mundubile now argues the operation and Kafwaya’s killing were the opening move in a broader effort to weaken him before he could get to court, an effort he says has continued through the past eleven days and into the current fight over his petition. Government maintains the raid targeted a suspected militia cell and had nothing to do with the election challenge that followed it.

International observers, including the European Union mission, described the pre-election environment as shaped by legal uncertainty and unequal campaign conditions, but stopped short of alleging manipulation of the count itself. That distinction will matter once the case reaches court, since any evidence Mundubile presents will be weighed on its own merits rather than on the surrounding political noise.

The immediate question is narrower than the wider dispute over who won. It is whether Mundubile can get his petition filed, and his legal team through the courthouse doors, before Monday’s deadline passes. Once that happens, the Constitutional Court’s 14-day clock begins, and Zambia moves from a fight over process into a fight over evidence.