DR. NEVERS MUMBA WAS FIRED AS VICE PRESIDENT IN 2004 BY PRESIDENT MWANAWASA, FOR INSUBORDINATION-Actually, Dr. Mumba is the only pastor who has ever been vice president of Zambia and possibly, the only pastor who will never be the president of Zambia.
Before we talk about Pastor Nevers Mumba being fired as vice president, we must first understand how a pastor became Zambia’s vice president.
Yes, so, Rev. Dr. Nevers Sekwila Mumba was born on 18 May 1960, from a family of seven boys and five girls. He is actually, the eleventh and second last born child.
Coming from a UCZ family, young and intelligent; Mumba became a born-again Christian on 17 October 1977 at Hillcrest Secondary School.
After leaving Hillcrest, he was sponsored by the Mining Industry, on the Copperbelt, to study a diploma in instrumentation from Copperbelt Energy Institute in Kitwe.
Otherwise, three to four months before graduating, Mumba quit the instrumentation course and went round preaching in Kitwe under the aegis of the Assemblies of God.
When Pastor Reinhard Bonnke of Christ for All Nations Ministries came to Zambia in 1981; Gary Skinner, a Canadian missionary and Coordinator of the organization in Zambia, asked Mumba to be Bonnke’s interpreter in Kitwe. The ability to interpret, gave Mumba an opportunity to be travelling with Bonnke to places where he held his crusades.
Anyway, back to politics.
Dr. Mumba’s political journey is an interesting one.
After campaigning for, and giving platform to then president Fredrick Chiluba (FTJ) to champaign in their pentecostal Churches, Mumba and the colleagues expected some reward when FTJ formed government: but, he was ignored. Due to his influence around the Christian community, in 1997, he started mobilizing Christians to get into politics by starting a Christian Coalition called the National Christian Coalition (NCC).
NCC later became a political party and Mumba was the youngest of the eleven candidates in the 2001 presidential elections. Unfortunately, he could only get two percent of the total vote cast.
In May of 2003, Mumba announced his resignation from his own party (NCC) to join the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) stating Mwanawasa’s fight against corruption and his inclusive government as some of the reasons for his decision (Austin M. Cheyeka, UNISA: Pentecostal clergy and politics in Zambia/ATAFOM University).
In the same year and month, on Wednesday, May 28, 2003 Pastor Mumba was appointed Vice president by president Levy Patrick Mwanawasa (parliament.gov.zm)
After serving for sixteen months as Republican Vice-President, Mumba was fired: for insubordination.
Mwanawasa made the surprise announcement on Monday evening at a news conference at State House in the capital, Lusaka, saying Mumba had breached an oath of allegiance when he failed to retract his allegations that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was harbouring individuals who were working against the Zambian government.
Secretary to the Cabinet Joshua Kanganja told IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks, now The New Humanitarian) on Tuesday that Mumba’s dismissal had been with immediate effect, adding that he would be replaced by then Northern Province Minister Lupando Mwape. Mwanawasa had admonished his deputy over the accusations at the weekend, and apologised to the Congolese government. Mumba, however, refused to acknowledge that his comments were imprudent, much to the chagrin of Mwanawasa (The New Humanitarian -5 October, 2004).
“I am Mr Mumba’s boss and I am entitled to some form of respect in line with the oath that ministers, including the vice president, take when I appoint them. Since he did not regret what he said, I regret that I appointed him and I have with immediate effect removed him from office,” President Mwanawasa was quoted in the 2004 Zambia Daily Mail newspaper.
After the dismissal, Dr. Mumba went back to his preaching job and visited the United States of America. Some critics said that he had gone there to source financial support to enable him to contest the 2006 presidential election. Unfortunately, when he came back from USA, Mumba was expelled from MMD on Tuesday, June 1, 2006 by the National Executive Committee of the party.
This ended Mumba’s ambition to join the presidential race on the MMD ticket in the 2006 general elections. Nonetheless, this resulted in Mumba forming a fresh political party, Reform Party.
In the bid to unseat the MMD presidential candidate in the 2006 elections, five political parties formed an alliance namely, National Democratic Front; Reform Party; APC; the Party for Unity, Democracy and Development, ZRP, Patriotic Front (PF) and the ZDC. Before an election to choose the leader of the alliance, Michael Sata of PF pulled out of the alliance.
When the convention took place on 12 June 2006 with a delegation of 55 members selected country wide, Ben Mwila of the Zambia Republican Party (ZRP) was elected as the alliance’s presidential candidate for the 2006 presidential elections.
Pastor Mumba refused to accept the results and cited corruption at the convention, he then pulled out of the alliance and never participated in the 2006 September tripartite elections.
Otherwise, after Mwanawasa’s death; Mumba claimed to have had reconciled with Mwanawasa at state house. So, he rejoined MMD; though at the emergency convention, then Mwanawasa’s Vice-President, Rupiah Bwezani Banda was nominated to stand for the republican presidency and won the presidential by-election in 2008 (Austin M. Cheyeka, UNISA: Pentecostal clergy and politics in Zambia).
The MMD demonstrated party unity at that time, as the various cabinet ministers who had vied for the position at the convention, after they lost-they all rallied behind the RB.
In 2009, Rupiah Banda appointed Nevers Mumba as Zambia’s High Commissioner to Canada.
When MMD lost to PF in 2011, Dr. Nevers Mumba was recalled. In 2012 he became MMD party president.
Fast forward to 2025, Dr. Mumba has changed the name of the Movement for Multi party Democracy (MMD) to New Nation Party (NNP).
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