Hikaumba’s Misleading and Conflicted Politics- Professor Namukolo Miyanda

Hikaumba’s Misleading and Conflicted Politics

By Professor Namukolo Miyanda, Pan-Africanist and Governance Expert

8th July, 2026

Mr. Leonard Hikaumba’s recent statement, _“Public Servants Must Take Threats Against Them Seriously”_, presents itself as a defence of the civil service. Yet on close reading, it is both misleading and conflicted. Civil servants deserve protection from politicisation. That protection begins with separating legitimate calls for professional accountability from partisan fear-mongering disguised as advocacy.

First, Mr. Hikaumba should leave civil servants out of partisan contests. He is not their elected representative, nor their appointed spokesperson. The civil service operates under established statutes, codes of conduct, and oversight institutions, not under the pronouncements of retired union leaders or party vice presidents. To appropriate the voice of public officers without mandate is to politicise the very institution he claims to defend. This is where the conflict lies: Hikaumba warns against political intimidation while simultaneously using civil servants as a political constituency to advance his party’s position ahead of 13 August 2026. You cannot decry politicisation while practising it

Second, the record and conduct of Mr. Brian Mundubile must be assessed on facts, not allegory. With years of service as a legislator, Leader of Opposition in Parliament, and government minister, Mundubile has operated within constitutional structures that require engagement with the civil service. His understanding of the values and professional ethics demanded of civil servants is drawn from direct legislative and executive experience. A leader with that background knows that a functioning state depends on a professional, impartial bureaucracy. He can never threaten officers acting in an acceptable professional manner when discharging their duties. Accountability is not intimidation. Calling on public officers to adhere to impartiality, to serve the state rather than a party, and to avoid partisan conduct is a defence of the civil service, not an attack on it.

Indeed, it is Mundubile who has already projected a good and caring heart for all Zambians, including civil servants. The very name of his political vehicle, the National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity, signals intent. Reconciliation is the opposite of retribution. Unity rejects division between state and citizen. Prosperity includes secure, professional public officers whose merit, not political loyalty, determines their standing. You do not name a party after reconciliation if your instinct is to purge. You do not campaign on unity if your plan is to weaponise the state. The name reflects a political philosophy that civil servants should welcome: stability, inclusion, and service to the Republic, not to a faction.

Mundubile’s comments can only be of concern to those civil servants who are currently acting unprofessionally or favouring the interests of the ruling UPND instead of being impartial as required of a professional civil service system. The Public Service Management Division Code of Ethics and the Constitution of Zambia require civil servants to be non-partisan and to serve the government of the day loyally while upholding professionalism. When political preference influences recruitment, procurement, or service delivery, it erodes public trust and violates the law. To demand neutrality is to uphold the institution. To label that demand a “threat” is to confuse accountability with victimisation.

Third, Hikaumba’s approach mirrors a familiar pattern from George Orwell’s _Animal Farm_, an allegory of how power is distorted through propaganda. Consider Squealer, the pig who served as the farm’s propagandist. Squealer repeatedly told the other animals that they were free and that the pigs’ privileges were for the common good, all while rewriting the farm’s commandments to justify new abuses. He used fear of the return of Mr. Jones to silence dissent and to keep the animals loyal to Napoleon’s rule. Hikaumba’s statement functions in the same way. He invokes fear of a past administration, rewrites accountability as “threats,” and positions himself as the guardian of civil servants while urging them toward a specific electoral outcome. Like Squealer, he tells the public servants that only one political choice guarantees their safety, and that to question it is to invite disaster. This is not protection. It is manipulation.

Fourth, Mr. Hikaumba invokes history to argue that Zambians should fear a return to harassment of civil servants. History must be cited with precision. The abuses he describes — harassment by cadres, assaults, forced removals — were lawless acts condemned across the political spectrum. They were not policy directives of any one individual. To assign collective guilt by association, while ignoring due process and individual responsibility, is a fallacy that debases public debate. If evidence exists of misconduct by any leader, it belongs before competent investigative and judicial bodies, not in sweeping analogies.

The scorpion and frog parable is instructive, but its application here is inverted. The lesson is that nature does not change. The nature of a professional civil service is impartiality. The nature of democratic oversight is to insist on it. When a political actor warns that deviation from neutrality will have consequences under the law, that is not a sting; it is the riverbank — the rule of law that keeps both frog and scorpion from drowning in chaos.

Finally, character does matter in leadership. Part of character is the courage to tell civil servants the truth: that their security lies in professionalism, not in political patronage. The current environment cannot be assessed by selective memory. Many public officers still report transfers, suspensions, and exclusion based on perceived political alignment. Dignity is not restored by slogans; it is secured by institutions that protect all civil servants from all parties, in and out of power.

Therefore, the comments by Hikaumba against Mundubile are misplaced and capable of misleading the people of Zambia. They conflate a call for accountability with a threat, appoint a self-declared guardian for a service that already has legal guardians, and use fear to discourage legitimate scrutiny.

Zambians should indeed reflect carefully before 13 August 2026. They should ask which candidate defends a civil service that is professional, non-partisan, and protected by law, and which voices seek to speak for civil servants while dragging them into partisan exchanges. The public service does not belong to any party, scorpion, or frog. It belongs to the Republic. Let it be guarded by law, not by allegory, and not by those who, like Squealer, claim to speak for the many while serving the few.