Is Hichilema preparing to assassinate his main rival before the election date?
By Sishuwa Sishuwa
“They are now left with only one option, which is to eliminate our [presidential] candidate (President Brian Mundubile)”, wrote Binwell Mpundu, a key member of Mundubile’s campaign team, on his Facebook page 11 days before Zambia goes to the polls on 13 August.
https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1032261176448046&id=100089925183869
Although Mpundu did not mention who exactly he was referring to by ‘They’, it is reasonable to assume that it was President Hakainde Hichilema and his supporters.
Is Hichilema preparing to assassinate his main rival before the election date? On face value, this question might seem dramatic. However, a closer scrutiny of the unfolding dynamics suggests that the question deserves clear answers for three reasons.
First, some of Hichilema’s most prominent supporters have openly called for the elimination of Mundubile on the ground that he represents a serious threat to the president’s re-election prospects. For instance, in a leaked audio to State House officials that has been widely shared on social media, one of Hichilema’s most prominent supporters popularly known as Seer 1 is heard calling for the death of Mundubile, saying the leader of “a party that was formed two months” should have long been got rid of.
“From far back, I told you guys to eliminate this guy [i.e. Mundubile] out of this race… You did not do it…Imagine President HH [Hakainde Hichilema] handing over power to Mundubile. They will kill him…. If HH does not hand over power to a person that would protect him, they would arrest…send him to jail…and kill him.
“I warned people. The assurance I received from the people I am working with was[that] it would be done. Where is it?… Even in America, Donald Trump was shot [at a] few days before the election. They wanted to kill him. That is America for you. The America you are respecting, bowing to, they do dirty politics. On our side, we want to please everybody. Sometimes, I don’t understand the type of people I work with…
“Mundubile is in Solwezi today. We cannot mobilise boys to scatter his head? Stone him! This guy is in our bedroom, and we are looking at him like he is a reverend father… Do you want HH out of power?”
https://facebook.com/MPLillianMutambo/videos/seer-1-asks-for-mundubile-to-be-murdered-before-elections-as-his-audio-to-hamasa/2160306767849316/
Hichilema has neither distanced himself from such calls to violence nor condemned them.
Second, Mundubile’s campaign has so far survived three coordinated violent attacks from supporters of the ruling party: one in Kitwe, another in Lusaka, and the latest one in Solwezi. No arrests have been made to date in either case. In addition, Hichilema has neither condemned the violence nor called on the police to arrest the perpetrators. A president who has delivered on their campaign promises and is therefore confident of victory in a fair election will not tacitly approve calls for the killing of their opponents or acts of political violence.
Third, Mundubile’s death would be of significant political benefit to Hichilema. It would result, for example, in the removal of the president’s most serious threat to retaining power, the immediate postponement of the presidential election, and, since the other elections to various public offices will proceed as scheduled, the availability of all other party officials currently fighting their own contests to campaign for Hichilema in the re-rescheduled election.
Zambia’s constitution provides that “Where a candidate sponsored by a political party dies before the date prescribed for the holding of an election, the Electoral Commission shall cancel the election, and call for the filing of a fresh nomination by the political party whose candidate died, and the election shall be held within thirty days of filing of the fresh nomination.”
Apart from industrial scale vote-rigging, the pre-ballot death of Mundubile represents the only way in which Hichilema can avoid defeat. Seen from this perspective, the president’s failure to condemn both the calls for the killing of Mundubile and the violent attacks on his campaign are not accidental. They demonstrate the length to which Hichilema is willing to go to avoid the embarrassment of losing power after just one term in office.
Now, do not get me wrong. Presidents do lose power, but to lose to a little-known party formed weeks before the election and with no national structures and such limited resources that it had to supplement its campaign with donations from poor and ordinary citizens would show the extent of the revulsion against President Hichilema. Killing Mundubile would eliminate the risk of this extreme embarrassment.
On 21 June this year, I tweeted that “Hichilema will lose the election on 13 August [for reasons that I explained in both the accompanying article and this interview https://youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=sCd4JB7HNM8&ra=m]. The only thing that can save him from defeat is pre-ballot death or industrial scale vote-rigging. Never again should Zambia elect a lying, tribal, corrupt, unpatriotic, vindictive, hypocritical, lawless, and undemocratic scumbag.”
Over a month later, I maintain this view. For me, the real question now is no longer whether Hichilema will lose the election. He will – unless he eliminates his main rival or resorts to industrial scale vote-rigging. However, the latter channel of retaining power is increasingly becoming so risky that he would have to be completely reckless to implement it.
For me, the real question is if the president, were he to lose as I expect him to, will easily accept defeat or ask the military to defend him or even seize power rather than handing it to the opposition. Although Vice-President Mutale Nalumango has publicly conceded that Hichilema will accept defeat “in the unlikely event” that he loses the election, the president has himself refused to publicly make this undertaking, stoking fears of a possible violent transition.
This brings us back to the original question: Will Hichilema seek to prevent the defeat that awaits him by hiring assassins to take the life of his main rival – or even his running mate since the effect is the same – before the election? Well, I do not know. What I know are the four main reasons that explain why Hichilema is desperate to retain power at all costs.
The first is the fear of prosecution for possible corruption or criminal misuse of power. Hichilema has extensive business interests that span nearly all sectors of Zambia’s economy. In opposition, Hichilema promised to lead by example in ensuring annual declaration of assets by all senior officials once in power, arguing that “the public should know” the business interests of their leaders to avoid corruption.
Since his election, the president has refused to publish his assets and liabilities, which makes it difficult to work out to what extent his policies are benefiting companies in which he has an interest. Once he leaves office, however, a new government can revisit the subject and seek his arrest for possible corruption or abuse of office.
The second is that Hichilema appears to be beholden to a variety of commercial interests that stand to lose out if he left office this month. During his decade-and-a half in opposition, he cultivated close ties with private supporters – local and external – who reportedly bankrolled his election campaigns in return for favourable government policies, once in power.
This includes local businessmen and multinational corporations in the extractive sector that appear to have undue influence on the president and direction of policy especially in mining. These private actors who aligned with him for financial reasons now seek a return on their investment. One five-year term is insufficient to recoup their investment, so they are pushing for his continued stay in power by whatever means.
The third is that Hichilema appears to see himself primarily as the leader of Zambians from one half of the country. Many people from Southern, Northwestern, and Western provinces believe they have been historically marginalised by their counterparts from the Eastern and the Bemba-speaking provinces of Northern, Luapula and Muchinga. As was the case under his predecessor, the binary between us and them has been sharply drawn under Hichilema’s leadership and found expression in the skewed distribution of appointments to public office.
As well as heading the executive, parliament and the judiciary, Zambians from Hichilema’s region dominate the leadership positions of all five security services, the justice system, electoral commission, foreign service, and most posts in the civil service and parastatal bodies. Hichilema – the first president from his region since independence in 1964 – does not see anything wrong with this ethnic-regional entrenchment and gross underrepresentation of other groups.
Fearful that a leader from the other half of the country would reverse the trend were he to lose, the solution is to remain in power until after this election and then either organise a successor from his region who can consolidate its hold on power, extend or remove presidential term limits, or abolish presidential election and instead empower the reconstituted National Assembly – which, following the recent gerrymandering of constituencies, now has more seats from Hichilema’s region than the remaining regions – to choose the president.
The final reason is connected to the risk that Mundubile’s life faces: that Hichilema wishes to avoid the embarrassment of losing power after just one term. Having spent fifteen years in opposition, it is understandable that the president does not want to leave power on such an inglorious record. However, he only has himself to blame for the growing public discontent against his leadership.
Over the last five years, Hichilema has antagonised the multi-ethnic coalition that brought him to power, prioritised the arrest of political opponents and critics rather than improving the deplorable economic conditions in which majority Zambians continue to live, paid more attention to the interests of foreign actors especially mining companies rather than domestic concerns, nurtured high-level corruption in government, destroyed any remaining semblance of autonomy in formal institutions by packing them with loyalists, and embraced and refined the authoritarian tendencies of his predecessors.
All things considered, Hichilema is a failed political experiment.
Sometimes I ask myself: what has happened to the Hichilema we had in opposition? The Hichilema in opposition could actively listen and learn. He promised people what they wanted, identified with the people and their needs, and played the part of the ordinary citizen who can represent all citizens. He appeared as a decent political leader who was outraged by anti-democratic or repressive legislation, abuse, injustice, lies, corruption, and ethnic-regional divisions, and a steady pair of hands who could help restore Zambia’s democratic tradition and resuscitate the faltering economy. In power or since his ascent to the position of President, Hichilema has so easily found comfort in the company of all the vices he denounced in opposition that one may think his conscience has been stolen. What would Hichilema’s former self think of him now?
Lacking intellectual curiosity, the Hichilema in power is dripping with arrogance, talks even where he should listen, has U-turned on many of the positions that made him attractive to most Zambians when he was in opposition, has systematically moved to alienate the various constituencies (in the broader sense) that voted for him, and is so extremely detached from reality that he is now promising to construct state-of-the-art airports in impoverished rural communities that have no functioning road network so that ordinary people could “fly to London directly”.
Hichilema’s detachment from reality was on full display on 1 August when his main rival asked his supporters for financial support. Writing on his Facebook page, Mundubile said:
“Fellow Zambians,
I invite you to visit our campaign support platform and make a voluntary contribution. This is truly a people-driven campaign. Click on the link below for more details
http://Nrpupfundraising.com
God bless you, and God bless Zambia.”
In a veiled reference to Hichilema, whose campaign, according to Global Witness, received a pledge of $50 million from the Canadian mining giant First Quantum Minerals in exchange for the diversion of “$771m…away from the copper-rich nation’s indebted economy and its people”, Mundubile later added that “Zambia’s mineral wealth should serve public interests, not private interests. Tax concessions that override public interests are a form of corruption.”
The irony was clearly lost on Hichilema who took to his own Facebook page to mock Mundubile as so impoverished that he has resorted to the use of “GoFundMe” to finance his campaigns:
“Anyway, we have CDF [Constituency Development Fund] for those who need financing!”, the president added.
When he was in opposition, Hichilema repeatedly asked his supporters to help finance his campaigns including ahead of the 2016 and 2021 elections.
https://x.com/HHichilema/status/639051130387963904?s=20
In power, he is actively mocking his political opponents for doing the same thing. The lack of sensitivity could not be starker and is only matched by his hypocrisy.
In a show of how ordinary struggling citizens are keen to vote out Hichilema, many have since been publishing evidence of their contributions, small and huge, to Mundubile’s campaign, with most of them noting that they would rather finance Zambia’s democracy than leave the responsibility to foreign mining corporations.
Barely 24 hours after he launched the GoFundMe campaign, Mundubile, in a show of transparency, disclosed that “we have received over K860,000 cash and K2.8 million in pledges”. He also thanked the “marketeers, farmers, public transport drivers (taxi, buses and truck drivers), college and university students, saloon and barbershop staff, welders, miners, nurses, uniformed officers, teachers, council workers, business owners, landlords, tenants, old men and women, diaspora supporters, doctors, car dealers and repairers, guards, maids, and villagers among many others) for the generous support and for believing in my leadership by physically donating to my campaign and expectant victory next week.”
Hichilema’s main rival added: “Please, continue donating, continue visiting the platform and continue sharing the information with your friends, workmates and family every day. This is a visible testimony that this campaign and my presidency belong to you as Zambians. Let us peacefully walk together and legally win this election together as One Zambia, One Nation.”
If Hichilema sought to ridicule Mundubile’s fundraising efforts, the outpouring of support that his rival has received from ordinary Zambians within a day suggests that it has achieved the opposite effect. If there is any one instant lesson that the President should take from this incident, it is that many Zambians now support whatever he opposes and opposes whatever he supports. Such is the extent of the growing revulsion against him that he has effectively become a repellent.
It does not help that Hichilema has not formally denied the report by
@Global_Witness
that First Quantum Minerals is “bankrolling” his campaigns.
Read the full report here: https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/transition-minerals/how-a-canadian-mining-giant-infiltrated-zambias-democracy/
Multinational mining companies in Zambia are not looked upon favourably by much of the country’s population. Instead of publicly denying the report that the country’s democracy has been infiltrated by the Canadian mining giant and launching an independent investigation into the matter, the president chose to put a stone around his neck by adopting silence as a response, effectively feeding popular perceptions that his affinities lie with the mining companies he once advised rather than the country whose mineral wealth is being plundered.
The president’s cavalier attitude on this issue might explain why his administration failed, over the last five years, to enact the Political Parties Bill which, according to Article 60 (4) of the current Constitution, should provide for: the establishment and management of a Political Parties’ Fund to provide financial support to political parties with seats in the National Assembly; the accounts of political parties which are funded under the Political Parties’ Fund and the submission of audited accounts by political parties; the sources of funds for political parties; and the maximum amount of money to be used for campaigns during elections.
In 2006, President Levy Mwanawasa said this about Hichilema: “His understanding of politics is that it doesn’t matter; you can cheat, provided you get your goals. The problem [with] Mr Hichilema is…that he wants to cheat, to mislead, to show that he is what he is not”. Was Hichilema a fraud who fooled many into believing that he was a bankable candidate only to show his true colours after assuming state power?
Or perhaps he was, all along, just a bad political leader whose many weaknesses we overlooked in our quest to get rid of his predecessor and a compulsive liar who made various promises which he had no intention of implementing and, in many cases, had the definite intention of doing exactly the opposite? Was his strategy to propose popular policies in order to get elected, and then to drop them after his election?
Whatever the answer, Hichilema should know one thing: Mundubile’s death before the election will set Zambia ablaze. If there are any plans to take the life of his rival, I advise the president to abandon them immediately. Do people have to die for Hichilema to remain in power?
Source: https://x.com/ssishuwa/status/2083954865974149275?s=20
Who wrote this rubbish?