MULILO KABESHA: THE MOST EVIL, PARTISAN AND UNPROFESSIONAL ATTORNEY GENERAL IN ZAMBIAN HISTORY
By Thandiwe Ketiš Ngoma
Zambia has had some partisan, terribly evil and unprofessional Attorney Generals in the past but none compares to the current Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha. The one time UPND Kabwe Central constituency losing parliamentary candidate is so partisan and unprofessional in his conduct that one would be mistaken for thinking that it is the UPND who pays his salary. Most disturbing has been his failure to rein in on President Hichilema’s obsession to punish former president Edgar Lungu in death as he did in life. More evil however has been his own callous and insensitive comments that he has made about the late President’s funeral including the abominable statement that the government is prepared to bury the deceased without the participation of his family.
Moreover, perhaps because he is a politician in a public office that requires professionals, Kabesha has a dubious distinction of making unsound legal arguments on the matter. His recent claim that the Government of Zambia “reinstated” presidential benefits to former President Edgar Chagwa Lungu after his death is not merely a weak legal argument. It is constitutionally reckless, ethically disturbing, and profoundly insulting to both the intelligence of the Zambian people and the dignity of a grieving family
This assertion has been advanced as though it carries legal force, as though it somehow sanitises or justifies the State’s continued interference in the burial of a man who, at the time of his death, was a private citizen. It does neither. It cannot. And it never will.
When examined through the lens of constitutional law, this argument collapses entirely.
No Constitutional or Statutory Authority Whatsoever
There is absolutely no provision in the Constitution of Zambia, and no statute anywhere in the country’s laws, that allows presidential benefits lawfully withdrawn during a former President’s lifetime to be “reinstated” after death.
None.
Presidential benefits are not symbolic gestures or political favours to be extended at convenience. They are personal legal entitlements, tied directly to conduct and status during life. When former President Edgar Chagwa Lungu returned to active politics, those benefits were withdrawn in accordance with the law. That decision was lawful, deliberate, and final.
Death does not resurrect withdrawn rights. The Constitution does not permit executive sentimentality, public pressure, or political expediency to manufacture rights where none exist. To claim otherwise is to invent law where the Constitution is silent, and that is the very definition of executive overreach.
No Retroactive Resurrection of Legal Status
Even if one were to suspend disbelief and assume, purely for argument’s sake, that posthumous reinstatement were possible, it could not operate retroactively.
At the moment of his death, Edgar Chagwa Lungu was not a beneficiary of presidential privileges. He was a private citizen. That fact is legally fixed and immutable. Legal status is assessed at the point of death, not reconstructed afterward to suit administrative or political objectives.
No press statement, affidavit, court filing, or ministerial explanation can alter that reality.
At the moment of death, custody of Mr. Lungu’s remains vested immediately and lawfully in his next of kin, in accordance with long-established common law and customary principles governing burial rights. That vesting is automatic. It is not negotiable. And it is certainly not subject to posthumous executive imagination.
Benefits Do Not Confer Ownership or Custody of a Human Body
The Attorney General’s claim dangerously blurs a line that should never be blurred.
Presidential benefits, whether active, withdrawn, or allegedly “reinstated,” do not and have never conferred ownership, custody, or decision-making authority over a human body. There is no constitutional doctrine, no statute, and no judicial precedent under Zambian law that allows the State to say, “Because we paid benefits, we now control the corpse.”
That logic is grotesque.
Burial rights are governed by common law and customary law. They belong to families. They are grounded in dignity, tradition, and humanity, not in payrolls, ceremonial titles, or executive announcements.
A State Funeral Is Not a Weapon of Control
The Attorney General’s position also reveals either a profound misunderstanding, or a deliberate distortion, of what a state funeral actually is.
A state funeral is a ceremonial honour extended by the State. It is not a legal instrument that transfers ownership or control of a deceased person’s body to the government. It is offered, not imposed. It requires consent. It does not extinguish family authority or override the clearly expressed wishes of the deceased.
The State may assist. It may facilitate. But it may not command.
To treat a state funeral as a legal crowbar to pry open family rights is to weaponise ceremony against grief and to convert honour into coercion.
A Dangerous Assault on Constitutional Values
Persisting with this argument places the State on a direct collision course with the Constitution itself.
It threatens the right to human dignity.
It violates the right to privacy as it extends to family life and death.
It offends the principle of proportionality and restraint in the exercise of executive power.
The Constitution exists precisely to prevent this kind of overreach, particularly in matters as sacred, irreversible, and sensitive as death and burial.
Conclusion: This Argument Must Be Rejected
The Attorney General’s claim that presidential benefits were reinstated after the death of former President Edgar Chagwa Lungu is constitutionally hollow. It has no legal foundation. It carries no retroactive force. And it confers absolutely no authority over the remains of the deceased.
What it does reveal is desperation, a troubling willingness to mislead the public, and an alarming readiness to stretch constitutional interpretation beyond recognition in order to justify continued State interference.
The State may offer support to a grieving family. It may not manufacture consent. It may not litigate grief into submission. And it may not claim ownership over a body that does not belong to it.
The only constitutionally defensible path forward is restraint. Withdrawal from this argument. Withdrawal from unnecessary litigation. And full deference to the lawful authority of the Lungu family.
This woman or imposter lack the ability to think. Driven by some kind of zealotry behaviour that we see emerging among certain individuals and what I would refer as to “numbskulls” people who dont tnink. Just regurititate whatever garbage that crosses their minds.
Reading the last paragraph of her article one gets the guist the naiveity in this person.
Law like any field of learning or profession is a body of knowledge hinged on certain priniciples that have been proven overtime to be credible.
And the basis on which Edgar Lungu’s benefits were reinstated are based on some legal priniciple that was applied when Edgar Lungu rejoined active politics.
Now we may have fools like Mundubile who have a law degree and political expediance will lie or make statements to the contrary. This is the nature of Psychopaths. And we seem to have a growing number. That lie, misrepresent or attempt to misinform as we have seen and learnt from Emmanuel Mwamba in the IG Masumba matter amd others.
Most useless chap, pregnant with hate, she’ll never change. You can read if you want, I’ve no time
Such a coward hinding and slandering people! Days are numbered, come and say all that rubbish here so that people can have a recourse.
Why can’t this woman just join herself with that SA Rasta Lawyer, naba Makebi to present her points in the SA Appeals Court, instead of making noise to us on Social Media, daily? Isn’t this matter before the Appeal Court and both Parties will, at a set date, present their Arguments, and the Appeals Court will give its final judgement? She is wasting her time talking to us on Social Media, we are the wrong people and target of her anger and tantrums, unless the objective is to entertain us freely, which we enjoy!
Although we are all created by the same God, everyone in UPND is a bad and evil person to you especially HH. But we don’t know how good you alone was created if you are good at all. But from the narration in your long and boring articles, you don’t sound a good person at all, you could even be worse than the person you are talking about.