The aspiring candidate said the case was not rooted in justice but in politics, casting the charge as part of a wider effort to drag opposition figures into court and away from the campaign trail. He spoke during Costa’s Cross-Examination on Diamond TV, where he was pressed on the charges, his release on police bond and the effect the case could have on his bid for the presidency with 144 days left before polling day.
Mundubile said the pattern, in his view, had become familiar in Zambia’s opposition politics. He argued that leaders who speak against President Hakainde Hichilema and the government are increasingly confronted with legal trouble that consumes time and public attention. His argument was that arrests, court appearances and bond conditions carry a political cost even before any matter is tested in court.
He rejected the case against him as a genuine criminal process and said the events surrounding his detention reinforced that belief. In his account, officers first approached him at the airport shortly before departure, questioned him over a range of names and alleged contacts, then later took him into detention before a different matter was placed before him the following morning. He described that sequence as disjointed and said it did not show a straight line from inquiry to charge.
According to Mundubile, the first interaction took place about 40 minutes before takeoff while he was in the VIP lounge. He said two men approached him, identified themselves as being from the Office of the President and began asking whether he knew several individuals, among them Walid Fendley, Moise Katumbi, former Democratic Republic of Congo president Joseph Kabila, Xavier Chungu and Sparks Mining. He said some names were known to him only in passing, while he denied having had direct contact or discussions with others.
He said the questioning grew more serious when officers told him they were worried by what they described as his activities and suggested he was involved in actions that could “put this country on fire.” Mundubile said he challenged that line directly, asking them to specify what they meant and to provide particulars. He said no detailed explanation was given and that the officers instead searched three of his phones using equipment at the scene.
Mundubile said he cooperated during the process but warned the officers that he considered the search unlawful because, in his account, there was no warrant and no formal arrest at that stage. He said he also reminded them that he was accessible as a member of parliament and did not need to be intercepted at the airport if authorities had a legitimate matter to put before him. In his telling, the manner of the intervention deepened his suspicion that the operation was designed for effect as much as for investigation.
He said the charge eventually brought against him did not even match the earlier questioning. Mundubile told the programme that after several hours at the airport and additional hours before being placed in police cells, officers returned the next morning with a matter he linked to an older case involving one of his media personnel. He said he was then accused of aiding, abetting and related offences, which he argued had little connection to the names and alleged plots raised the previous evening.
That gap between the first inquiry and the eventual charge sat at the centre of his political argument. Mundubile said it showed the process was assembled to inconvenience him rather than to pursue a clear criminal complaint. He said the intention was to interrupt his trajectory and prevent him from freely campaigning and marketing his message to citizens at a time when opposition politics are tightening ahead of the election.
The charge now lands in a wider political climate already marked by tension between the ruling party and opposition camps. Mundubile used the interview to place his experience alongside other opposition figures facing detention or criminal proceedings, arguing that many of those cases are political rather than substantive. He said the treatment of some former Patriotic Front figures had created an impression that anybody associated with the previous ruling party risked being branded corrupt or criminal before a court had reached any finding.
That argument was challenged repeatedly in the interview. Costa pressed him on whether citizens should worry that figures from the former ruling establishment, including Mundubile himself, carry unresolved questions from their time in office. Mundubile answered by saying guilt must be proved in court, not settled on political platforms, and he maintained that many public allegations over the past five years had not translated into convictions.
He also used the platform to present the arrest as a test of political freedom and civil rights. He said Zambia had entered a period where citizens could not speak, move or assemble freely in the way a functioning democracy demands. In that framing, his detention was not only a personal legal matter but part of a bigger struggle over how open the political field will be in the run-up to polling day.
The issue now moves from the television studio to the courts, where the state’s case and Mundubile’s defence will be tested formally. Yet the political impact is already in motion. For his supporters, the arrest may harden the image of a candidate under pressure from the state. For his rivals and critics, it opens a fresh line of scrutiny over conduct, associations and his readiness to carry a presidential campaign under legal strain.
What is already clear is that Mundubile has chosen not to retreat into a legal defence alone. He is treating the arrest as campaign material, folding it into a larger message that he is being targeted because he poses a political threat. That line is likely to remain part of his stump message as long as the case remains active and the election clock keeps moving.
Credit: Diamond TV