Ubuntu on Ice: Kampyongo’s ECL Cry for Humanity
…in an emotional Xmas countdown take of Lungu
Amb. Anthony Mukwita – Saturday Reflections
13th Dec 2025.
The Christmas lights twinkle in Lusaka, yet their glow feels hollow, refracted through the icy prism of a steel casket in Pretoria.
Edgar Chagwa Lungu, Zambia’s sixth president, lies frozen – not in memory, but literally, in a morgue seven feet deep in steel and silence.
The Attorney General prepares to carve into a roasted turkey, while the nation carves into its conscience, asking: how did we arrive at a Christmas without ubuntu, without humanity, without closure?
Stephen Kampyongo, once Internal Security Minister under Lungu, broke the silence at an anti–Bill 7 briefing. His voice cracked with grief: “For the first time in Zambia’s history, we shall celebrate Christmas without a very important man in our universe.
No
President Edgar Lungu died on 5 June, and since then has been frozen in a steel casket, denied a dignified send-off. It bleeds my heart.”
His lament was not just about a man, but about a nation’s soul. Ubuntu – the African creed of compassion, of being human through others – seems to have evaporated.
“How can we sing and dance while the father of the nation lies frozen in Pretoria? What have we become?” Kampyongo asked.
Madam Esther Lungu, widow and former First Lady, remains trapped in mourning, her black dress a permanent shroud.
Her daughter Tasila Lungu, who dared to follow her father’s political footsteps, was stripped of her parliamentary seat for mourning abroad.
The cruelty compounds says Kampyongo: a family denied closure, a nation denied dignity, a presidential ghost denied rest.
The Ghost in the Fridge
Zambia’s crossroads are not only economic — double-digit inflation, 64% poverty – but spiritual.
The elephant in the house is not the ballot, but the corpse in Pretoria. The Attorney General’s locked jaw on Lungu’s body raises questions: is this precedent, or punishment? Is Zambia rehearsing a tragicomedy of history?
Examples abound. In Africa, Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire lay unburied for months in 1993 as politics delayed his funeral.
In medieval times, Pope Formosus was exhumed and tried in the grotesque “Cadaver Synod,” his body paraded as a legal pawn.
Zambia now risks joining this macabre league, where leaders become frozen relics instead of dignified memories. We are breaking a sad record.
Silence and Shadows
Ordinary sympathisers whisper: “It is taboo to speak of ECL now.” Silence has become the unwritten law. Yet silence is complicity.
Bravo Kampyongo, for daring to speak when others tremble. His words rip open wounds that frost cannot numb.
Lungu was not perfect, but he was human. He built bridges and roads, united the nation, and awkwardly danced the funky chicken with a smile that disarmed critics.
On 11 November, he would have turned 69. Instead, he remains trapped between Lusaka and Pretoria, a restless spirit hovering in legal limbo.
The Question of Compassion
As the French caution: “Le silence des vivants est plus cruel que la mort des rois” — the silence of the living is more cruel than the death of kings.
And in Swahili, a reminder: “Huruma ni ngao ya binadamu, kwa rafiki na adui vilevile” – compassion is the shield of humanity, for both friend and foe alike. The Daily Revelation Newspaper
Christmas Frostbite
Christmas is meant to be warmth, family, and song. Yet this year, Zambia faces frostbite. The oxymoron is stark: fairy lights against steel morgue walls, roasted turkey against frozen flesh, carols against silence. Smart Eagles
The nation celebrates while its former leader ECL lies uncelebrated.
Is Zambia headed for a fall? Perhaps. Or perhaps Hon. Kampyongo’s cry will thaw the ice, reminding us that ubuntu is not optional. It is the heartbeat of a nation, 12 days before Christmas.
Amb. Anthony Mukwita is a published Author & International Relations Analyst.
It’s you the PF that have refused to bury ECL in a dignified manner as our former head of state. You had your own plans, unfortunately those plans have backfired. Just swallow your stubbornes and bury this man. You’re the same people that cornered the KK family to bury KK at embassy park despite the family having different wishes, tell us what has changed with ECL. Just do the right thing please, we’re tired of your political games that are not taking you anywhere.
Steven blaming others for your own making doesn’t help, just a reminder a criminal remains so whenever him or might be, be in in a mortuary, prison or free.
This Mukwita Fellow, always trying to steer up our sympathetic emotions as a people is very manipulative. He always tells one side of the story. To him, there is only one side which is the Victim and the other side is the Persecutor. Very basic and elementary reasoning.
Remember he was gifted with a diplomatic job for merely writing a premature biography on ECL
If hearts can bleed, it is difficult to imagine that some people actually have hearts.
Sir, all Humans have hearts and they bleed, mine does and I am sure yours does too. It is only a question of perception and prejudice, especially prejudices, all manner of prejudices: tribal, entitlement, superiority/inferiority complexies, name them…… There is, currently, just too much senseless polarisation in this country: It is always “Them and Us”. When we are supposed to be just one people. I wish KK was immortal and lived forever to continue shouting and singing to us his favourite Slogans: “Tiyende Pamodzi…. and One Zambia One Nation”, waving his White Handkerchief!
These people don’t know that they are sinning against Lungu, no corpse has ever been kept for six months without burial and kept in a foreign country. We are seeing it for the first time with PF. What they forget is that once this body is dead, there is nothing you can still get from it, it just has to go back to the soil where it came from, that is what God said. So to delay someone’s burial is tantamount to opposing God. Unless they are telling us that Lungu is not dead, but even then, it is evil to fake someone’s death for the sake of gaining political mileage.
What a senseless article. Who today can stand up and blame the Attorney General for this impasse? The writer is coming out like an underprivileged boy who has no option but to write songs of praises for his condemned sponsors. Low life reasoning indeed.
Ba Mukwita, it is not silence, Zambians have simply moved on. Even the Lungu family spokesperson, Mr. Makebi Zulu, has moved on. He is campaigning for the very seat the deceased left.