‘Why the Clergy Should Think Twice About Accepting Presidential Appointments’- Linda Banks

‘Why the Clergy Should Think Twice About Accepting Presidential Appointments’.

By Linda Banks ©

In a country where silence has become a survival mechanism, and truth a revolutionary act, it is imperative for moral leaders, especially members of the clergy to step cautiously when approached by political power. President Hakainde Hichilema’s recent appointment of Rt. Rev. Emmanuel Chikoya, General Secretary of the Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ), to the Human Rights Commission has sparked applause in some corners. But for those who have watched Zambia’s political history repeat itself with surgical cruelty, the moment is less one of pride and more of profound unease.

We must ask, Is this appointment a genuine call to service, or a quiet conscription into complicity?

Zambia has a long and troubling history of clerical leaders being co-opted by political power, only to emerge diluted, discredited, or disastrously compromised. When religious leaders align too closely with political regimes, they risk swapping their prophetic voice for a partisan whisper. They go from being voices of the people to ornaments of the palace, revered no longer as moral compasses, but as hollow legitimizers of oppression.

Consider Dr. Nevers Sekwila Mumba, a man once so revered, congregants spoke of him as “Jesus Junior.” Once a very solid national spiritual voice, his fall from spiritual grace to political ridicule is not merely a personal tragedy, but should serve as a warning to other men and women of the cloth. Today, even fools mock his name on social media. Not because he sinned greatly, but because he entered a political arena that devoured his credibility and sullied his once pristine pulpit. He remains a symbol of what happens when clergy mistake proximity to power for real influence.

Let us not forget Bishop John H. Yambasu of Sierra Leone, who tried to bridge the Methodist Church with the ruling SLPP government, only for the Church to fracture and his reputation to be questioned. In the United States, the image of the late Rev. Billy Graham praying with presidents from Nixon to Reagan has been both admired and criticised. His son, Franklin Graham, went further, aligning overtly with right-wing politics {So close to president Trump in his first term} and in doing so, compromising the very Gospel of love and truth he inherited.

What unites these examples is simple: prophetic credibility is always sacrificed on the altar of presidential approval.

President Hichilema, it must be said without flinching, has presided over a Zambia where democratic backsliding is no longer a threat but a fact. Opposition lawmakers have been jailed without transparent due process. Citizens are kidnapped in broad daylight. Journalists and civil rights defenders live in self-imposed exile. Others simply vanish, their families left to grieve in silence. And all this under the watch of a president who now dares to fill the Human Rights Commission with “credible” individuals.

Why?

Because credibility, once absorbed, becomes currency. The president needs people like Chikoya to sanitise his rule, to offer a façade of reform while maintaining a machinery of repression. Credibility, in Hichilema’s Zambia, is not respected, it is harvested, drained, and discarded. Ask Mumba Malila. Once a respected jurist, now reduced to a shadow presiding over constitutional decay, complicit in silence as rights are trampled and institutions gutted.

Is that the fate waiting for Rev. Chikoya?

It is not enough to be appointed into integrity. One must preserve it. And in a regime that appoints both the compromised and the credible, there is no honour in being summoned. There is only risk, the risk of becoming another well-dressed pawn in a game where the people always lose.

Zambia today has a Human Rights Commission on paper, but in practice, it is a symbolic entity. It has watched, even applauded, as journalists are arrested, whistleblowers are threatened, citizens disappear without trace and constitutional violations become routine. What power will Chikoya really have in such a structure? And at what cost?

This is not to question the bishop’s character. It is to remind him of the stakes.

To accept this appointment is to sit at a table where the meal has already been poisoned. To lend credibility to a regime that desecrates the very values the Church holds dear. If you accept, you will be remembered not for what you stood for, but for how easily you were swayed.

If President Hichilema truly respected human rights, he would not need to appoint moral figures to mask the rot. He would govern justly.

Rev. Chikoya, you have spent your life fighting for justice, truth, and dignity. Do not throw that legacy into the furnace of politics. Step back. Speak out. Remain free!

Because the day will come when the regime you now serve will collapse under the weight of its own sins. And when it does, the people will remember who stood with them and who chose comfort over conviction.