🇿🇲 EDITORIAL | Zambia Cannot Suspend Democracy Over a Burial Dispute
Zambia is approaching a constitutional moment. Come August 13, 2026, citizens are expected to go to the polls and elect their leaders. That process must proceed. No burial dispute, however painful, should be allowed to suspend the democratic calendar of a nation of more than twenty million people.
Emerging calls suggesting that elections should be halted until the late former President Edgar Chagwa Lungu is buried must therefore be rejected clearly and firmly. As a publication, we state this without hesitation. Zambia cannot suspend elections because of a burial matter. The Constitution does not allow it. Common sense does not support it either.
Yes, we sympathises with the Lungu family. Grief deserves dignity and respect. Losing a loved one, particularly a national leader, carries enormous emotional weight. Yet a nation cannot be governed on emotion alone. Leadership requires decisions that recognise a larger national interest.
The reality is simple. Zambia cannot remain indefinitely trapped in a political and emotional stalemate over the burial of one individual, no matter how important that individual was in national life.
Citizens have watched the burial issue unfold for months. The story is often presented in a simplified form: that government has failed to resolve the matter. That narrative is repeated frequently in political speeches and social media commentary. However, the full picture is rarely presented.
Behind the public arguments lies a complicated web of family decisions, political calculations and legal processes. These complexities are often left out of public messaging because they do not serve political narratives.
A number of actors have emerged around this matter, including groups such as “Christians for Lungu,” which have consistently amplified the claim that the current administration has failed in its duty to resolve the burial question. As the election season approaches, such messaging will inevitably intensify. It is a political strategy designed to portray the government as incapable of resolving even the burial of a former president.
Politics thrives on symbolism.
The burial dispute has therefore become more than a family matter. It has become a campaign instrument.
But Zambia must not allow electoral democracy to become collateral damage in that political messaging.
The Patriotic Front itself has publicly suggested that the burial of former President Lungu would only be facilitated once government changes. That statement alone raises an obvious question: if burial is linked to a change of government, how can elections simultaneously be suspended because the burial has not taken place?
The logic collapses under its own weight.
Those who believe they can resolve the burial dispute through political victory should welcome elections, not resist them. Elections provide the legitimate mechanism through which political questions are settled in a democracy.
What Zambia cannot accept is the suggestion that national democratic processes should be frozen until a political dispute surrounding a burial is resolved.
The country has already experienced the strain of prolonged national mourning. When the mourning period expired and progress remained elusive, President Hakainde Hichilema made the decision to cancel the extended mourning programme. That decision attracted criticism in some quarters, but it reflected a basic reality of governance.
A nation cannot exist in a perpetual state of mourning.
States must continue functioning. Institutions must continue operating. The constitutional timetable must continue moving.
The 2026 elections therefore must proceed. Zambians will decide who governs them. If voters believe the current administration has mishandled national matters, they have every right to vote accordingly. That is the essence of democracy.
But democracy itself cannot be suspended because of unresolved grief. Zambia is bigger than any single political dispute. It is bigger than any single family. It is bigger than any single individual, living or deceased.
The country must honour its former president with dignity. It must support the grieving family with compassion. But it must also protect the constitutional order that holds the republic together.
Come August, Zambians must go to the polls.
This is not cruelty. It is democracy.
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