Faith Nyasuguta
A Lusaka court has sentenced two men to prison with hard labour after finding them guilty of plotting, through witchcraft, to assassinate Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema.
Leonard Phiri, a village chief, and Jasten Mabulesse Candunde, a Mozambican national, were arrested last December after a cleaner reported “strange noises” near a government building. Police say the pair were caught carrying a live chameleon and a bundle of “assorted charms,” including a red cloth, an unidentified white powder and an animal’s tail.
“The motive of the crime was to kill the head of state,” magistrate Fine Mayambu told the court. “The convicts were not only enemies of the head of state but of all Zambians.” Each man received a two-year sentence.
According to prosecutors, the two had been hired by the brother of opposition MP Emmanuel “Jay Jay” Banda, who is himself facing trial for robbery, attempted murder and escaping custody. Banda has denied involvement, but the case has inflamed tensions between the government and opposition.
The conviction was handed down under a British colonial-era law criminalising witchcraft – legislation that critics say still haunts Zambia’s justice system. Traditional healers and spiritual practices remain common, and accusations of witchcraft are not unusual in Zambian politics.
Hichilema, elected in 2021 on a reformist platform, is facing mounting criticism at home and abroad for cracking down on dissent. Human Rights Watch said in its 2024 global report that his administration had “increasingly exhibited tendencies toward authoritarianism,” citing harassment of journalists, youth activists and political opponents. Sishuwa Sishuwa, a senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University, wrote in the Mail & Guardian that Hichilema was “using the courts to suppress opponents” and rewriting constitutional rules ahead of next year’s national elections.
Meanwhile, a fierce dispute had erupted over the burial of Hichilema’s predecessor and rival, Edgar Lungu, who died in South Africa in June. Lungu’s family is fighting a state-arranged repatriation, claiming he did not want Hichilema at his funeral. A South African court is weighing whether to allow the family to appeal an order sending the body back to Zambia.
Rumours swirling around the Lungu funeral have further fuelled claims of occult politics, but Hichilema rejected them last month on Martine Dennis’s Africa Here & Now podcast: “Personally I don’t believe in witchcraft … as a person, as a family, as a Christian.”
Many Zambians argue traditional beliefs should not be criminalised. “I hate that colonial piece of legislation that attempts to outlaw a practice that it does not understand,” said Gankhanani Moyo, a cultural heritage lecturer at the University of Zambia.
RELATED:
