Hichilema Won’t Be Sworn In Yet, We Are Petitioning, Says Mundubile

NRPUP presidential candidate Brian Mundubile says President Hakainde Hichilema will not be sworn in yet, as he prepares a legal challenge against the declared election results. Mundubile insists he did not lose the election and says he is ready to take the matter to court,…

NRPUP presidential candidate Brian Mundubile says President Hakainde Hichilema will not be sworn in yet, as he prepares a legal challenge against the declared election results.

Mundubile insists he did not lose the election and says he is ready to take the matter to court, where he believes the evidence will expose what he describes as a rigged process. He maintains his Parallel Voter Tabulation and results collected by his G20 teams point to serious irregularities, particularly in Southern, North-Western and Western provinces.

Speaking on the challenge he intends to mount, Mundubile was direct about where he believes the numbers do not hold up. “We are challenging the announcement of results because we believe we have sufficient grounds to prove that this election was rigged,” he said. “Southern, Western and North-Western provinces are areas of concern. We have the G20’s that prove that we won the elections.”

His campaign’s grievances extend beyond those three provinces. A claim circulating on social media this week alleges that ECZ’s certified win for Hichilema in the Wusakile constituency understates the true result, asserting Mundubile actually polled 17,274 votes against 7,800 for Hichilema there. ECZ’s certified figures for Wusakile, which match independently compiled constituency data, give Hichilema 22,273 votes against 17,196 for Mundubile. The alternative figures have not been supported by any polling-station form, agent’s tally sheet or other documentation, and their source has not been identified, so they remain an unverified allegation rather than an established fact.

The dispute has taken on a more serious dimension in recent days. Mundubile says he was forced into hiding after unknown men broke into his property and opened fire at people there, an incident that has already drawn conflicting accounts from his camp and the government. He says the threats did not stop afterwards, leaving him with no choice but to seek protection at the United Nations compound.

Mundubile has now addressed that incident directly for the first time, firmly rejecting government claims that a militia had been present at his home. “I want to put it very clear on record, there was no presence of any militia at my home,” he said in an interview. Asked whether he had been arrested and charged, he said he was detained briefly but never formally charged. “I had been picked and later released. I was not charged at all,” he said.

He gave a detailed account of what he says happened when armed personnel arrived at the property. “Upon arrival at our residence, they began to shoot. They shot through the guardhouse. They knocked the gate down using an armoured vehicle. They broke down the doors, broke the windows and gate access,” he said. Mundubile said he was in the same room as former Lunte MP Mutotwe Kafwaya when the shooting began. “Three soldiers broke in and immediately opened fire at Honourable Kafwaya. He later directed that gun towards me and fired two shots. Later, he fired at the wardrobe where my wife was,” he said, adding that physical evidence remained at the property. “We can literally go to visit the site and see exactly what I’m talking about.”

Pressed on his earlier claim that colleagues had died in the raid, Mundubile acknowledged he could not confirm this independently. “It’s still unknown,” he said. “I insisted to them, I pleaded with them to take me to the hospital because he had been bleeding and we were being dragged like animals out of that house.” On the government’s assertion that high-grade weapons were recovered at the residence, he was equally direct. “We were not armed at all. Honourable Kafwaya was not armed. My wife was not armed. I was not armed,” he said, suggesting any firearms found on his security personnel would have been ordinary civilian-licensed weapons. “There’ll be no dangerous weapon that they can display to the world to confirm that they found dangerous weapons,” he said.

The declaration opens a new and potentially volatile chapter in the election dispute, with the country now waiting to see whether the courts will be asked to formally examine the evidence Mundubile says his teams have gathered. A legal challenge of this kind, if filed, would place Zambia’s judiciary at the centre of resolving a contest that has already spilled well beyond the counting halls.

Not everyone is convinced the numbers support Mundubile’s case. An electoral expert has poured cold water on the claim, arguing that even if Hichilema’s entire Southern Province vote were removed from his total, Mundubile would still fall short of the votes needed to win outright. That assessment cuts against the heart of Mundubile’s argument, which rests on the idea that irregularities in a handful of provinces were enough to flip the national result. Whether his legal team can produce evidence strong enough to overcome that arithmetic gap is likely to become the central question if the matter reaches court.

Mundubile’s account of the raid continues to conflict directly with statements from the Ministry of Defence, which has previously described allegations that Kafwaya was shot and later died as “a total fabrication,” and with Cabinet Secretary Patrick Kangwa‘s earlier assertion that the operation was linked to an alleged militia at the property. Neither side’s account has been independently verified.

For now, the standoff leaves Zambia in an unusual position. The Electoral Commission has certified Hichilema as winner with a result well above the threshold required to avoid a run-off, yet the man he defeated is refusing to accept that outcome and is actively preparing to contest it through the courts, all while reportedly sheltering from threats to his safety and disputing the government’s account of the raid on his home.

The battle may therefore be far from over. The next showdown could now move from the polling stations to the courtroom, with both sides likely to face pressure to produce hard evidence rather than competing claims. Zambian electoral law gives candidates a window to formally petition a presidential result, and Mundubile’s public remarks suggest he intends to use it.

What happens next will depend heavily on what documentation each side is willing to put before a court, and how quickly. Party agents, legal teams and election watchers across the country are now bracing for that process to begin in earnest.