M’membe Challenges Constitutional Basis of Paramount Chief Petition for Chief Mukuni

Socialist Party leader says title being sought for Chief Mukuni is a colonial invention the courts have already stripped from the President’s hands, while the title of Chief Mukuni Paramount Chief remains contentious. Socialist Party president Fred M’membe has challenged the…

Socialist Party leader says title being sought for Chief Mukuni is a colonial invention the courts have already stripped from the President’s hands, while the title of Chief Mukuni Paramount Chief remains contentious.

Socialist Party president Fred M’membe has challenged the constitutional basis of a petition before the Constitutional Court seeking to have Chief Mukuni reclassified as a Paramount Chief, arguing the title itself has no roots in Leya tradition but was invented by colonial administrators in 1936. He emphasized that the debate over the Chief Mukuni Paramount Chief title reflects broader issues of tradition versus colonial imposition.

M’membe traced the modern ranking of Zambian chiefs to the Native Authorities Ordinance No. 9 and the Barotse Native Authorities Ordinance No. 25, both passed in 1936, which graded traditional leaders into Paramount Chiefs, senior chiefs, chiefs and sub-chiefs as an instrument of indirect colonial rule. He said Zambian communities had kings, councils and courts long before that date, and that what the colonial government created was not traditional leadership but a ranking system layered on top of it.

The ongoing discourse around Chief Mukuni Paramount Chief raises critical questions about the recognition and authenticity of traditional titles in contemporary Zambia.

He argued the 2016 constitutional amendments, particularly Article 165, deliberately stripped the state of any power to confer or withdraw chieftaincy titles, a position reinforced by a December 2019 Constitutional Court judgment that struck out sections three to seven of the Chiefs Act after a challenge by Chief Mwene Mutondo Mulubisha of the Nkoya people. On that basis, M’membe said, neither the President nor Parliament currently holds any lawful power to create a Paramount Chief, and a petition invoking Article 165 to achieve exactly what that clause was written to prevent risks reviving a colonial mechanism through the courts instead of government notice.

He raised concern, without alleging any deal, that Chief Mukuni’s reported endorsement of President Hakainde Hichilema’s re-election could create the appearance that any elevation granted by the same administration had been politically rewarded. M’membe warned that opening the door to state-graded titles would invite similar petitions from the Lamba, Lunda, Kaonde, Luvale, Nkoya, Namwanga, Tonga and Mambwe communities, tying up the courts in tribal ranking disputes “in a country still bleeding from August.”

His underlying argument is not that traditional leaders have too much influence but too little: he wants power shared with chiefs, religious leaders and community figures in actual governance and economic decision-making, rather than through titles handed down from State House. He linked the erosion of traditional authority to poverty, noting that Muchinga, Western, Northern, Luapula and Eastern provinces, all areas of historically strong chieftaincy, are also Zambia’s five poorest by the Living Conditions Monitoring Survey.