Opposition Alliance Asks African Union To Halt Hichilema’s Inauguration

Lusaka — The Tonse-Pamodzi Alliance has asked the African Union to urgently intervene in Zambia’s post-election crisis, arguing that the closure of the country’s courts during the constitutional petition window and the planned September 1 inauguration of President-elect…

Lusaka — The Tonse-Pamodzi Alliance has asked the African Union to urgently intervene in Zambia’s post-election crisis, arguing that the closure of the country’s courts during the constitutional petition window and the planned September 1 inauguration of President-elect Hakainde Hichilema together threaten to place the disputed election beyond judicial scrutiny.

Former Zambian Ambassador to Ethiopia and Permanent Representative to the African Union, Emmanuel Mwamba, made the appeal in a letter dated August 25 addressed to African Union Commission chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf on behalf of the opposition alliance.

“The gravest of these breaches can still be arrested, but only before the inauguration scheduled for 1 September 2026 renders judicial scrutiny of the election moot,” Mwamba wrote.

He said Zambia was facing a situation in which the constitutional and judicial mechanisms designed to allow an election result to be challenged were themselves being disabled. Mwamba specifically cited the sealing of court premises across the country on August 24, including the Lusaka High Court complex and the building housing the Constitutional Court, by armed military and police personnel. He said lawyers had been instructed to leave the premises, and that an unsigned memorandum had been issued to Judiciary staff communicating the closure, with no formal public explanation offered of its legal basis, scope or duration.

Mwamba argued the timing made the closure especially serious, since it fell on the final day of the seven-day constitutional period for challenging the declaration of the President-elect before the Constitutional Court. He noted the Judiciary had itself recorded that the Constitutional Court Registry was required to remain open from 08:30 to 18:00 hours specifically for the purpose of receiving a presidential election petition.

“A State cannot demand that election disputes proceed through exclusively legal channels while physically sealing those channels, and it cannot rely on an impossibility of its own creation,” Mwamba stated.

He said the closures had already directly affected a petition involving former Law Association of Zambia president Linda Kasonde, activist Brebner Changala and the LCK Freedom Foundation, which names the Electoral Commission of Zambia, the Attorney General and Hichilema as respondents. According to Mwamba, that petition was transmitted electronically to the Chief Justice after physical access to the courts had been prevented, and the Judiciary had acknowledged receiving it before the Chief Justice referred the documents to the Constitutional Court to determine whether the filing was valid.

Mwamba contrasted that acknowledgment with a statement from Secretary to the Cabinet Patrick Kangwa that the Judiciary had not received any petition, arguing the two positions were irreconcilable. He also challenged the planned September 1 inauguration itself, saying it risked pre-empting the constitutional mechanism for resolving the dispute if it proceeded before the Constitutional Court had ruled on whether the petition was properly filed.

The letter further raised concerns over the reported deployment of the armed forces at polling stations, tallying centres and the National Results Centre, as well as the August 14 security operation at the residence of Tonse-Pamodzi presidential candidate Brian Mundubile. Mwamba said former Cabinet minister Mutotwe Kafwaya was killed during that operation, and that 11 people, including senior opposition figures, were reportedly arrested. He noted the operation occurred shortly after Mundubile had met the African Union Election Observation Mission, arguing this raised questions under the African Charter concerning security guarantees and cooperation with election observers.

Mwamba also questioned the conduct of the Electoral Commission of Zambia, citing its suspension of vote tallying and results announcement on August 14 and the subsequent declaration of results in the early hours of August 18. He said the Commission had declined to publish polling-station-level results in an analysable format or release Records of Proceedings at Tallying Centres and GEN20 forms.

He cited an analysis by Professor Nic Cheeseman of the University of Birmingham and Dr Nicole Beardsworth of the University of the Witwatersrand, which he said identified significant differences between presidential and parliamentary turnout figures in several constituencies, differences the analysis estimated could account for between 350,000 and 550,000 votes concentrated in ruling-party strongholds. Mwamba said the discrepancies warranted examination by the Constitutional Court rather than being treated as conclusive evidence of wrongdoing on their own.

The letter asks the African Union Commission to bring the matter before the Peace and Security Council under Article 24 of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, and to remain seized of the situation through the petition period and the planned inauguration. It further asks the AU to urgently engage the Zambian government to restore full access to the courts and to refrain from proceeding with the September 1 inauguration while the Constitutional Court considers the petition filing issue.

Mwamba called for the preservation of all electoral materials and audit-trail documents, including polling-station results, Records of Proceedings at Tallying Centres and GEN20 forms, alongside an independent investigation into both the closure of the Judiciary and the August 14 operation in which Kafwaya was killed. The alliance also wants the AU to call for the rights of those detained in connection with the election to be respected, including access to lawyers and the courts, and to consider further measures should the alleged breaches continue.

Mwamba said the African Charter should not be treated as merely aspirational, arguing that Zambia’s own institutions, churches and civil society organisations were themselves calling for regional intervention over what he described as a threat to judicial independence and the rule of law.