Hichilema tears into Nkombo, exposes two decades of “betrayal” in blistering Mazabuka address

MAZABUKA, July 24, 2026 — President Hakainde Hichilema unloaded years of pent-up frustration on his former ally Gary Nkombo before a packed Mazabuka crowd, opening with a question that set the tone for everything that followed. “Can I spill the beans?” he asked, and then did precisely that, for the better part of his address.

He took the crowd back to the darkest days of opposition politics, when the Patriotic Front (PF) was, in his telling, actively hunting him down. He named Kaizer Zulu, the political operative he says wanted him dead, and said that within a month of that threat, Nkombo was already dining and drinking with the very man. “A month later, you would find Nkombo in Kafue enjoying himself, dining with a person who wanted to kill me,” he said, his disbelief evident. “What can one person think of Nkombo?”

He said the pattern repeated itself even closer to home, with the very officials who had persecuted him. While Stephen Kampyongo was serving as Minister of Home Affairs and had him teargassed during the day, Nkombo would be found drinking and dining with the same people that night, without a shred of shame. It did not stop there either. The President recalled that when Bowman Lusambo was still fighting the UPND on behalf of PF, Nkombo was later spotted sharing a beer with him too, as if the years of struggle counted for nothing.

Hichilema said he confronted Nkombo directly about this pattern of behaviour, and each time the response was the same, a shrug and a soft apology. “I have heard, Mr President,” Nkombo would say, before doing it all again. “He is a rebel,” Hichilema declared. “He started being rebellious a long time ago. One person who does not change.” He said only restraint had kept him from reacting more forcefully over the years. “God gave me a chest for cooling my heart, my temper, not for being upset with people or fighting people,” he told the crowd, a line that drew loud approval even as his own irritation was plain to see.

The President then turned to the present, accusing Nkombo of quietly throwing his weight behind Tonse-Pamodzi Alliance candidate Brian Mundubile. He pointed to the symbols on their respective ballots, Nkombo’s candle and Mundubile’s lamp, and told the crowd the resemblance was no accident. “The lamp and the candle are one thing, and that is how they planned it,” he said, before putting a direct question to his supporters: would they follow Mundubile through Gary Nkombo? The crowd roared back that they would not. “Thank you,” Hichilema said. “Don’t follow that friend of mine in the name of Gary Nkombo, for 20 years.”

What seemed to sting the President most was the ingratitude. Nkombo, he said, owed his entire political career to him, yet had never once offered a word of thanks. “Gary could have come to say thank you for allowing me to be in parliament,” he said, adding that on top of everything else, Nkombo had refused to vote in support of Bill 7 when the party needed him most.

He then walked the crowd through what he described as a final, private attempt to resolve things man to man. He said he had summoned Nkombo, not to State House, but to his own home, and sat him down in the presence of a witness. “I am a person with a big chest, simply a man with a big heart,” he said. There, he asked Nkombo not to contest the Mazabuka seat, telling him plainly that he had wronged the UPND. Once the party’s adoption process had run its course, Hichilema said he went further still and asked Nkombo to campaign for him instead, an olive branch he insisted others in Nkombo’s position had gracefully accepted.

To prove the point, he ran through the list himself. Former Minister of Education Douglas Siakalima had been asked not to stand and had not stood, and was out on the trail campaigning for the party. Sikumba, present at the rally itself, had also been asked to step aside and was doing the same, campaigning loyally rather than sulking. And former Minister of Foreign Affairs Mulambo Haimbe, also present, had accepted the same request without complaint and was campaigning too.

“All the mentioned are campaigning,” Hichilema said, driving the final nail in. “Who is Nkombo not to respect UPND, and be like the others?”

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