By Thandiwe Ketiš Ngoma
In a statement that sent shockwaves through the hearts of many Zambians, I heard President Hakainde Hichilema publicly thanking the South African government and President Cyril Ramaphosa for taking care of former President Edgar Chagwa Lungu from the time he sought refuge there for medical attention until his final breath.
He was speaking at State House in Lusaka during a meeting with South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Hon. Ronald Ozzy Lamola, who had flown into the country with his delegation to discuss the fate of the remains of the late President Dr. Edgar Chagwa Lungu.
A task that should have been the solemn and sacred responsibility of the Zambian government, your government, was instead carried out with grace, empathy, and dignity by a foreign nation. That fact alone is painful. But the deeper reality is far more disturbing.
President Hichilema, see your life now.
This is not a simple diplomatic lapse or a technical error. It is a glaring failure of leadership. It is a scar on your presidency and a disgrace to the office you hold. It is a moral collapse so profound that history will not record it as a side note but in bold.
You did not merely neglect Edgar Lungu. You deliberately blocked him from traveling abroad to seek medical treatment, not once, not twice, but three times. Your administration, fully aware of his deteriorating health, stood in his way and denied him access to medical care. That was not just an abuse of power. It was inhumane.
You denied him his fundamental human rights. The right to medical care. The right to dignity. The right to freedom of movement. You oversaw a government that humiliated a former Head of State, reduced him to a shadow of his former self, and treated him like a criminal.
Let it be known. President Lungu did not flee Zambia to escape the law. He fled to escape a political system that was strangling him with quiet cruelty. He had to sneak out of the very country he once led, like a fugitive in the night, simply to seek the medical help he desperately needed.
He was not running from justice. He was running from a government that sought to erase him, not with charges but with silence, not with bars but with barricades.
And even in death, that pain lingers.
According to the family of the late President Lungu, his final wish was clear: that President Hakainde Hichilema should not be allowed near his body. The family has publicly reaffirmed this position, stating that it is a matter of principle and respect for the suffering he endured under your leadership. It is a statement of rejection, born not of hatred but of hurt, a testament to the betrayal he felt at the hands of a system that failed him.
Is this the Zambia we have become under your leadership?
Where was your sense of compassion? Where was your duty as President, not just to your loyalists but to all Zambians, including your predecessor?
Whatever political rift existed between you and President Lungu, it should never have taken precedence over your constitutional and moral responsibility to protect his rights and ensure his welfare.
Instead of leading with grace, you led with bitterness. Instead of choosing statesmanship, you clung to vengeance. And now, in the most ironic twist, you stand before the nation publicly thanking South Africa for doing what you refused to do.
How dare you.
This moment, President Hichilema, has unmasked your administration. You preach unity, yet your actions breed division. You call for peace, yet harbor vendettas. You claim moral authority, yet failed the simplest test of humanity.
Zambians are watching. We have seen the man behind the office, a leader so entangled in politics that he lost sight of compassion. A man who let pettiness cloud principle. A man who allowed his predecessor to suffer in silence with no intervention from the state.
Let there be no mistake. Leadership without mercy is tyranny dressed in a suit. And history is never kind to tyrants.
The people of Zambia will not remember your foreign trips or ceremonial ribbon-cuttings. They will remember this moment. The moment when their President chose pride over decency and left a former Head of State to be cared for by strangers while his own government watched in silence.
A Simple Analogy
It is like a man watching his sick elder brother collapse on the porch, refusing to open the door. And when the neighbor takes him in and holds his hand as he dies, that man sends flowers. Not as a tribute but as a disguise. That is not gratitude. That is guilt pretending to be noble.
President Hakainde Hichilema, you failed President Edgar Lungu. You failed the Zambian people. And now, history is writing your chapter, and it will not be kind.
