Zambian Whistleblower, Maclear (2025)

12/12/2025

Bill 7 - Here is Where I Stand.

By Aaron Ng'ambi, A Geopolitical Analyst, Strategist, Leadership Consultant and A Prospective Zambian Politician.

In August of 2021, President Hakainde Hichilema entered office promising to defend the Constitution; his actions since then show nothing but a President who is testing how far that Constitution can be stretched to secure his own interests. This is the only sensible explanation as to why he initiated a rushed process of amending the constitution, which has lacked wide public consultation.

In opposition, while fighting Bill no. 10 of 2019, Hakainde Hichilema said the Constitution belongs to the people, not to any president. His current behaviour sits in direct conflict with those claims. In fact, in June 2025, the constitutional court ruled that the process of amending the constitution as started by the Hichilema administration lacks legitimacy.

Evidently, there were no broader consultations with stakeholders in this process, not even under the disguise of the so-called technical committee which was established after the fact. All of this is in sharp contrast to claims made by President Hichilema publicly that "citizens had agreed to amend the constitution" when the courts found that this process had no broad citizen participation at all. The government chose articles to amend in the constitution and began the process unilaterally.

The minister of Justice then, who is now the current minister of foreign affairs Mulambo Haimbe, argued that the administration was only going to amend what they thought were non-contentious issues in the constitution. This was dishonest and an outright lie, because there can be no further proof or admission of guilt by the government - every inch of this process points to that fact that this has been a top-down process, with proposed amendments forced down the throats of the people by a regime that is determined to abuse the constitution in order for them to perpetuate their stay in power.

Bill 7 exposes HH and his contradictions as once a champion of democracy and constitutionalism before, and now an obnoxious Head of State and President who is bent on changing anything and everything in the constitution in a manner that takes away power from the hands of the people and puts it right into the hands of one man.

Under his government, the Constitution is going to be amended in ways that would expand Parliament through a highly opaque delimitation process, introduce party‑list MPs more accountable to party leaders than to voters, weaken by‑elections that allow the public to remove disloyal or underperforming MPs, and remove term limits for mayors or council chairpersons so that they can stay in power indefinitely.

Clearly, at least 4, if not 5, of the 13 proposed amendments to the constitution are contentious by anyone's definition. Let us examine some of these articles, which the government wants to pretend that are non-contentious. The first proposed amendment, which states that this amendment will "revise the composition of the National Assembly to provide for the increase in the number of constituencies - increase seats from 156 to 211, to actualise the delimitation report by the Electoral Commission."

The issue here is not the increase in the number of MPs in parliament through the suggested delimitation process. The problem here is that, President Hakainde Hichilema is dishonest and insincere in this ordeal, because he has the delimitation report on his desk given to him by the electoral commission - with specific recommendations of which constituencies should be delimitated. He has refused to publish this report, why? Because, he does not believe in transparency and accountability. He wants the bill to pass first, and then do as he pleases in terms of which constituencies will be divided up.

He will obviously increase more seats for MPs in his party strongholds or areas where he knows he has more support. This is an old trick in the book, this is the Museveni and Mugabe playbook of altering parliament and increasing the numbers in order to get away with changing laws at will for him and for the ruling party. Surely, this is a contentious issue if presented to the public, and the public sees the delimitation report before the bill is passed.

Secondly, the other problematic clause that HH is seeking to introduce is as follows; "revise the electoral system for election to the National Assembly to provide for a mixed-member proportional representation electoral system to guarantee the representation of women, youths and persons with disabilities." According to this proposed clause, the government will pick not more than 20 women, 12 youth and 3 disabled people whose seats will be guaranteed and permanent. On face value, this sounds very exciting and even progress. But the reality is that these 35 seats will be seats that are nothing but regional and loyal to the appointing authority and will go along with any government agenda or program.

Again, this is an attempt to completely change the face of parliament to weaken it and make it subservient to the executive. If at all President Hakainde cares for women and youth and disabled people, why hasn't he appointed women, youth and disabled people to the already 8 nominated Members of Parliament as provided for by the constitution? He is just using the women, youth and disabled people to get away with his plans to change parliament and stay longer in power.

Another clause which is undoubtedly contentious and perhaps even poisonous, is this idea that, the amendments will "remove the two-term limit for the office of mayor and council chairperson." The argument here should be understood in the way that Hakainde Hichilema thinks, and in the light of what his true intentions are. Once, the President succeeds in changing the composition of Parliament and his party enjoys more than 2/3 (two thirds) majority beyond the 2026 elections,this man at the state house will come to parliament and make the argument that the two term limits for the Presidency should be abolished.

At that time, his rationale will be that since the two term limits were abolished by bill 7 for mayors and council chairpersons, then the presidency as the only elected office left with two term limits is not acceptable to him and should not be acceptable to the people either. Right now, as things stand - all elected officials have no term limits, except the mayors and the president. Thus, this bill 7 is a slippery slope to the removal of presidential term limits, and HH knows he has to test the waters for now and tread carefully. But he is determined to get there, of course, counting on a weak and compromised parliament.

None of this strengthens democracy or gives the voter more power. These plans must not be allowed to come to fruition; once embedded in the constitutional order, they would be extremely difficult to reverse. Sadly or rather foolishly, there are some opposition members of parliament who think that they can make a deal with President Hakainde on this issue, by supporting him to pass this bill in the hope that he will somewhat return the favor during the 2026 general elections - by either giving them resources to campaign and come back to parliament, or by dividing up (delimitating) their constituencies with the view that they will take the one side of the constituency without any real challenge from the United Party for National Development (UPND). This kind of thinking is very prevalent among MPs who are very unpopular in their constituencies.

Hence, they see this as a chance to hang on to parliament if their constituencies are split. However, after the bill is passed and the delimitation report is made public - only then will these opposition or independent MPs learn that they are being dupped. Unfortunately, the reality is that HH is a man incapable of honoring such a deal or deals. His past record is clear, and soon after these opposition or independent MPs give him bill 7, he will make a u-turn and will no longer have any use for them. They will be looking for HH during the nominations and elections, and the man will be nowhere to be seen.

The Zambian people cannot approach 2026 as a normal election in a neutral system. They voted for a president whom they believed would respect the 2016 amended constitution, but what they see instead is a leader probing how far the rules can be bent to suit his long‑term interests. And if citizens do not wake up to this reality now – to actively resist any attempt to change the constitution at the last minute – they risk waking up in a country where elections still happen, but the real power to change course has quietly slipped away.

In the final analysis, bill 7 is for the benefit of President Hakainde Hichilema and not for the Zambian people. This is the reason why he is rushing this process without an established legal framework or an act of parliament that guides the process as the case has been with other constitutional amendment processes in the past. According to the constitutional court, this constitutional amendment process is flawed and does not inspire confidence in the Zambian people.

This President will do well to withdraw bill 7 from parliament, and then begin the process in a more acceptable way. But he will not do that because the man does not mean well for mother Zambia. A few examples support this premise, when HH was in opposition and promised the Zambian people that he would repeal the Cyber law and Cyber security act of 2019, but since he got elected he abandoned this and even began to use the same law to jail his critics. Again, the man cannot be trusted. He simply speaks from both sides of his mouth. He also, promised that he would do away with the controversial public order act - he has not done that after almost 4 and half years in office. And to add salt to the injury, the man is now talking about coming up with some legislation before the next elections called the public gathering bill, which he can use as a disguised public order act. Clearly, President Hichilema is a trickster and his intentions for this bill 7 are definitely retrogressive.

John 8:32 "And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
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©️ Zambian Whistleblower

11/12/2025

Where HH’s Pride and Authority Truly Come From

By Chitundu

For more than a decade I have watched Zambians struggle to understand the origins of Hakainde Hichilema’s pride, authority, and political confidence. Long before he entered State House, people constructed elaborate archetypes of who he was, what shaped him, and how he would govern. Yet the difference between his theoretical authority in opposition and his practical authority in power has revealed deeper truths that our politicians, civil society leaders, church mother bodies, academics, and journalists continue to miss.

I agree with many of the criticisms already made by respected thinkers, but the point still eludes most observers: HH wants everyone right where they are, and so far every actor has played into his hands. Nothing the opposition has attempted, nothing civil society has raised, and nothing the church has said has meaningfully disrupted his long-prepared political design.

To understand this, we must challenge three explanations often presented as the source of his pride: money, cattle culture, and tribal identity. These explanations are accurate only on the surface. In reality, each one conceals something larger, more strategic, and far more difficult to confront.

Money is the least understood. People talk about HH as a wealthy man, but few have asked what that actually means. Money is not simply a figure on a balance sheet. It is power only when it can buy loyalty, silence, or protection. HH has used money not merely to enrich himself but to incapacitate rivals, neutralise civil society actors, and compromise factions within the church. His wealth has grown not because he is a business genius, nor because he won elections for two decades, but because the political ecosystem around him never meaningfully inspected the origins of his declared assets during his losing election cycles. Even now, his 2021 declaration remains confidential, protected from public scrutiny.

But money is only one part of his authority. The second is what I call cattle culture. It is more than a reference to livestock; it is a worldview built on hierarchy, clan loyalty, and practical austerity. Enlightenment values should weaken such cultural structures, yet in this case they have only made them more adaptive. HH has consistently absorbed criticism into his identity narrative. When agencies, journalists, or citizens call out patterns of favouritism, that criticism reinforces the loyalty of his political base, not because they reject national unity, but because they see themselves in him. This is where identity becomes armour.

That brings me to tribalism. We have created a national tragedy by refusing to confront it honestly. HH’s political identity was shaped by tribal mobilisation from the moment he entered public life. For years, opposition parties, journalists, and even church leaders insisted he was merely a victim of bigotry. They argued he was the right man for the job and that the regional voting patterns were coincidental. But the numbers have long told a different story. As Dr Sishuwa has pointed out, Southern Province holds more constituencies than Lusaka, Northwestern, Northern, Luapula, and Muchinga when compared individually. That demographic reality has political consequences we have denied for far too long.

The population, tired of old politics, convinced itself that the Southerner was the oppressed one. The result is that we must now confront real tribalism, not the imagined one we once debated on radio and social media. When the RTSA director openly enforced cattle-culture logic at the national level, the matter died quietly. No accountability. No public outrage. No institutional correction. Today, any criticism of HH by a non-Southerner is immediately repurposed by his supporters as evidence of persecution, which only strengthens his political fortress. As a nation, we have trapped ourselves at both ends of the problem.

This is why HH is winning the ideological war. He is not governing through money alone, nor through tribalism alone, nor through cultural sentiment alone. He is governing through a combination of all three, supported by a religious ecosystem that gives moral cover without direct alignment. The SDA connection is not superficial. It provides social discipline, moral framing, and access to a structured, loyal community. It is a political asset disguised as spiritual coherence.

The most painful truth is that our democratic institutions have not adapted. Politicians still fight him with rallies and slogans. Civil society still relies on statements and petitions. Church mother bodies still issue pastoral letters that reach fewer people than the President reaches in a single public prayer. Academics publish analyses that ordinary citizens never read. Journalists expose scandals, yet fail to connect the small patterns into a national story of centralised power.

Everyone is playing the wrong game.

HH is fighting an ideological war: a battle of identity, legitimacy, and narrative. And he is fighting it on terrain he understands better than anyone. He knows how to use money without appearing corrupt, how to use tribal loyalty while appearing national, how to use religious networks while appearing secular, and how to use institutional power while appearing democratic.

If Zambia is to reclaim its constitutional balance, the fight must shift to the ideological front. We must challenge the narratives that protect power, not just the actions that flow from it. We must demand transparency in wealth, interrogate identity politics for what it is, and rebuild the moral authority of civil society and the church.

HH’s authority is not accidental. It is constructed, layered, and carefully maintained. And unless we confront the three pillars—money, cattle culture, and tribal identity—in their true political form, we will remain trapped in the very system we helped create.

John 8:32 "And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Get in touch with us on WhatsApp +263786654620

©️ Zambian Whistleblower

11/12/2025

Bill that stands on nothing: Why Parliament cannot lawfully proceed with Bill 7

By Prof. Cephas Lumina

Bill 7 was born of an unconstitutional process, and in the eyes of the law, it stands on nothing at all. As the case law makes clear, a void Bill cannot be rescued by procedure, debate, or political will. Parliament cannot lawfully proceed with a Bill the Constitution itself refuses to recognise — and doing so risks plunging the country deeper into constitutional crisis.

For months now, the country has been dragged through a constitutional amendment process marked by confusion, opacity, and a persistent disregard for constitutional safeguards. What began as a routine Executive initiative to introduce amendments has unravelled into a full-scale constitutional crisis. The crisis is not abstract. It is unfolding in real time through the National Assembly’s attempt to continue processing the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Bill, 7 of 2025 (“Bill 7”) — a Bill the Constitutional Court has effectively rendered legally non-existent.

What we are witnessing is not simply a clash of political positions. It is a fundamental confrontation between constitutional supremacy and political obstinacy. At its centre lies a critical question: Can the Parliamentary Select Committee appointed to scrutinize Bill 7 lawfully continue to consider a Bill produced through a process the Constitutional Court has already declared unconstitutional? And what are the implications of the Technical Committee’s sudden, unauthorised entry into the legislative process after it had already become functus officio (that is, having fully discharged its mandate)?

These questions matter not only for Bill 7 but for the very foundations of constitutional governance.

This moment also exposes a broader problem: a government that appears astonishingly committed to doing things incorrectly and for political expediency. Instead of respecting constitutional limits, rebuilding public trust, or promoting unity, it has chosen to push forward with a deeply flawed amendment process without providing credible explanations. The justifications we have heard so far — such as the claim that more constituencies will somehow improve the effectiveness of the Constituency Development Fund — collapse under scrutiny. The public has never seen the delimitation report or any audit report that supports this proposal. Citizens are effectively being asked to support fundamental constitutional changes whose factual basis has been withheld from them.
The silence from the government on these glaring contradictions — including the questions previously posed in this column last week — only deepens the suspicion that the true motivations behind Bill 7 have little to do with the national interest. The government must explain why it is such a rush to pass these ruinous and polarizing amendments and why it has not published the Electoral Commission’s delimitation report, despite the report being a key justification for the proposal to increase the number of constituencies.

That backdrop makes the constitutional analysis even more urgent.

A Bill that stands on nothing cannot stand at all

The Constitutional Court’s decision in Munir Zulu & Another v Attorney-General makes one thing clear: the process used to initiate Bill 7 was unconstitutional from the start. That finding alone carries consequences that cannot be negotiated away or softened by political convenience. Constitutional law does not treat process as a mere formality. The steps laid down for changing a nation’s supreme law are essential guarantees, and when those safeguards are brushed aside, whatever emerges on the other side is fatally tainted. Simply put, when a foundation is defective, everything built upon it collapses with it.

This is why comparative case law from Canada, India, Kenya, South Africa, and other common law countries all converge on a single principle: an unconstitutional process cannot give birth to a valid constitutional amendment. It is also why Lord Denning’s famous words in Macfoy v United Africa Co. Ltd (1961) resonate so sharply in our context. As he put it, “If an act is void, then it is in law a nullity… You cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand.”

Bill 7 embodies precisely that impossibility. It stands on nothing. The Constitutional Court has already removed the ground on which it pretends to stand. What Parliament is now being asked to do is to construct a constitutional amendment on an empty space — on ground the Court has declared a wasteland.

No amount of debate, political spin, political desire, or parliamentary ritual can provide a foundation the Constitution itself has withdrawn. Bill 7 stands on nothing, and because it stands on nothing, it cannot stand at all.

Parliament is bound — whether it likes it or not

Despite this, some voices insist that Parliament may proceed because the Bill has already been tabled, and, once tabled, it falls within the sacred domain of parliamentary privilege. But parliamentary privilege, while important for protecting internal procedure, has never given the National Assembly the authority to override the Constitution itself. The supremacy clause in Article 1 is unambiguous: all authority in Zambia is exercised under the Constitution, not alongside it or above it.

Article 128 reinforces this by granting the Constitutional Court original and final authority over questions of constitutional compliance. When the Court declares that a process was unconstitutional, that declaration binds every arm of the State — Parliament included. Agreement is irrelevant; preference is irrelevant; political expedience is irrelevant. Under Articles 1(2) and 128, once the Court has spoken, legal consequences flow automatically.

To continue processing Bill 7 as though nothing has happened is not an assertion of parliamentary autonomy. It is a direct confrontation with the constitutional order. The National Assembly cannot breathe life into a Bill the Constitution refuses to recognise. No majority vote, no procedural motion, and no appeal to “internal affairs” can reverse a judicial finding of unconstitutionality. Parliament is bound, not trapped — bound by the same constitutional fabric that grants it authority in the first place.

The Select Committee’s constitutional dilemma

Within this legal reality, the Select Committee finds itself placed in an impossible position. Its mandate under Standing Order 113 assumes that any Bill referred to it is lawfully before the House. But Bill 7 does not meet that threshold. It simply cannot meet it. The Court’s decision in Munir Zulu stripped the Bill of legal existence from the outset, rendering it a nullity before the Committee even began its work.

This means that the Committee’s current undertaking is not simply difficult or inconvenient — it is constitutionally impossible. Any hearings, deliberations or findings produced in relation to a Bill that the Constitution does not recognise inevitably share in that defect. They become legally weightless. A report based on a void Bill is itself void. Recommendations made about nothing amount to nothing. And should Parliament attempt to act on such a report, it would only deepen the constitutional crisis and open the door to multiple, inevitable legal challenges.

The Select Committee therefore stands at a point of constitutional divergence: to continue is to proceed without constitutional authority; to stop is to uphold the only lawful course available. The dilemma is not one of politics but of constitutional obedience.

The Technical Committee’s after-the-fact engagement

The situation has been made worse by the unexpected and constitutionally problematic conduct of the Technical Committee on Amendments to the Constitution. Having completed its mandate and submitted its final report and draft constitutional amendment Bill to the President on 1 December 2025, the Committee became functus officio. Its authority ended at that moment — not gradually, not conditionally, but completely.
Yet, despite this finality, the Technical Committee submitted the same materials to the Select Committee and appeared before it on 8 December. This was not a harmless procedural oversight. It was an intrusion into a phase of the constitutional amendment process over which it had no authority. A body that has exhausted its mandate cannot revive itself, cannot reinterpret its work, and cannot offer guidance aimed at influencing legislative deliberations. Any such attempt is ultra vires (done beyond legal authority). It should also be noted that nothing in the Technical Committee’s terms of reference or the constitutional provision under which it was appointed authorised or mandated it to submit its deliverables to, or engage with, the Parliamentary Select Committee.

What followed during its appearance only compounded the constitutional irregularity. The Technical Committee presented its consultations as “very inclusive,” described the number of submissions it received as unprecedented (without providing context, including what portion of these submissions were in favour of, or against, the amendment proposals), highlighted portions of its recommendations as “strong,” emphasised certain proposals in ways that could shape parliamentary opinion (including its recommendation that Members of Parliament be “deemed” to have served for five years and paid emoluments for the full five-year term despite Parliament being dissolved three months before the general election), and spoke of “synergies” with Bill 7 — synergies with a Bill the Constitutional Court had already undermined at its roots. These were not neutral clarifications; they were interventions clearly calculated to influence the Select Committee’s deliberations. And they were interventions by a body that no longer had authority to participate in the constitutional amendment process.

The Technical Committee’s involvement strayed even further outside the National Assembly’s procedural framework. Standing Order 116 limits amendments to those formally submitted under Standing Orders 92–94 and 116, and it is well-established that any amendment that substantially alters a Bill is, in substance, a new Bill. Any interpretive gloss, “guidance,” or implied amendments generated by the Technical Committee therefore not only lack procedural standing but also amount to new legislative proposals that cannot lawfully be relied upon by the Select Committee. By advancing a parallel draft amendment framework while Bill 7 — forget its invalidity for a moment — was already before Parliament, the Committee effectively introduced a second constitutional amendment initiative within the same parliamentary session, in direct violation of Standing Order 124’s prohibition on re-introducing the same Bill or introducing a new one on the same subject.

Worse still, this engagement occurred while the Technical Committee’s own establishment, processes and outputs are under judicial scrutiny in the Law Association of Zambia & Others case (2025/CCZ/0029). Under the sub judice rule (reflected in Standing Order 74), Parliament should have avoided engagement with the Technical Committee entirely. Instead, the Technical Committee’s involvement has tainted the Select Committee’s proceedings and cast doubt on the procedural integrity of the entire parliamentary process.

The Standing Orders cannot rescue an unconstitutional Bill

Some suggest that procedural manoeuvres — such as suspending Standing Orders or accelerating scrutiny periods — may allow Bill 7 to proceed. But Standing Orders are subordinate to the Constitution.

Standing Order 57(3) prohibits the House from transacting business that is not properly before it. A Bill born of an unlawful process cannot meet that standard. Standing Order 108 presupposes that constitutional amendment Bills originate from lawful procedures. And Standing Order 255 cannot be stretched to suspend constitutional obligations or to retroactively validate unlawful sittings.

No procedural creativity can cure an unconstitutional process or breathe life into a Bill built on void foundations.

The broader constitutional crisis

What is unfolding is not merely a dispute about the interpretation of legal provisions. It is a test of the country’s constitutional culture. When governments treat constitutional safeguards as irritants, when Parliament considers proceeding in open defiance of a binding judicial decision, and when Executive advisory bodies intrude into legislative functions after their mandates have expired, the cumulative effect is erosion of public trust and institutional decay.

The Constitution is not a suggestion. It is the supreme law — and the only source of legitimacy for every state organ.

What must happen now?

The country is now at a critical moment. The legal questions have been answered by the Constitutional Court; what remains is the institutional response. The Select Committee must acknowledge that it cannot lawfully continue with Bill 7. The Bill is void at inception — legally non-existent. The process that produced it has been condemned by the Court. The intervention of the Technical Committee has further contaminated the proceedings. Nothing done to the Bill in Parliament can change the fact that its foundation does not exist.
The only constitutionally defensible course is therefore clear: the Select Committee must discontinue all work on Bill 7; it must report to the House that the Bill cannot proceed because it is a nullity; and it must recommend that any future constitutional amendment process be restarted in full compliance with the Constitutional Court’s directives, beginning with broad, meaningful and people-driven consultations.

This is not merely a procedural recommendation. It is a constitutional necessity. Upholding the Constitution is never optional, and institutions demonstrate their integrity not when the law aligns with their preferences, but when they follow the law precisely because it demands something difficult.

Bill 7 stands on nothing, and therefore it cannot stand. What remains is for Parliament to decide whether it will stand with the Constitution.

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