10/08/2026
WHEN AN ELDER SHOULD COUNSEL POWER, NOT COURT IT: MR MWAANGA AND THE POLITICS OF PANDERING
Chishala Kateka President - New Heritage Party
Mr Mwaanga, with all due respect, this is precisely where an elder ought to be offering counsel rather than applause.
The impasse did not materialise by spontaneous combustion. It was created when Government altered the terms of an agreement and then proceeded to litigate against the family in a South African court.
That is not conjecture; it is part of the factual sequence that cannot simply be edited out because it is inconvenient to the preferred political narrative. What is particularly striking is the selective memory now being deployed.
The central issue was never some mysterious refusal by the family to cooperate with Government. The late President Lungu's wishes regarding President Hichilema's presence at his funeral were known, and the family acted on those wishes.
Government, rather than resolving the disagreement through sober engagement, took the matter to court in South Africa. The judgment has since vindicated the family's position.
Mr Mwaanga's decision to move away from those facts is therefore rather curious. One would expect an elder statesman of his standing to be asking President Hichilema some rather uncomfortable questions:
Why was the agreement altered? Why was litigation necessary? Why was the family's position treated as something to be defeated rather than something to be understood and appreciated? And, perhaps most importantly, what can be learnt from the episode?
Instead, we are treated to an extraordinary exercise in political sanitisation: remove the inconvenient facts, rearrange the chronology and present the resulting narrative as wisdom.
That is not counsel - It is pandering or praise singing
And there is a profound difference between advising a President and protecting his ego.
An elder's usefulness to power is not measured by how elegantly he tells the powerful that they are right. It is measured by his willingness to tell them when they are wrong, particularly when everyone else in the room is too frightened, too ambitious or too politically invested to say so.
President Hichilema does not need elders to become a chorus of yes, Mr President. He needs elders who can say, quietly but firmly:
“Mr President, this was mishandled. This is where Government went wrong. This is what the court has now said. Learn from it and move on.”
That is what counsel looks like.
Everything else risks becoming political flattery dressed up as elder statesmanship.
History is rather unforgiving towards elders who mistake proximity to power for wisdom. The former gives one a seat near the table; the latter gives one the courage to tell those at the table when they have burnt the food.
Mr Mwaanga should therefore be counselling President Hichilema, not helping to massage an already bruised political ego.
Zambia has enough politicians who tell power what it wants to hear. What it desperately needs are elders prepared to tell power what it needs to hear.
Facts should not become negotiable merely because they embarrass the Government. Nor should age, reputation or proximity to the Presidency be used to confer legitimacy upon a convenient version of events.
An elder statesman's duty is not to make the President feel comfortable.
It is to make him think.
And President Hichilema would be better served by an uncomfortable truth from an honest elder than by a comforting fiction from a flattering one.
10 August 2026
