FROM JOGGING BAN TO EXILE: HOW ZAMBIA’S DEMOCRATIC SPACE HAS COLLAPSED

By Brian Matambo

When the BBC interviewed former President Edgar Lungu in 2024, his testimony painted a disturbing picture of Zambia’s democratic retreat. He described being blocked from leaving his home, stopped from boarding a plane for an international conference, denied medical treatment, and even prevented from going to church. For Lungu, the state’s harassment was “a buildup meant to culminate in my arrest.”

That interview now reads as a chilling foreshadowing. Lungu died on 5 June 2025, and his body remains unburied amid a bitter dispute between his family and the government. His closest allies, including Emmanuel “Jay Jay” Banda and Ambassador Emmanuel Mwamba, both central figures in the 2024 crackdown described in that broadcast, now live in exile.

THE ABDUCTION OF Jay Jay BANDA
The BBC exchange with Mwamba in 2024 focused on the abduction of Jay Jay Banda, then an opposition MP. His car was discovered abandoned with what police described as a suicide note. Mwamba rejected that account, calling it an “apparent abduction” linked to Banda’s closeness with Lungu.

Banda resurfaced days later, battered and disoriented, only to be forcibly transferred by police from a private hospital to a military facility. Mwamba told the BBC that “the threats against JJ Banda’s life came from people associated with government,” insisting the matter required an independent investigation.

WIDER REPRESSION
The interview also highlighted a pattern of arrests and intimidation. Opposition leader Edith Nawakwi and civil rights activist Brebner Changala were detained and charged with seditious practices. Mwamba himself recounted being abducted and beaten by police, saying, “I lost a tooth and had bruises everywhere.”

The government of President Hakainde Hichilema denied involvement, but Mwamba pointed to “clear videos and voice notes” of ruling party officials issuing threats. He accused the administration of deliberately shrinking the democratic space.

DEMOCRACY ON “LIFE SUPPORT”
Mwamba tied the crackdown to broader national failures. Zambia in 2024 was reeling from its highest cost of living in three decades, a devastating drought threatening six million people with famine, and recurring public health outbreaks from cholera to anthrax.

Instead of addressing these crises, he argued, the government was silencing critics. In Parliament, opposition MPs faced suspensions whenever they tried to raise economic or governance issues.

“Zambians elected Hakainde Hichilema to expand freedoms and resolve crises,” Mwamba said. “Instead, there is a rise in dictatorship.”

A WARNING THAT ECHOES IN 2025
At the time, critics questioned whether the Patriotic Front had the moral authority to challenge Hichilema, given its own record in government. Mwamba’s reply was stark: “A wrong remains a wrong, whether committed by Edgar Lungu or Hakainde Hichilema.”

One year later, with Lungu gone, Banda and Mwamba in exile, and Zambia’s diaspora emerging as the loudest opposition voice, the warnings from that 2024 BBC interview resonate even louder. What was then a forecast of repression has since hardened into today’s political reality: a nation trapped between economic turmoil, authoritarian drift, and unresolved grief over an unburied former president.