The Toyota Hilux, the President, and the Archbishop: understanding the politics behind the orchestrated campaign to have Alick Banda removed from his position

By Sishuwa Sishuwa

The recent move by the government to summon Lusaka archdiocese Archbishop Alick Banda over “unlawful possession of a Toyota Hilux Motor vehicle” is not accidental; it is part of an orchestrated and long running effort by President Hakainde Hichilema to have the Catholic prelate removed from his position before the next general election on Thursday 13th August 2026. To state this point with absolute certainty is not to downplay the possibility that there could have been in-house breaches of laid-down procedure – entirely divorced from Archbishop Banda – in how the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) disposed of the Hilux in question; it is to demonstrate both the critical importance of placing or locating the issue in its proper historical context, and the extent to which the government’s actions against the leader of the Catholic Church in Lusaka are politically motivated and legally unjustified.

President Hichilema may not be methodical when it comes to effectively running the country, but he most definitely is when it comes to scheming on how to keep power at all costs. His desire to have Archbishop Banda removed from his position, fearful of the prelate’s influence in the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops (ZCCB) and ahead of the general election, is as old as Hichilema’s presidency. I seek the reader’s indulgence to provide a brief history of Hichilema’s relationship with Banda and the Catholic Church in general because it is useful to understanding the present. In opposition, Hichilema, and his United Party for National Development (UPND) did not enjoy a close relationship with Archbishop Banda. Their darling was Telesphore Mpundu, the then Archbishop of Lusaka who was known for his strong criticism of the administration of President Edgar Chagwa Lungu on governance concerns.

For instance, when Hichilema was arrested on a trumped-up treason charge in April 2017, Mpundu, who also served as president of the ZCCB, denounced the action, stating that “Zambia is now all, except in designation, a dictatorship.” Mpundu was to play an important role in the process that led to Hichilema’s release from detention (treason is a non-bailable offence in Zambia, so suspects are kept in detention throughout the court process). After he clocked three months in detention, and even before trial in the case commenced, Hichilema requested civil rights activist Brebner Changala, who visited him in prison in July 2017, to ask the Catholic leadership to help secure his release from prison. By denomination, Hichilema is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church that has historically steered clear of politics in Zambia until after his election in 2021. In asking the Catholics to intervene, Hichilema was recognising both the power of the Roman Catholic Church and the influence of its bishops on political affairs.

Changala relayed Hichilema’s request to Archbishop Mpundu, who, following a meeting with President Lungu at State House, constituted a three-member group of Catholic Bishops, including himself, to lead the mediation talks. The other two were Bishop Banda, then in charge of Ndola Diocese on the Copperbelt and chosen because he was seen as someone respected by Lungu, and Emeritus Bishop Raymond Mpezele of Livingstone in Southern Province, chosen for his perceived closeness to Hichilema and what Mpundu believed was the need to create a team that reflected ethnic-regional diversity (Mpundu is a Bemba from the North, Banda is a Chewa from the East while Mpezele is a Tonga from the South). The trio then held back and forth meetings with Hichilema and Lungu, who, by this time, was searching for a way to release his nemesis without causing himself further political embarrassment.

Growing domestic and international condemnation of the continued incarceration of the opposition leader left Lungu in a catch 22 situation. On the one hand, if he allowed the treason case to run its course, the bogus nature of the charges and the extent of his presidential involvement would be laid bare. On the other, if the Catholic Bishops succeeded in bringing the treason case to a halt and securing Hichilema’s unconditional release, Lungu would have not only capitulated to domestic opposition but also emboldened and confirmed the political influence of the prelates. This is what delayed the release of Hichilema until Lungu enlisted the involvement of an external and non-threatening intermediary who could free him from a self-inflicted mess without further humiliation. Enter the Commonwealth and its Secretary General Patricia Scotland, whose first stop in Lusaka, even before she went to State House, was the Catholic Cathedral to meet Mpundu.

On the eve of Scotland’s entry into the Catholic Bishops’ mediation efforts, it was clear to many that the treason charge against Hichilema was entirely cooked up and that Lungu had got himself into an untenable position. His claims concerning the independence of the judiciary and respect for the separation of powers were now widely seen as hollow. In enlisting Scotland’s intervention, Lungu reasoned that it was easier to deal with an external organisation rather than a domestic political actor, especially one that had accused him of dictatorship. The Commonwealth Secretary General was the perfect candidate to assist Lungu in avoiding a more just end of the treason case, which would have exposed him as the villain. And saving him she did. A few days after Scotland’s arrival, Hichilema walked to freedom after the public prosecutor discontinued the case through a nolle prosequi. Despite the efforts of the Commonwealth to present its intervention as decisive, it was never lost on Hichilema that the full credit for his release lay elsewhere: on the Catholic Church bishops and particularly Mpundu, who, in spite of repeated attempts by the ruling elites to intimidate and discredit him, refused to be silenced.

I have taken the trouble of providing all this background to demonstrate the point that altogether, this experience taught Hichilema one important lesson: the unrivalled influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Zambia, where it has long played an important role in consolidating democracy. Unlike its religious counterparts, the Church enjoys relative financial independence, protecting it from state intimidation and patronage. Its priests often take messages of political change to the Sunday pulpit and deliver them accessibly. Meanwhile, its bishops provide regular, mostly critical, pastoral letters on the state of the nation in a way that shapes public opinion. In opposition, Hichilema benefited from this unofficial support of the Church, in addition to its denunciation of his detention on the politically motivated charge of treason. After he became president and fearful that he would now become the recipient of its stinging criticism on national policies that impede the upliftment of the people, Hichilema devised a twofold strategy aimed at containing the Catholic Church’s role in promoting social justice and accountable democratic governance.

The first strategy was instigating divisions in the ZCCB to weaken its political influence. This is an objective that the president has, to some extent, accomplished. Before the election of Hichilema, and since Zambia’s independence in 1964, the strength of the ZCCB rested on having a crop of principled Bishops who were above ethnic politics and easily criticised the governance excesses of successive administrations regardless of the ethnic origins of such bishops and of the president at a given time. After August 2021, things changed. For instance, the pastoral letters on governance concerns that the ZCCB previously provided on a regular basis, roughly averaging four times a year, are now so rare that there are even instances where they have not been issued in a whole year.

A key reason for the increasing dearth of pastoral letters is the reluctance by Catholic Bishops who ethnically hail from Southern, Western and Northwestern provinces – a region where voters have historically supported Hichilema and his party – to publicly criticise the president. Hichilema is the first president from this region since Zambia’s independence in 1964. All previous hopefuls from there failed to win the presidency, which, until his election, had largely been held by their counterparts from Eastern and the Bemba-speaking provinces of Northern, Luapula and Muchinga. Partly because of this record, many people from Southern, Northwestern, and Western provinces, who believe they had suffered marginalisation in the public sector and distribution of appointments to public office, are reluctant to criticise a person they see as ‘our’ leader. It does not help that Hichilema appears to see himself primarily as ‘the’ leader of Zambians from one half of the country. A well-placed Catholic leader who spoke on condition of anonymity provided illuminating insights that reveal how these ethnic-regional tensons have now found expression in the leadership of the Catholic Church. According to him, bishops who hail from Hichilema’s region now generally prefer holding face-to-face meetings with the president rather than issuing strongly worded pastoral letters, however justified:

“There is no established number of pastoral letters that we are supposed to issue annually. The established practice is that the Bishops meet twice a year to deliberate on key issues, so pastoral letters are, at the very least, issued twice a year in the aftermath of these meetings. In practice, however and historically speaking, they have been issued sometimes four to five times a year. Since 2021, the frequency of the letters has reduced. This is not because there are no issues to discuss or that the biannual meetings do not take place. It is because there are some divisions within the ZCCB that have a tribal or regional orientation. For a pastoral letter to be issued, all the bishops must sign it. This required consensus has been difficult to achieve in the last few years”, the source stated before explaining how ethnic-regional dynamics have interfered with the work of the ZCCB.

He added “You must remember that the current occupant of State House is the first president of Zambia from one half of the country [i.e. the mentioned region comprising Southern, Western and Northwestern provinces] since independence, so the general reluctance by some bishops to admonish him should be understood from this perspective. Not once have individual bishops who originate from that region publicly criticised this administration even on issues that affect their flock. Whenever you hear criticism from individual bishops, it is usually from those of us who hail from the East or the North. This is what gives him the courage to respond to our criticism by saying some Catholic leaders hate him because of where he was born. He would not be saying this if individual bishops across the country criticised him, as they did to previous presidents, even outside the pastoral letters. Unfortunately, a few bishops from one region prefer meeting him at State House in place of issuing the pastoral letters. This is the reason why the bishops have ended up at State House on two occasions in the last four years. Even Archbishop Banda whom they are now claiming has never been to State House was there. Just conduct a search on google and you will see the pictures of our meetings with the president. There is generally nothing wrong with meeting the president at State House, but such meetings should not come at the expense of pastoral letters”, concluded the source who also bemoaned the fact that “one or two current bishops are involved in businesses that benefit directly from the award of government contracts, thereby compromising their independence.”

This is the wider context within which Hichilema’s relatively successful attempt to reduce the political influence of the Catholic Church as an institution should be understood. To be clear, the secretariat of the Catholic Church does issue occasional shorter statements on certain issues, but the impact of such efforts is small, relative to the pastoral letters.

The second strategy employed by Hichilema to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church on politics is targeting prominent individual members of ZCCB for smear by way of presenting them as supporters of the former ruling party, the Patriotic Front (PF), and ex-president Lungu. An additional lesson that Hichilema drew from his experiences in opposition politics, particularly in the wake of the treason debacle, is how the leadership of an individual Catholic bishop can tilt the political scale of popularity against an incumbent president especially in swing provinces like Lusaka. Although Lungu lost the 2021 election because of several other factors, it is indisputable that Archbishop Mpundu contributed greatly to his defeat. Not only did the prelate hold power to account; he was also a significant voice in the ZCCB and in galvanising civil society in defence of electoral democracy. Hichilema learnt the lesson: a powerful Bishop, especially if they head an influential diocese in the capital, is a major threat to an incumbent president’s electoral prosects. Lungu realised this point after the treason case and immediately set out to correct it.

Exploiting the naivety of the then Apostolic Nuncio to Zambia, Julio Murat who served in the role from 2012 to 2018, the then President lobbied the Nuncio, the Vatican’s diplomat who represents the Holy See in another state, to have Mpundu removed from his position as the Archbishop of Lusaka ahead of the 2021 election. The government branded Archbishop Mpundu as a ‘destabilising’ figure whose continued occupation of his office would undermine the relations between the Vatican and Zambia. The Holy See caved in and Mpundu was forced to resign on 30 January 2018. On the same day, Banda, the Bishop of Ndola, was promoted and appointed Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Lusaka, which, alongside other Catholic structures such as Caritas Zambia, went on to play an important role in ensuring vote protection during the 2021 election. This paved the way for the political transition that brought Hichilema to power.

A few days after his inauguration, the new president, perhaps indebted to Mpundu for his role in the treason case, invited the retired archbishop to conduct mass at State House. Given that Banda was the overall leader of the Catholic Church in Lusaka, Hichilema’s decision was regarded as a wilful act of disrespect since no permission was sought from the incumbent archbishop. This incident initially created a rift between Mpundu and Banda but the two easily reconciled, later. The president later tried to make overtures to cultivating a better relationship with Banda but without acknowledging his ‘mistake’ and apologising for it. This episode planted the seed of what would turn out to be a poor relationship between Hichilema and Archbishop Banda.

Hichilema destroys what he cannot control. Or at least he attempts to. For instance, when the United States Ambassador to Zambia Michael Gonzales became increasingly outspoken against corruption under the UPND, Hichilema lobbied the State Department to recall its envoy. Much to his annoyance, the Trump administration refused. In fact, it extended Gonzales’s stay in Zambia by a year. So when Banda started highlighting governance concerns under the UPND, Hichilema, fearful that the Archbishop could become to his rule what Telesphore Mpundu was to president Lungu’s, hatched a three-legged plan aimed at mortally blunting the influence of Mpundu’s successor.

The first was lobbying the Vatican to remove Banda from his position. Ahead of a trip to the Vatican in February 2022, the president reportedly asked Archbishop Gianfranco Gallone – the Nuncio to Zambia from 2019 to 2023 – to request the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church, to remove the Archbishop of Lusaka whom he presented as a ‘destabilising’ figure with the capacity to undermine the country’s relationship with the Vatican. With a better grasp of the political dynamics than his predecessor, Gallone declined the president’s request. Then, during his actual visit in Rome, Hichilema renewed his request to have Archbishop Banda removed before the Vatican officials who also respectfully declined this appeal.

The second strategy was to discredit Banda in the hope that this could force him to resign on his own or accept Hichilema’s overtures for enforced friendship. As Banda’s critique over governance concerns continued, the president encouraged ruling party officials to condemn the archbishop. The first to take its turn was the party’s leadership in Lusaka, who publicly branded Banda as a PF supporter. The bashing of Banda was later taken up by UPND Secretary-General Batuke Imenda who condemned the archbishop as “the Lucifer of Zambia” and “a well-known PF political conman”. The ruling party’s chief executive called the use of the pulpit as a “political podium” a “devil scheme and a satanic philosophical tactic”. Finally, Imenda announced, the “UPND will consider Banda as political opponent, not a priest”. In what appears to be coordinated moves, traditional rulers and non-Catholic church leaders went paraded on state media to join in the denouncements. However, this did not shake Banda who continued speaking truth to power.

The third and final strategy consisted of elements of the first two. After Gallone left Zambia in 2023, he was succeeded by Archbishop Gian Luca Perici, a more malleable Nuncio with whom Hichilema began to cultivate close ties following the Italian’s arrival in September that year. According to local press reports, the president asked Archbishop Perici to lobby the Vatican to remove or transfer Banda. However, the absence of a clear pretext that the new Nuncio could use to persuade the Holy See constrained the willingness of Gallone’s successor to implement Hichilema’s request. Enter the Toyota Hilux registration number ALF 7734. Donated to Archbishop Banda in May 2021, the vehicle, according to publicly available data such as official receipts, gate passes, and court records, was previously owned by Mulopa Kaunda, an employee of the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA), and, before then, by ZRA itself. In December 2023, the government, through its investigative wing, the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC), stated that it had reason to believe that the Hilux was “was irregularly acquired”. After issuing a notice of seizure, the DEC sized the vehicle from Archbishop Banda on 27 December 2023 and warned that the car was subject to forfeiture to the state.

Then in September 2024, the DEC announced that the Hilux had been forfeited to the State, as per the law, following Banda’s failure to contest its seizure within six months: “As of 27th June 2024, Archbishop Banda did not claim the vehicle and no proceedings regarding the vehicle had been instituted by the Commission. In terms of…the Laws of Zambia, upon expiration of six months from date of seizure, any property that has not been claimed is deemed duly and legally forfeited to the State”, read the DEC’s press release dated 12 September 2024. UPND officials started using this case to further discredit Banda as “a car thief” and this smear campaign provided Hichilema with additional material that he relied upon to renew his request to Archbishop Perici to lobby the Vatican to remove or transfer the Catholic prelate.

Aware of Hichilema’s machinations, John Sangwa and I privately wrote to the Apostolic Nuncio on 30 December 2024, urging him not to fall prey to the president’s schemes. As well as highlighting the political role that the Catholic Church has

historically played in Zambia, our letter demonstrated the many clashes between successive presidents of the country and Catholic leaders on governance concerns. The letter, which was copied to the ZCCB president Archbishop Ignatius Chama, to President Hichilema and to Archbishop Banda, read in part: “We, Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa and Mr John Sangwa, are writing to express concern about the Zambian government’s current campaign to discredit Archbishop Dr Alick Banda of Lusaka Archdiocese. This campaign has escalated to lobbying the Holy See for the removal of Archbishop Banda from his position…. Archbishop continues to fulfil his responsibility by highlighting issues including national governance failures which impede the upliftment of the people of Zambia, as did his predecessor.”

It continued: “During the one-party state era, President Kenneth Kaunda clashed with Catholic priest Fr Umberto Davoli, who regularly criticised the government’s excesses. Subsequent presidents, including Frederick Chiluba, Levy Mwanawasa, Michael Sata and Edgar Lungu, employed similar tactics to pressure the Church. Despite these efforts, the Church has resisted attempts to silence its critical voice…. We urge you, Your Excellency, not to participate in or succumb to the Zambian government’s manoeuvres to remove Archbishop Banda, who has courageously spoken out against governance failures. Instead, we ask you to convey to the Zambian government that the Catholic Church’s mission is to promote the wellbeing of all individuals including by addressing governance issues that hinder this goal”, we concluded.

Things went relatively quiet until after the death of former president Lungu in June 2025 in South Africa when the deceased’s family made it clear that they did not want Hichilema to attend the funeral as per his predecessor’s dying wish. The president refused to honour the family’s request, despite the absence of any statute that requires his presence at the burial of a former president or that mandates the state to have the final say on the funeral. Following the collapse of talks between the two parties, the family opted to bury Lungu in South Africa but the Zambian government, seeking to enforce Hichilema’s personal wish to preside over it, moved to legally block the funeral when it was already underway, one that was being presided over by Archbishop Banda. As a result of this ongoing court process, Lungu remains in a Johannesburg morgue more than seven months after his demise. Attempts by Hichilema to get both Banda and the ZCCB involved in resolving the impasse failed. UPND supporters seized these developments to resume their denunciation of Banda, falsely presenting him as the stumbling block to getting Lungu buried in Lusaka.

Events came to a head in later 2025 when the ZCCB strongly opposed Hichilema’s proposed changes to Zambia’s constitution that were widely seen as aimed at tilting the playing field in favour of the governing party. When the government refused to withdraw the Bill carrying the proposals, despite a court ruling that declared the process that produced it as unconstitutional, the ZCCB, as part of a broader civil society group, sued the executive in the Constitutional Court. Even as the matter remained before court, Hichilema bulldozed his way until the bill was passed on 15 December 2025, following allegations that he offered financial bribes to opposition lawmakers to vote for it. Again, UPND supporters blamed Banda for his perceived role in instigating the public interest litigation that has seriously delegitimised the new constitutional amendments – notwithstanding the fact that the legal action was a collective decision of the ZCCB. In fact, when Hichilema, in the company of his press aides for politics and legal affairs, hosted at his home the ZCCB president Archbishop Chama on 28 November 2025, he reportedly raised four complaints against Banda whom he accused of harbouring hate against the president.

The first was that the Lusaka archbishop had in 2022 allegedly predicted in the presence of six cabinet ministers – in charge of defence, home affairs, agriculture, education, labour, and community development – that Hichilema’s administration would not last long in power. The president said he considers Banda’s remarks as treasonable and could have had him arrested if it was not for his (Hichilema’s) magnanimity. The second was that Banda was in custody of two stolen cars, one that was registered in a charity, Heart of Mercy, which is run by the archdiocese, and the Toyota Hilux that was donated to him and which the government had since seized. Again, Hichilema made it clear that Banda would have been behind bars if it was not for the supposed presidential magnanimity. The third was that Archbishop Banda was the one to blame for the prolonged impasse over Lungu’s burial place, a charge that the ZCCB president flatly rejected, defending his colleague as a third party with limited sway on the matter. The fourth and final complaint was that Archbishop Banda had allegedly prevented Hichilema from attending Church functions in Lusaka’s Catholic dioceses. Again, Archbishop Chama pushed back on this claim.

In fact, in accusing Banda of hate, Hichilema may simply have been unhappy that the archbishop had not only stood up to the president but also learnt the lesson on receipt of gifts. For instance, when Hichilema had earlier donated 10 cows to the Archdiocese of Lusaka, Banda, smart from his enlightening experience, declined to accept the gift, arguing that he did not know if the source was untainted. His example may have begun to influence other Bishops. For instance, when Hichilema donated K800, 000 to the Diocese of Mansa that was celebrating its anniversary in June 2025 and at which Banda was the guest of honour, the Bishop in charge rejected Hichilema’s gift. These incidents may have bruised the president’s notoriously fragile ego and fed perceptions that Banda hates him.

The president ended the meeting with Archbishop Chama by extending an invitation to the entire ZCCB. Chama tabled Hichilema’s proposal for a meeting to the bishops during their biannual forum held from 15 to 19 December. Aside from the absence of an agenda, the bishops declined the invite on the ground that any meeting with the Head of State, coming so soon after the passage of the widely discredited amendments to Zambia’s constitution, would be seen as an endorsement of such changes. They however wrote a strongly worded letter to Hichilema, dated 19 December 2025, in which they criticised the tendency by the president and his officials to treat Banda as separate from the Catholic Church. The letter defined leadership in the Catholic Church, presenting the bishops and priests as kings and prophets who speak the mind of God, and proposing that any future engagements between the ZCCB and the president should be held at a neutral venue, away from State House. Altogether, these developments have frightened Hichilema into the belief that Archbishop Banda is becoming a Telesphore Mpundu.

As part of its plans to rig the forthcoming elections in Lusaka, even at parliamentary level, the government has recently changed the leadership of two ministries that are crucial to the management of elections: local government and education. For instance, the Local Government Commission recently embarked on mass ethnic transfers that have seen over 20 senior officials from the Lusaka City Council, who all hail from Eastern and Northern provinces, moved to far flung places to pave the way for their replacement with those from Hichilema’s region. Additionally, the government has made wholesale changes to the leadership of the Ministry of Education by ensuring that all the ten provincial education officers come from the region that has historically supported the UPND. Fearful that the Archbishop of Lusaka could stand in his way to rig the polls by getting the Catholic Church to monitor the forthcoming election and prevent vote rigging, a scheme was then hatched to resurrect the old case of the Toyota Hilux with a view to initiating criminal charges against Banda. Such an action, the government concluded, would provide it with a much stronger pretext on which to petition the Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Perici to ask the Vatican to finally remove Banda from his position. Enter the DEC again.

On 31 December, the investigative wing summoned Archbishop Banda to answer questions over the same Toyota Hilux that he had already been seized and forfeited to the State in December 2023. The interrogatory meeting was slated for 5 January 2026 at the DEC head offices. Ahead of it, the ZCCB president issued, on 2 January, a press statement in which he expressed his fellow Bishops’ “unwavering solidarity with Archbishop Alick Banda…in the face of ongoing attacks against the Church’s mission and leadership.” Chama added that the ZCCB viewed Banda’s summoning “as an attempt to suppress his voice as a Shepherd of the Archdiocese of Lusaka and a member of ZCCB. Archbishop Banda has faced consistent name-calling and what we can now recognise as state-sponsored persecution. We consider it an abuse of authority for the ruling party to utilise state machinery against an individual due to his stance on national governance and his efforts to hold the government accountable. We reaffirm that it is morally wrong to use state institutions to persecute those who hold dissenting views and/or provide oversight on matters of governance”, Archbishop Chama stated.

Banda, whose summons did not indicate whether he was being treated as a witness or suspect, appeared before the DEC in the company of his lawyers. Sources within the Commission disclosed that the original plan had been to arrest the Archbishop of Lusaka on a criminal charge, but “the huge crowd of people who accompanied him to our offices and the Bishop’s refusal to answer all questions except confirming his [National Registration Card] NRC number” undermined the scheme. In the aftermath of the meeting, DEC issued a press statement stating that it had recorded a warn and caution statement from Archbishop Banda over “his unlawful possession of a Toyota Hilux Motor vehicle with registration number ALF 7734, being property of Zambia Revenue Authority”. Commission spokesperson Allan Tamba stated that the Hilux “is reasonably suspected to have been unlawfully obtained from ZRA, contrary to Section 319 (a) of the Penal Code Cap 87 of the Laws of Zambia… When granted an opportunity to explain how he assumed possession of the said motor vehicle”, Tamba added, “Dr Alick Banda chose to remain silent. The commission will update the nation regarding the outcome of the investigations an at an appropriate time.” This action set the next stage for what appears to be several government-instigated machinations.

The first involves Mulopa Kaunda, the ZRA employee who was said to have bought the car and donated it to the Archbishop. On 7 January, two days after Banda’s appearance at the DEC, News Diggers, a private newspaper that seem to have been recently co-opted by the government, published a cover story titled “ZRA employee denies gifting vehicle to Archbishop Banda: FRAUD EXPOSED”. In the story, Kaunda, reportedly a practising Catholic who worked in Ndola for several years when Banda was the Bishop of the area before he was recently transferred to the ZRA head office in Lusaka, denied knowing the Archbishop as emphatically as one of the 12 disciples had done against Jesus Christ: “I don’t know Alick Banda. I never sold or gave him a vehicle. I never bought the vehicle and I know nothing about it. I never participated in any tender or auction at ZRA where I bought that vehicle. I know that ZRA advertises assets that it wants to dispose of, but I never participated in any such process”, he said.

Kaunda further said he does not know how official documents indicating receipt of payment for the car, a letter of change of ownership of the vehicle from ZRA to him, and a gate pass authorising the Hilux to leave the premises of ZRA, were all issued in his name. On the day that he should have taken the car from the ZRA premises, Kaunda added, he was away in Ndola where he remained working until May 2022 when he was promoted to Lusaka. When asked to explain how the letter to RTSA bear his NRC number, Kaunda blamed it on one of his former superiors: “One day my boss Mr Kaoma called me and told me to send him my NRC on WhatsApp. But I was not comfortable doing this because I didn’t know what he wanted to use it for. So, I told him my WhatsApp had crashed. But him being my boss, I couldn’t refuse. So, I sent him my NRC using my work email to his personal email. I still have that email and all the correspondence…. That is the only thing that I genuinely did. My boss, Mr Kaoma, called me on phone and asked me to send him my NRC, without saying what he wanted it for.” I will return to the possible lack of credibility of this testimony later.

The second of what appeared to be government-instigated manoeuvring involves the conduct of News Diggers. If the publication of Kaunda’s conveniently timed ‘revelations ‘was meant to expose Archbishop Banda to further public ridicule, then the objective was achieved. I say ‘conveniently timed’ because Diggers, which has a distinction of indicating when an interview was conducted, concealed the date of the one with Kaunda. If the interview was conducted before the Archbishop appeared at the DEC offices, then the date for the interrogations might have been deliberately set up to get the prelate to say something that could have contradicted Kaunda’s claims in the hope that publishing it immediately afterwards would present Banda as a liar. When the prelate elected to remain silent, what the publication dubbed the “Holy Silence” the following day, the pre-set schemes were shattered, perhaps forcing the newspaper to go ahead and publish the story anyway.

If the interview was conducted after Banda appeared at the DEC offices, then it suggests that the aim was to set him up for further bashing, a task on which News Diggers was happy to take the lead. The paper’s editorial comment for 7 January, the same day it published the undated interview with Kaunda, was unambiguous in its pro-Hichilema agenda. Titled “Report Alick Banda; let the Vatican deal with his issues”, the comment denounced the Archbishop to the point of possible libel. Despite acknowledging that the “principal offenders are clearly the ZRA officials who facilitated and authorised the illegal disposal, without [whom] no vehicle would have left the ZRA custody let alone landed in private hands”, the paper proceeded to impute criminality on Banda, presenting him as a person destined for prison even before he is formally arrested, and any court process takes place.

Addressing both Hichilema and the Nuncio, the editor was unrestrained: “This brings us to the unavoidable political question: can the UPND afford to jail a sitting Archbishop under these circumstances, and in an election year? Our answer is a firm no. Not because the law should be selectively applied, but because justice must also be intelligent, strategic and focused on dismantling criminal networks rather than scoring symbolic victories. Jailing the highest-ranking Catholic priest in Lusaka would instantly overshadow all anti-corruption gains, inflame religious sentiment and hand the opposition a powerful persecution narrative.” This recklessness is neither accidental nor rooted in ignorance of the difficulty of finding Banda with a case to answer when the relevant law, discussed in greater detail below, is applied. It is arguably a deliberate element of an orchestrated effort to further discredit the moral authority of Archbishop Banda in the eyes of the public and empower the Apostolic Nuncio to use the editorial comment as material evidence that he could submit to Rome in support of Hichilema’s request to have the Archbishop removed from his position. As far as the publication is concerned, any court process would find “the highest-ranking Catholic priest in Lusaka” guilty and the only problem is “jailing him in in an election year”.

Having set up Banda as a jail-bound criminal, the newspaper then proceeded to offer what it calls a ‘sober’ solution that would “reinforce the credibility of President Hichilema’s leadership…especially in the context of an approaching general election”: “Report Alick Banda [to] the Vatican [and let the Holy See] deal with his issues”. The paper concluded that this “diplomatic and institutionnal (sic) route…appears far wiser than dramatic arrests. The Catholic Church is not an informal grouping; it is a highly structured global institution. In Zambia, the Vatican is represented by the Apostolic Nuncio, who closely monitors the conduct of Church leadership. It would be naïve to assume that the Vatican is comfortable with its senior clergy being implicated in criminal scandals, regardless of political context. Providing evidence to Church authorities and allowing internal ecclesiastical processes to run their course would protect the State from accusations of political persecution while still addressing the substance of the matter. Such an approach would also demonstrate respect for institutional boundaries and reduce unnecessary tension between Church and State.”

Enter the government through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Anyone can be forgiven for thinking that Diggers’ Banda-bashing editorial comment was written by State House in conjunction with Archbishop Perici, the Apostolic Nuncio to Zambia. Hours after the comment’s publication, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs moved to formally ask the Vatican to remove Archbishop Banda from his position. Quoting government sources, KBN, a private Television station in Lusaka, reported in the evening of 7 January that “The Ministry has raised a diplomatic exchange to the Vatican – a note verbale – raising Government’s displeasure with the conduct of Archbishop Banda whom they have accused of being political. And yesterday, Vatican representative in Zambia, the Nuncio Archbishop Gian Perici, spoke to President Hakainde Hichilema, sources have further revealed without disclosing the contents of their discussion. Sources say Government want Dr Banda recalled from Lusaka as he was deemed to be “disturbing” Government and would not be wanted in his current portfolio in the running up to this year’s elections.”

The TV station added that the “arrest of Archbishop Banda is imminent, but the Government is willing to stop the process if he is recalled from Lusaka.” Herein lies the goal of the earlier cited comment by News Diggers: creating the decisive platform on which the Vatican can be pressured or blackmailed to speedily hound Archbishop Banda out of office through dismissal or transfer from Lusaka to, say, Rome. Should the Holy See fail to do so, the central governing body of the Catholic Church must be prepared to witness what Diggers called the “dramatic arrests” of “its senior clergy [who are] being implicated in criminal scandals” in Zambia. Four years after Hichilema launched his bid to have Banda removed from his position in early 2022, the president is on the verge of triumph, aided in part by three related factors: Hichilema’s continued abuse of state institutions, the existence of an Apostolic Nuncio who appears suspectable to executive influence, and a private newspaper which – for whatever reason – appears hitched to a government agenda.

Hichilema’s desperation to have Banda removed from office before the initiation and conclusion of any court process is based on a clear understanding that no competent court is likely to convict the Archbishop of Lusaka if the Hilux case runs its full course. Despite the unacceptable attempts by the DEC, Kaunda, and Diggers to frame Banda as guilty, a review of (i) the ZRA Asset Disposal Policy (ii) the publicly available facts relating to how the Hilux was disposed of, and (iii) the existing law relevant to the case all show that it would be almost impossible for the prosecution to prove its case in court. To better understand this point, it is important to provide a brief history of the wider context of how we got here.

Between 2017 and 2020, ZRA disposed of at least 68 obsolete, redundant, and unserviceable cars through internal auction sales governed by the company’s Asset Disposal Policy. This policy, created in October 2002 and intended to reduce the rate of attrition among the employees due to road traffic accidents caused by worn-out cars, empowers the institution to sell vehicles that have reached a mileage of 200, 000 kilometres or are five years old, whichever comes first, to serving employees. It allows the Authority, whenever necessary, to seek permission from the Ministry of Finance and the ZRA Board of Directors to sell the ageing fleet. Once approval is given, the Asset Disposal Committee – consisting of the Purchasing and Supplies Manager (chair), Transport and Security Manager, Administration Manager, Accountant Assets, Senior Procurement and Stores Accountant (secretary), Assistant Commissioner in charge of the debt collection unit and Assistant Commissioner for International and Policy – electronically advertises the cars to the employees who then bid for them at auction. Workers can bid from any location, as one does not need to be in Lusaka. Once an auction is conducted, the successful bidder is notified and required to deposit money into the ZRA account held at Zambia National Commercial Bank within five days failure to which the vehicle is given to the next-on-the-line employee.

After the deposit is made, the successful bidder sends evidence of payment to the Cashier at the Head Office who then issues a ZRA branded formal receipt to the employee in his or her name. A different relevant officer then issues a letter authoring change of ownership from ZRA to the new owner, one that the person takes to the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA). Such a letter carries personal details of the new owner of the vehicle including their NRC number. The successful bidder is further issued with a gate pass bearing their name, one that allows them or their designated representatives to remove the car from the ZRA premises. At this stage, the new owners have the freedom to do whatever they want with their acquired properties. Some employees buy the cars for their parents, others donate them to friends and family, or choose to immediately resell (car ownership at RTSA can change anytime including only hours after the previous change) while a few either retain the vehicles for personal use or turn them into scrap metals.

Most of the cars that were sold across the period under consideration underwent this process and were bought by the Authority’s employees, as per the policy. According to evidence in the public domain, Mulopa Kaunda is said to have bought the Toyota Hilux in dispute on 17 November 2020 for the sum of K50, 000. After successfully bidding for it, a receipt showing evidence of payment, a gate pass allowing the car to be taken out of ZRA, and a support letter were issued in his name to facilitate the change of ownership at RTSA. In September 2024, News Diggers quoted Sizwan Luhana, an Assistant Manager at the Road Transport and Safety Agency, saying official Agency records showed that “the Toyota Hilux registration number ALF 7734 transferred ownership from ZRA to Kaunda and then to Archbishop Banda…The current owner is Alick Banda. Before Alick Banda, it was owned by Mulopa Kaunda. It was changed from ZRA to Mulopa on May 21, 2021, and came to Mr Banda Alick on May 22, 2021”. This record suggests that the Toyota Hilux car was not stolen from ZRA. By the time its ownership was changed from the ZRA employee who supposedly bought it to Archbishop Banda, the Hilux was, legally speaking, a registered property of Kaunda, not ZRA.

Kaunda’s earlier argument that he neither bid nor paid for the car is based on his word alone – and it is both surprising and incriminating that Diggers chose to believe what he said at face value. When pitted against what seems to be credible official records, and the potential testimony of the relevant officials at the time that he participated in the auction, the law is more likely to be favourable towards the official record. In the same vein, Kaunda’s argument that he was in Ndola on the day the Hilux was taken out of ZRA premises is not compelling because, as shown, the successful bidder is allowed to nominate another person to collect the vehicle on their behalf, provided the nominee has the required supporting documents. Even Kaunda’s claim that he only emailed a copy of his NRC to his boss out of obedience will, during a court process, be subjected to rigorous scrutiny. After all, he is not a disinterred party. He is someone who has a job with the Authority to protect. Given the demonstrated preoccupation by Hichilema to fix Archbishop Banda, it is not impossible that the State might have intimidated Kaunda to deny knowledge of the transaction as a condition for keeping his job, which he has retained to date.

If the argument is that the Hilux was disposed of without appearing on the list of cars to be auctioned, then abuse of office could have indeed taken place through failure to follow laid down procedure. However, as the Diggers’ editorial comment stated, the “principal offenders [even when this possibility is considered] are clearly the ZRA officials who facilitated and authorised the illegal disposal, without [whom] no vehicle would have left the ZRA custody let alone landed in private hands”. The Archbishop was not involved since he had no direct dealings with ZRA. Given this background, it becomes clear that the government’s pursuit of Banda, when he was not involved in the internal process to dispose of the Hilux or change its ownership from ZRA to one of its employees, is politically motivated.

The government’s pursuit of Archbishop Banda is even more surprising when one considers that the Hilux in question was not among the vehicles over which former ZRA director general Kingsley Chanda and director of administration, Callistius Kaoma were recently convicted in relation to the disposal of the 68 cars. To provide brief context: Following the 2021 transfer of power, Chanda and Kaoma lost their jobs. The government then dragged them to court for failure to follow procedure over the disposal of the vehicles. The duo was found guilty on only three of the cars, and the Toyota Hilux in question was not among them.

In addition, most of the 68 vehicles that were disposed of are no longer with the ZRA employees who originally bought them. Some were donated to the employees’ parents; others were given away to charities and even government institutions such as the Anti-Corruption Commission. Surprisingly, the government has shown little interest in the fate of the other vehicles. Its main preoccupation is the one car that was donated to the Archbishop because, according to the DEC, it “is reasonably suspected to have been unlawfully obtained from ZRA, contrary to Section 319 (a) of the Penal Code Cap 87 of the Laws of Zambia”. A closer examination of this provision reveals the extent to which the government’s case is legally threadbare.

Section 319 of the Penal Code does not criminalise the receipt of stolen property. It addresses only unexplained possession, arising where a person brought before a court on suspicion of possessing or conveying property reasonably suspected to be unlawfully obtained fails to give a satisfactory account of how it was acquired. It does not require proof that the property was stolen, nor that the accused knew or had reason to believe that it was. On the facts, supported by documentary evidence, Archbishop Banda received the vehicle from a private individual who, according to official records, was the registered owner at the time. The government’s reliance on section 319 (a) therefore serves only to highlight the absence of a viable charge, reinforcing the conclusion that what is at play here is not law enforcement but political design.

The lack of a straightforward basis for criminal liability in the cited provisions might help explain why Hichilema is exerting enormous pressure on the Vatican to remove Banda from his position before he is charged and subjected to the court process. The president knows that the Holy See – potentially misled by context-lacking and one-sided reports from a compromised Nuncio in Lusaka – may be easier to manipulate than Archbishop Banda who understands the cut and thrust of African politics as the ruthless pursuit of political power, and the slippery nature of trying to change the behaviour of a leader with authoritarian tendencies. By contrast, the Vatican may have no experience of such politics nor sufficient knowledge of Zambia’s laws that could help it navigate the dispute with the required levels of understanding and impartiality.

In a sense, President Hichilema has found himself in the same Catch-22 situation in which Lungu was during the treason case. If the government discontinues the case against the Archbishop of Lusaka, Banda would be emboldened, and his influence might spiral. If the government arrests him and the matter runs its course, the bogus nature of the charges and possible presidential involvement would be exposed. If the Archbishop were to be convicted, it would be a serious indictment of the judiciary. Many people would conclude that the rule of law no longer applies in Zambia. Were the Vatican to act on the longstanding wish of President Hichilema to sack or transfer one of Zambia’s most prominent and outspoken Catholic clerics, it would not have saved Archbishop Banda; it would have rescued Hichilema from political embarrassment.
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