Zambian opposition arrests and vote count delay cast shadow over election

Eleven people sit in Zambian police cells, six of them opposition figures. The vote count in a presidential election has been suspended for six hours. The European Union's own observers have pronounced the campaign stage anything but free. And the incumbent, Hakainde Hichilema, is pulling ahead.

Armed raid on opposition candidate's home

The most striking episode came on Thursday night, when Zambian security forces conducted a raid that the government later described as an operation against militia activity. Those detained were, according to the official statement, found with high-grade military weapons, ammunition and materials for an armed insurrection. The government provided no further detail on what those materials were, or what specific plans the group is alleged to have pursued.

The location of the raid mattered more than the government acknowledged. It took place at the residence of Brian Mundubile, the presidential candidate of the National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Progress (NRPUP), the main opposition bloc. Mundubile said armed personnel fired shots during the raid and that he was subsequently interrogated by army officers about videos he had released. He also said he suffered mistreatment while in custody. The authorities have denied that claim.

The NRPUP rejected the government's characterisation outright, calling the militia claims spurious and entirely false. The party's statement framed the arrests as a direct assault on its leadership rather than a legitimate security operation. Outgoing Foreign Affairs Minister Mulambo Haimbe, speaking to DW, insisted that those apprehended had been charged and would face trial. "It is not Mr Mundubile's place to make assertions on matters that will go through a court process," Haimbe said, adding that authorities acted to ensure the security of the nation was not compromised during the election.

Among those detained was Patrick Mwansa, the husband of Tasila Lungu, daughter of former president Edgar Lungu. Cabinet Secretary Patrick Kangwa confirmed Mwansa was being held at a police station in Lusaka. The connection to the Lungu family is not incidental: the Patriotic Front, which Lungu led until his death in South Africa last year, has accused Hichilema's government of systematically targeting its allies through arrests and investigations since taking power in 2021.

Six hours of suspended counting

The arrests did not happen in a vacuum. They coincided with an already fraught vote-counting process. On Friday, the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) suspended the count for roughly six hours, citing reports of violence against polling staff and the alleged theft of ballot papers. The commission said the security threat had been contained and that counting resumed, but the pause itself became a flashpoint.

Mundubile argued that the suspension created opportunities for interference and manipulation of results. The ruling United Party for National Development (UPND) dismissed that argument, saying Mundubile was trying to undermine public confidence in the electoral process. The dispute over the pause is not merely procedural. In a close election, any interruption to the count invites suspicion, particularly in a country where the opposition already believes the institutions of the state are aligned against it.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), which sent its own observer mission, warned that the suspension had generated uncertainty and anxiety among voters and political stakeholders. That language, from a regional body not known for confrontational statements about member states, was notably direct.

What the EU observers actually found

The European Union Election Observation Mission did not limit its criticism to the count. Its chief observer, Michael McNamara, described a campaign conducted in a constrained democratic space. The mission's concerns were specific: intimidation of opposition candidates, disruptions to rallies, late changes to electoral laws, an uneven playing field that favoured the ruling party, incumbency advantages and heavily pro-government state media coverage.

These are not marginal observations. The EU's election observation missions are the union's primary instrument for assessing the quality of democratic processes in partner countries, and their conclusions carry weight in Brussels and in national capitals. A negative assessment from an EU mission can affect everything from trade preferences to development aid conditions. The European Parliament's framework for election observation ties such findings directly to the EU's external relations posture.

McNamara's reference to restricted democratic freedoms goes beyond the mechanics of vote counting. It describes a pattern in which the institutional advantages of incumbency, control of state broadcasting, the ability to set electoral rules at short notice and the capacity to deploy security forces against opponents, combine to tilt the contest before a single ballot is cast.

The Catholic bishops intervene

Domestic voices have amplified the international concerns. Zambia's Conference of Catholic Bishops, an institution with considerable moral authority in a country where a large share of the population is Catholic, called on the electoral commission to account fully and publicly for the chain of custody of every affected ballot box and ballot paper. That demand, if taken seriously, would require the ECZ to demonstrate that no ballots were added, removed or altered during the six-hour suspension.

The bishops also urged authorities to ensure that any military deployment remained limited, transparent and temporary. They called for full accounting of anyone held by state agencies, insisting that detained persons must be granted access to legal counsel and family, and either charged according to law or released. The specificity of these demands suggests the bishops were responding to credible reports of people being held incommunicado, a practice that would violate both Zambian law and the international conventions Zambia has signed.

The numbers as they stand

Partial results from the ECZ, covering 70 of Zambia's 226 constituencies, give Hichilema 626,434 votes to Mundubile's 505,795. That is a margin of 120,639 votes with 156 constituencies still to report. The remaining constituencies include both rural areas where Hichilema's support runs strong and urban centres where the opposition tends to perform better. The final outcome is not yet certain, though the incumbent's lead gives him a tangible advantage.

Mundubile has nonetheless claimed victory, citing his party's own parallel count. The ECZ has rejected that claim, stressing that only the commission can officially declare the result. In practical terms, the opposition's parallel count is an assertion rather than a proof, but the decision to claim victory before the official count concludes is itself a signal of how little trust remains in the institutional process.

The shadow of the Lungu era

This election cannot be understood apart from the political trajectory that brought Hichilema to power. When he defeated Edgar Lungu in 2021, it was widely seen as a democratic reset for Zambia, a country that had experienced increasing authoritarianism under the Patriotic Front. Hichilema, a businessman who had been arrested on dubious treason charges under Lungu, was received in European capitals as a reformer.

The subsequent years have complicated that narrative. The PF and its allies have accused the new government of using the instruments of state, police investigations, prosecutions, and now armed raids, to pursue its predecessors under the guise of accountability. The government insists it is merely addressing the corruption and abuse of power that characterised Lungu's administration. The truth likely contains elements of both: genuine accountability and genuine score-settling are not mutually exclusive, and distinguishing between them is the sort of judgment that election observers are tasked with making.

Lungu's death last year added another dimension. He has become a venerated figure among his supporters, and the arrest of his son-in-law during an election will reinforce the opposition's conviction that the state is being weaponised against the PF's network. The United Nations' democratic governance frameworks emphasise the separation between state security apparatus and partisan political objectives, a distinction that looks increasingly thin in Lusaka.

Opposition coordination beyond NRPUP

The concerns are not confined to Mundubile's party. Makebi Zulu, the vice presidential candidate of the Tonse-Pamodzi Alliance, issued a statement alleging a broader pattern of interference that included electoral officials, missing polling documents, security force involvement and the intimidation of opposition actors. The breadth of these claims, coming from a separate opposition alliance, suggests the problems are structural rather than limited to a single party's grievances.

Gracious Kaoma, a political science student at the University of Zambia, captured the mood among many citizens. She told reporters she was very hopeful yet concerned because the process had been unusually long and very challenging. The violence surrounding the vote, she said, had been painful to watch. She nonetheless expressed hope that Zambia's political leaders would reconcile and put the country's needs first. That hope is widely shared. Whether it is well-founded depends on what happens in the coming days.