Two men have been convicted in Zambia of planning to use witchcraft to kill the president, Hakainde Hichilema.
Leonard Phiri, a village chief, and Jasten Mabulesse Candunde, a Mozambican citizen, were arrested in December after a cleaner reported hearing strange noises. Authorities said they were found to be in possession of a live chameleon and other “assorted charms”, including a red cloth, an unidentified white powder and an animal’s tail.
“The motive of the crime was to kill the head of state,” the magistrate Fine Mayambu said in his ruling at a court in Lusaka. “The convicts were not only enemies of the head of state but all Zambians.”
The men were sentenced to two years in prison with hard labour.
The prosecution said they had been hired by the brother of the opposition MP Emmanuel “Jay Jay” Banda, who is facing trial for robbery, attempted murder and escaping custody.
The conviction, under a British colonial-era law that criminalises so-called witchcraft, comes as Hichilema has faced growing criticism for cracking down on free speech and political opposition.
Hichilema is using the courts to suppress his opponents, appointing allies to the election commission and “rewriting constitutional rules” for his own benefit before national elections next year, Sishuwa Sishuwa, a senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University said in a column for the Mail & Guardian, a South African newspaper.
Human Rights Watch said in its 2024 annual global human rights report: “The administration of President Hakainde Hichilema increasingly exhibited tendencies toward authoritarianism … the authorities harassed and intimidated journalists, youth activists and political opposition leaders for expressing dissent or criticism of the government.”
Meanwhile, a furious row is raging over the burial of Hichilema’s predecessor and bitter rival Edgar Lungu, who died in South Africa in June. Lungu’s family have been fighting the repatriation of the body for a state funeral, claiming he did not want Hichilema to attend. A South African court is weighing whether to allow the Lungus to appeal against an earlier decision that the body should be sent back to Zambia.
Accusations of witchcraft are not uncommon in Zambian politics. Amid the legal battle over Lungu’s funeral, rumours have been circulating that Hichilema wants to use the body for occult purposes.
“Personally I don’t believe in witchcraft, never believed in witchcraft, as a person, as a family, as a Christian,” Hichilema told the journalist Martine Dennis last month when asked about the allegations on her Africa Here & Now podcast.
However, many people in Zambia argue that traditional spiritual beliefs should not be criminalised.
“I hate that colonial piece of legislation that attempts to outlaw a practice that it does not understand,” Gankhanani Moyo, a cultural heritage lecturer at the University of Zambia, told Associated Press.
Agence France Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report
