NRPUP Leaders Charged With Treason as Case Docket Rises to 18

Opposition NRPUP leaders have been arrested and charged with one count of treason, their lawyer Milner Katolo says, taking the number of people accused in the matter to eighteen, among them Patrick Mwansa and Valden Findlay.

By The Zambian Economist Analyst

Eighteen people now stand accused of treason in Zambia. The count reached that figure this weekend after opposition National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity (NRPUP) leaders were arrested and charged with one count of treason each, according to their lawyer, Milner Katolo.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with MUVI TV News, Mr Katolo said the arrest of the NRPUP leaders brings the total number of people accused of treason in the matter to eighteen. Among those facing the charge are Patrick Mwansa, husband of Tasila Lungu, and Valden Findlay. “My clients remain in high spirits and are looking forward to appearing before the court to answer to the allegations,” the lawyer said.

The charge turns Zambia’s sharpest post-election confrontation from a police investigation into a criminal case, and it lands at a crowded moment in the calendar. MPs-elect register at Parliament Buildings on Sunday, President Hakainde Hichilema takes the oath for a second term at National Heroes Stadium on Tuesday, and none of the allegations against any of the eighteen has yet been tested in court.

From a Kabulonga raid to an eighteen-person docket

The case began on polling day. On 13 August, a joint security operation raided a house in Lusaka’s Kabulonga area, where police say they apprehended eleven people and recovered an armoury: five AK-47 rifles with sixty rounds of ammunition, a Zastava pistol, a military-version automatic Uzi, a bulletproof vest and night-vision binoculars, all listed in the police account. Secretary to the Cabinet Patrick Kangwa told journalists that restricted, high-grade military weapons were seized and that presidential candidate Brian Mundubile was found at the scene. Mr Mundubile’s response at the time, in an interview with the BBC, was blunt: “There was no militia at my home.”

A day later, Inspector General of Police Graphel Musamba said, former Lunte MP Mutotwe Kafwaya was shot in an exchange of fire at the house and later died, after his wife had already gone to the High Court seeking an order over his detention. The police chief said security wings had been monitoring the group since November 2023, and President Hichilema had warned publicly of arrests over an alleged election disruption plot, citing reports of military training abroad, a week before the vote.

From there the docket grew. On 27 August police recorded warn and caution statements from Mr Mundubile and his running mate Makebi Zulu, the two most senior NRPUP figures, and the pair have remained in custody since, according to police statements and BBC and TRT Afrika reporting. Mr Katolo’s disclosure on Sunday confirms that the inquiry has now produced formal charges.

Who else is on the docket

Mr Mwansa, married to Tasila Lungu, daughter of the late former president Edgar Lungu, has been in custody since the Kabulonga operations. His detention drew enough public attention that Zambia Police had to issue a statement denying social media claims that he had died in custody, saying he was alive, in good health and receiving family visits.

Mr Findlay, 63, is a Lusaka businessman with an earlier brush with the same system. In 2022 the Drug Enforcement Commission arrested him and his wife in a K386 million money-laundering investigation, and News Diggers has reported that an espionage charge was at one stage brought against him in the current matter, to the surprise of his defence team.

What one count of treason means

Treason is created by section 43 of the Penal Code, Chapter 87 of the Laws of Zambia, and covers conduct intended to overthrow or coerce the state. For most of its history the offence carried the death penalty. That ended on 23 December 2022, when President Hichilema signed the Penal Code (Amendment) Act abolishing capital punishment, leaving life imprisonment as the maximum sentence.

The offence has also been treated as one of Zambia’s non-bailable crimes under the Criminal Procedure Code, though bail law was amended again this year and how the courts apply it to this docket will be watched closely. The immediate next step is procedural: an appearance in court, a reading of the charge and a plea. That is the moment Mr Katolo says his clients are ready for.

There is an irony in the timing. In April 2017, Hakainde Hichilema, then the opposition UPND leader, was himself arrested and charged with treason over the Mongu motorcade affair and held for roughly four months before the state discontinued the case. From detention, he petitioned the Constitutional Court to have unbailable offences struck down. Nine years on, his government administers the same law against his opponents.

An inauguration, a new parliament and a court date

The charge arrives as the machinery of a new government starts moving. MPs-elect, including the seventy-six from NRPUP, the second largest bloc in the 278-seat National Assembly, register at Parliament Buildings on Sunday ahead of a first sitting that will elect a Speaker. On Tuesday, President Hichilema is sworn in before foreign delegations at National Heroes Stadium, starting the ninety-day clock within which the 2027 Budget must be presented.

The opposition’s other route into the system closed earlier in the month. The fourteen-day window to petition the 13 August election expired unused on 24 August after police sealed the Constitutional Court and the other superior courts on the strength of an unsigned memorandum, a move the Law Association of Zambia questioned and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation folded into its warning to the re-elected president about wasting Zambia’s democratic legacy. With the petition route shut and its leaders in the dock, NRPUP’s seats are the party’s remaining institutional foothold.

Why investors are watching the courtroom as closely as the stadium

Markets have taken the political turbulence in stride so far. Annual inflation slowed to 6.2% in August, the lowest reading in years, the kwacha traded near K19 to the dollar at midweek, copper closed the week above $14,000 a tonne, and the economy grew 7.7% in the first quarter. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva was quick to congratulate the re-elected president, a signal that Fund engagement carries into the second term.

What the treason docket adds is a governance question of the kind that moves risk premiums rather than exchange rates. Foreign creditors and the ratings agencies mostly distinguish between election noise and institutional erosion, and an eighteen-person treason trial involving a defeated presidential candidate reads very differently depending on whether it is conducted openly and at a reasonable pace or marked by closed courts and long pre-trial detention. The judiciary has said little publicly about how the case will be managed. Until it does, the timeline itself, from charge to plea to trial, is the information investors will price.

For Zambian businesses the practical exposure is narrower. Security deployments around court premises and the inauguration may snarl central Lusaka on Monday and Tuesday, while the ceremony itself is a trading boost for hotels, transport operators and vendors around the stadium. The bigger commercial date remains 30 September, when the Bank of Zambia’s monetary policy committee meets with inflation falling and room, in most analysts’ view, to cut the 13.25% policy rate.

What to watch

• The first court appearance, when the eighteen are brought before a court, the charge is read and pleas are taken. No date had been announced by Sunday evening.
• Any bail application, and how the courts apply the amended Criminal Procedure Code to a treason docket.
• Tuesday’s inauguration at National Heroes Stadium and the start of the ninety-day clock to the 2027 Budget.
• The first sitting of the new National Assembly, where NRPUP’s seventy-six seats make it the official opposition.
• The Mandevu by-election on 24 September and the Bank of Zambia rate decision on 30 September.

Zambia’s markets are pricing a recovery, its inflation is the lowest in years and its politics are heading to court. The eighteen names on this docket, and the openness of the process that follows them, will do as much as Tuesday’s ceremony to tell the world which of those two stories defines the second term.

Related coverage

• Police Warn and Caution Mundubile and Makebi Over Alleged Treason
• Zambia Arrests Suspected Militia Members in Kabulonga Raid, Presidential Candidate Mundubile Named at Scene
• Kafwaya Was Shot and Later Died: Police on the Kabulonga Raid That Killed the Former Lunte MP
• Zambia Police Says Patrick Mwansa Is Alive as Custody Death Claims Spread
• Zambia Courts Closed as Mundubile Election Petition Deadline Arrives
• Ten Days That Tested Zambia: Hichilema’s Re-election, Sealed Courts and a Cooling Inflation Rate
• Is Zambia Ready for Hichilema’s Second Term? The Economy He Inherits and the World Waiting at the Door
• More in the Election 2026 Economics series

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