Detained Without Charge: A Dangerous Slide Into Political Harassment

By Dr Mwelwa

There is something profoundly unsettling about a State that moves faster than its own law. When a citizen, more so a leading opposition figure, is intercepted at an international airport, detained, transported between police facilities, interrogated extensively, and yet no formal charge is ready, the issue ceases to be law enforcement. It becomes something else. Something deeper. Something more dangerous. It becomes politics wearing the uniform of law.

The reported interrogation of Brian Mundubile reveals more than the State perhaps intended. It exposes not a crime, but a search for one. Questions about Mwata Kazembe, Joseph Kabila, Moses Katumbi, and obscure villages in the DRC do not point to an ongoing offence. They point to an attempt to construct a narrative, to connect dots that may not exist, to manufacture suspicion where evidence is absent. This is not investigation. This is speculation elevated to state power. When speculation is backed by police authority, it ceases to be harmless curiosity. It becomes intimidation.

Let us be clear: the law is not silent on matters of liberty. A person of fixed abode, publicly known, holding a passport issued by the same State, cannot be treated as a flight risk merely because he is politically inconvenient. If there was a credible offence, the law provides clear procedures: charge, caution, and present before court. But here lies the contradiction that must trouble every thinking citizen. Why stop a man from leaving the country when you are not ready to tell him what he has done wrong? Law does not operate on anticipation. Justice is not built on “we are still deciding.” What we are witnessing is not the application of law. It is the suspension of law in favour of political timing.

The timing itself is instructive. Zambia stands at the threshold of a decisive electoral moment. Alliances are forming. Voices that were once fragmented are beginning to find coherence. Figures like Mundubile are not merely participants. They are re-energising a political space that many had prematurely declared dead. History teaches a simple truth: when the opposition begins to breathe, the State begins to tighten. Not always through overt repression, but through calibrated acts such as interceptions, interrogations, delays, and uncertainty. Not enough to declare a crisis, but sufficient to create fear.

This is how democracies are not broken overnight, but slowly bent. First, the citizen is questioned. Then, he is detained without clarity. Then, the narrative is seeded: “seditious practices,” “destabilisation,” “foreign links.” Eventually, the accusation becomes the punishment, even without conviction. The message travels far beyond the individual: if this can happen to him, it can happen to you.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of this episode is not what the State has done, but what it has failed to do. It has failed to charge. It has failed to explain. It has failed to demonstrate urgency consistent with the dramatic nature of its actions. This gap, between action and justification, is where the truth often resides. It suggests not certainty, but hesitation. Not evidence, but exploration. Not law, but strategy. In simple terms, they are still looking for a case.

There is an old philosophical warning that power must always remember: the legitimacy of authority lies not in its ability to act, but in its ability to justify its actions. When the State acts first and justifies later, it reverses the moral order of governance. It ceases to be a protector of law and becomes an author of fear.

What then are we to make of this moment? It is not just about Brian Mundubile. It is about the direction of the Republic. It is about whether Zambia will remain a country where law restrains power or one where power manipulates law. It is about whether elections will be contested through ideas and persuasion, or through intimidation and procedural obstruction.

There was a time when hope defined governance. Leadership promised to restore freedoms, to expand democratic space, and to respect dissent. But as one observer sharply noted, even salt can lose its flavour. When it does, it cannot be made salty again by force. It can only be replaced by something new.

The attempt to contain Mundubile may achieve the opposite of its intention. In politics, persecution often produces relevance. A man stopped at the airport without a charge does not appear guilty. He appears feared. A feared opposition is often a growing opposition.

Zambia must choose carefully. The path normalised today, stopping citizens without charge, questioning without clarity, detaining without conclusion, is the same path future governments will inherit. Power is never permanent, but precedent is.

In the end, the question is not whether the State is strong enough to stop a man from travelling. The question is whether it is just enough to let him go when it has no case. Until that question is answered, this will remain not an arrest, but a signal. The nation is watching.