ARCHBISHOP ALICK BANDA IS NOT JUST ANOTHER MAN. HE IS AN INSTITUTION.

 by Brian Matambo | 3rd January 2026

There are moments in a nation’s life when clarity is demanded, not diplomacy. This moment that Zambia finds herself in is one of them.

To suggest that Archbishop Alick Banda is an “ordinary man” is not merely an error of judgment. It is a failure to understand history, vocation, and the moral architecture of Zambia’s democracy. The archbishop is not a freelance commentator. He is a custodian of conscience. He does not speak for himself. He speaks from an altar built by sacrifice, prayer, and centuries of moral witness.

That is precisely what the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops made unequivocally clear in its Statement of Solidarity. The statement is not emotional theatre or spiritual poetry. It is institutional doctrine meeting democratic responsibility head-on. It affirms that Archbishop Banda’s summons is viewed as an attempt to suppress a prophetic voice and weaponise state machinery against pastoral oversight. Those are not casual words. They are carefully chosen because the Church understands power. It has buried empires that thought themselves eternal.

Could someone please sit Mark Simuwe, and the UPND, down and educate them on the following. The Church in Zambia is not an NGO. It is not an opposition party. It is not a pressure group auditioning for relevance. It is a foundational pillar of this Christian nation and this unitary republic. Long before slogans, long before party colours, the Church educated, healed, buried, reconciled, and spoke when silence was fashionable. To pretend otherwise is to argue with the past, AND THE PAST ALWAYS WINS.

Let it also be said, plainly and without apology: while faithful Catholics have vowed to stand with their Shepherd, they do not stand alone. We Pentecostals stand with Archbishop Alick Banda too. This is not a denominational quarrel. It is a matter of civic duty. When one Church is threatened for speaking about the cost of living, governance, justice, and human dignity, every pulpit should feel the tremor, that of the seventh day Adventist church included.

Pastors, bishops, and archbishops are called to a life of self-sacrifice. Their calling is not comfort. It is burden. They are expected to absorb blows so that society does not fracture. To reduce such a calling to “just another citizen who can be arrested like any other” is to deliberately miss the point. Yes, they are citizens. But they are also sentinels. And when sentinels are targeted, the gate is already under attack.

The comments attributed to Mark Simuwe spread dangerous confusion. To label moral critique as “misbehaviour”, to suggest that preaching about economic hardship turns clergy into politicians, is to demand a Church that baptises silence and sanctifies suffering. That is not Christianity. That would be a theology convenience.

Now, what I personally find disturbing is how they justify verbal assaults under the guise of metaphor. Invoking Lucifer, fallen glory, and satanic imagery to describe a serving archbishop is not intellectual debate. Awe bane! Tulekwatako umuchinshi! That is sheer provocation masquerading as analysis. No wonder in the ZCCB press statement the Church is right to condemn name-calling, intimidation, and persecution as wounds to the Body of Christ and as threats to national unity.

The ZCCB statement is clear and I quote, “the Church’s voice must remain free TO SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER, to comfort the afflicted, and to guide Zambia toward peace, unity, and justice”. Dialogue and MUTUAL RESPECT, not intimidation, are the lawful currency of a democracy. Anything else is a drift towards darkness, however well-lit the podium may appear.

Archbishop Alick Banda does not need political defence. Institutions do not beg for relevance. They endure. And that is why this moment matters. Not because of one man, but because of what happens to a nation that forgets the difference between noise and conscience.

On this matter, the line has been drawn. And many more are standing on it than some imagine. To be honest, this is a defining moment, for every Zambian. I hope you the reader knows this. I submit.

DEC Boss Crosses the Line

By Thandiwe Ketiš Ngoma

The statement issued by Drug Enforcement Commission Director General Nason Banda regarding the summoning of Archbishop Alick Banda is troubling not because of what it claims, but because of what it reveals.

Mr. Banda insists the matter is “nothing political.” Yet his conduct points in the opposite direction. He chose to speak publicly about a summons that, by his own admission, is a private legal instrument. He issued warnings instead of limiting himself to procedural clarity. He went further by prescribing how an Archbishop should present himself at DEC offices. Neutral law enforcement does not behave this way.

If the matter were routine, it would have remained routine. There would have been no press engagement, no public cautioning, and no attempt to manage public optics. The decision to step into the media space transformed a legal process into a political spectacle. That choice rests squarely with the DEC Director General.

The most revealing moment came when Mr. Banda warned the Archbishop not to come “with cadres.” This was not a careless word. It was a political label, loaded with Zambia’s partisan history and routinely used to delegitimise public support by casting it as disorderly or threatening.

Archbishop Alick Banda is not a politician. He does not command cadres. He leads a church. His followers are congregants, clergy, and citizens exercising conscience, not party militants mobilised for confrontation. By invoking the language of cadres, Mr. Banda projected a political mindset onto a religious figure who does not operate in that space.

Equally inappropriate was the Director General’s effort to reference his personal Catholic faith as a shield against criticism. Personal belief is not an institutional defence. Public confidence in law enforcement is not earned through declarations of faith, but through restraint, professionalism, and adherence to due process.

More concerning is the tone adopted throughout the statement. Warnings replaced invitations. Commentary replaced procedure. The language suggested suspicion rather than inquiry. In any justice system worthy of trust, the presumption of innocence is non-negotiable. Public officials do not speak as though conclusions have already been reached.

If the Archbishop’s name arose in court proceedings, the correct response was simple and lawful: a summons issued quietly, followed by questioning conducted without theatre. Anything beyond that creates the impression of intimidation, particularly when directed at a church leader who has previously spoken on matters of governance and public morality.

The Catholic Church has long occupied the role of national conscience. Attempts, perceived or real, to pressure or frame its leadership through state institutions inevitably provoke public resistance. History has taught Zambians to be alert when power appears eager to discipline moral voices.

Mr. Banda may insist that nothing political is at play. His language, posture, and public warnings suggest otherwise.

Law enforcement exists to investigate, not to sermonise. It is meant to apply the law, not to manage narratives. It must treat every citizen, bishops included, with procedural dignity and without insinuation.

Power exercised without restraint erodes trust. Justice applied without neutrality ceases to be justice.

Why is President Hakainde Hichilema going after Archbishop Alick Banda?

By Brian Matambo | Lusaka, Zambia

In a nation that proclaims itself Christian, there are moments when law, power, and conscience collide so loudly that silence becomes impossible. Zambia is standing in such a moment.

The summoning of Lusaka Archbishop Dr. Alick Banda by the Drug Enforcement Commission has triggered questions that no procedural statement can dismiss. The issue is no longer whether the State has the legal authority to summon a citizen. It is whether the State understands the moral, historical, and political weight of the citizen it has chosen to summon, and the moment it has chosen to do so.

The question Zambians are now asking is simple, unsettling, and unavoidable. Why Archbishop Alick Banda?

Is it because he officiated at the funeral service of late former President Edgar Chagwa Lungu, offering dignity where the State had offered hostility? Is it because the Lungu family, in their moment of deepest grief, chose Archbishop Banda as their representative in mediation talks, while government appointed Bishop Joshua Banda to sit on the opposite side? Is it because Archbishop Banda has emerged, quietly but firmly, as a voice of reason in a season where reason itself has become inconvenient?

Or is it because this regime finds moral clarity acutely discomforting?

The State insists the matter is purely legal. That a motor vehicle once belonging to the Zambia Revenue Authority found its way to the Archbishop, and that questions must therefore be asked. Yet even within the factual record now circulating publicly, the narrative is far less sensational than the accusations suggest. Investigations into the disposal of ZRA vehicles were conducted by a Joint Investigations Team comprising multiple agencies. That process resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two former ZRA officials, Kingsley Chanda and Callistus Kaoma, for failure to follow procedure in the disposal of 22 vehicles.

What is conspicuously absent from the court record is any finding that Archbishop Alick Banda stole, solicited, or unlawfully acquired a motor vehicle. Evidence presented in court shows that when the Archbishop learned that the Toyota Hilux associated with him was under investigation, he surrendered it voluntarily to the Joint Investigations Team. The vehicle was not recovered from him. It was handed over by him. It was later produced in court as an exhibit in the case against the ZRA officials. No charge was laid against the Archbishop. No offence was attributed to him. If there had been evidence of criminality, the prosecution would have had every opportunity to add his name to the charge sheet. It did not.

This is why the current summons feels less like due process and more like insistence. As if the State is determined to extract something that has already been examined, testified to, and judicially concluded. As if explanation itself is now the offence.

Context matters. History matters. Memory matters.

Not long ago, a senior official of the ruling party publicly labelled Archbishop Banda “the Lucifer of Zambia”. It was a statement so incendiary, so reckless, that it should have attracted immediate condemnation and discipline from the highest office in the land. Instead, the response was silence. Worse still, the silence felt like approval. When private citizens attempted to pursue legal redress for hate speech and criminal defamation, the process was swiftly halted. The insult stood. The wound festered.

Zambians did not forget.

They also did not forget that when civil society and the Oasis Forum sought to oppose the controversial Bill 7, the Catholic Church was deliberately isolated and vilified, its clergy paraded as political villains, its bishops reduced to unnamed enemies of the State. Ministers were deployed to disparage the Church. It felt, to many observers, like a forced ultimatum. Choose the President, or choose your faith.

Now add to this a record that troubles the conscience of the nation. A government that sued a widow on the very day she was meant to bury her husband, because the President insisted that he alone should preside over the burial of his political nemesis. A government whose leader once dismissed the National Day of Prayer and Reconciliation as irrelevant, while his own ministers derided it as a gathering of wilful sinners. A government that has held the former first family in mourning for seven months, not out of necessity, but out of ego and control.

These are not the actions of humility. They are the habits of power unrestrained by reverence.

It is therefore deeply ironic that those who defend this posture dare to accuse a Catholic Archbishop of Luciferian tendencies. If the term has any meaning at all, it describes pride that exalts itself above all else. It describes power that refuses accountability. It describes authority that weaponises institutions to silence moral resistance.

In Christian theology, those who suffer for speaking truth do not wear the mark of evil. They carry the cost of the Gospel.

Archbishop Alick Banda has not called for insurrection. He has not mobilised violence. He has not abused office. He has spoken, presided, mediated, and prayed. If that makes him a threat, then the problem is not the Bishop. It is the State.

Zambia’s democracy was never meant to be a courtroom without conscience. It was meant to be a covenant between law, reason, and faith. When any one of these is crushed under the weight of ego, the nation begins to fracture.

This moment demands restraint. It demands wisdom. It demands that power remember it is temporary, while faith endures.

A Christian nation is not measured by how loudly leaders invoke God at commemorations, but by how carefully they treat His servants when those servants become inconvenient.

Zambia must choose reason over vendetta, democracy over intimidation, and faith over fear.