Mass at eight, the DEC at ten: Archbishop Banda answers a renewed summons over a five-year-old Hilux — and the Church walks him to the door

By the time this edition reaches you, the choreography will already have begun. At eight o'clock this morning, the Archdiocese of Lusaka celebrated a solidarity Mass at the Cathedral of the Child Jesus. At ten, according to the summons served on him, the Most Reverend Dr Alick Banda — Archbishop of Lusaka, and the most persistent clerical critic of the Hichilema administration — was due to present himself to the Drug Enforcement Commission for questioning. Between the two appointments lies about a kilometre of Lusaka pavement, and a distance Zambian politics has been measuring since New Year's Eve.

The commission's account is narrow and procedural. In a joint statement on Sunday, DEC spokesperson Allan Tamba and police spokesperson Godfrey Chilabi confirmed that the Archbishop had been invited to appear "in line with ongoing investigations" arising from a warn-and-caution statement recorded on 5 January 2026. The suspected offence: possession of property reasonably believed to have been unlawfully obtained, under Section 319 of the Penal Code. The property: a blue Toyota Hilux, registration ALF 7734, which investigators say the Archbishop possessed between 22 April 2021 and 27 December 2023, and which they suspect was unlawfully obtained from the Zambia Revenue Authority.

The Hilux is one of about 22 ZRA vehicles at the centre of a disposal scandal that has already put two of the tax authority's former senior officials in prison — ex-Commissioner General Kingsley Chanda, sentenced to six years, and former Director of Administration Callistus Kaoma, sentenced to nine. The Archbishop's name surfaced in court records in that case; the vehicle was surrendered to the DEC through his lawyer in December 2023. His defenders note that it was a gift — one reportedly linked to the late President Edgar Lungu — and that a recipient is not a thief.

This is the second time the commission has called him in. On 5 January, after a summons dated 31 December, the Archbishop walked to the DEC's headquarters from the cathedral at the head of a prayerful procession several thousand strong — opposition politicians, lawyers and laity among them — past a police deployment reportedly numbering more than a thousand. Inside, he was formally warned and cautioned, and exercised his right to silence. He emerged after about an hour and walked back without a word. Nothing further happened — until last week, when the call-out note was renewed and promptly circulated on social media, as it was in December.

The Church's response this time has been more carefully liturgical and more openly anxious. The Archdiocese's statement, dated Friday, opens with Matthew 26:38 — "Stay here and keep watch with me" — and says twice that it fears for the Archbishop's safety and well-being, without specifying the source of that fear. It calls the summons a "renewed" one, urges calm and respect for the law, and insists its shepherd will not walk alone. In January the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops went further, calling the summons "state-sponsored persecution" and an attempt to silence the Church's prophetic voice — a characterisation the government, the ruling UPND and the DEC's director-general, Nason Banda, have each rejected. The DEC chief's own formulation in January was pointed: he is a practising Catholic, he said, and the Archbishop is his archbishop; the call-out went to a name in a case record, not to an office.

The authorities spent the weekend fencing off the politics. Sunday's joint statement warned the public against unlawful assemblies, processions or any conduct that might breach the peace, and said only the Archbishop's legal representative and persons connected to the matter would be allowed to accompany him. The warning is aimed at a repeat of January's procession — and at an opposition that has folded the Archbishop's case into its broader post-election narrative of state power turned against critics. That narrative now includes treason and sedition cases against defeated presidential candidate Brian Mundubile and his running mate Makebi Zulu, a cyber-harassment charge against former minister Dr Katele Kalumba, and six cancelled passports. A Toyota Hilux from a concluded corruption case is, on its face, an odd member of that list. Its inclusion tells you less about the vehicle than about the climate.

What happens next is genuinely uncertain. A warn-and-caution interview can end a matter, extend it, or precede an arrest; the DEC has said only that investigations continue and the nation will be informed "at an appropriate time". As this edition went to press at midday, no statement had emerged from the commission, and the Archbishop's legal team had said nothing. What the morning has already settled is the optics: an archbishop who answers a summons with a Mass, and a state that answers a Mass with a warning about processions. Neither side blinked. Both, in their own idiom, said the same thing — this is not over.

Sources: Zambia Monitor, "Authorities warn public ahead of Archbishop Banda questioning" (27 Sep 2026); News Diggers, "DEC summons Bishop Alick Banda" (27 Sep 2026); Archdiocese of Lusaka statement (25 Sep 2026), via Zambian Observer; Lusaka Times, "Lusaka Catholics gather as Archbishop Alick Banda responds" (27 Sep 2026); ACI Africa and Zambia Daily Mail on the January appearance and the ZCCB statement (Jan 2026); Open Zambia on the vehicle's December 2023 surrender (Jan 2026).