The mayor's first week: Chitambala Mwewa takes the chain at the Civic Centre — and Operation Clear Path rolls into the CBD

The lane already carried his father's name; now the office carries his. Chitambala Mwewa was sworn in at the Civic Centre on Wednesday morning and installed as Mayor of Lusaka the same afternoon, the mayoral procession setting off behind a ceremonial march of the very council police he says must be better equipped. He is the son of the late Simon Mwewa, Lusaka's first indigenous Zambian mayor — the man Simon Mwewa Lane is named for — and he won the chair in August with 200,029 votes to the NRPUP's Gabriel Kibombwe's 195,041, one of the capital's tighter races.

The new mayor's first responsibility, as he put it at the installation, is to make Lusaka clean through the Operation Clear Path agenda — “the clear path is my first agenda”. The operation is not waiting for the paint to dry on his door. Phase one cleared unauthorised trading along Simon Mwewa Lane and Kalusha Bwalya Road; phase two, now under way, targets the central business district: buses relocated to stations with the Road Transport and Safety Agency, the illegal car and phone trading on Katondo Street moved on, and wheelbarrow operators warned their barrows will be impounded outside designated markets. Police spokesperson Godfrey Chilabi says about 40 buses have been impounded since the operation began and two people arrested for disorderly conduct. The public-health framing is explicit: Lusaka District has recorded 130 cholera cases, and blocked drains and street waste are part of the transmission map.

His shopping list from the chair is pragmatic. The Lusaka City Council Police, he told the investiture, need greater capacity to carry out enforcement — the unit that must keep cleared corridors clear once the cameras leave. Foreign Affairs Minister Mulambo Haimbe, who graced the ceremony, reminded him what residents actually audit: clean streets, efficient waste management, reliable street lighting, safe markets, functioning drainage — “not luxuries; the foundations of a capital worthy of its name”.

The arithmetic that will define his term is not the vote count but the space count. The Zambia Institute of Architects estimates the city's informal traders at 250,000 to 350,000 against just over 11,000 designated market spaces — a ten-to-one mismatch no enforcement wave can legislate away, and the reason the September ultimatum drew a crowd of vendors, mostly women and youths, to his office before the clearing began. His mother, Florence Mwewa, had the week's most human brief for the city: “Pray for him, encourage him.” His election, it should be noted, remains under a court petition — a file that has not slowed the operation. Elsewhere, Gary Domingo took the oath in Kabwe and Dr Charles Mulenga was installed in Luanshya the same day, with the same brief: order, cleanliness, service.

Sources: Lusaka Times, “Council Police Need To Be Equipped – Mwewa” (8 Oct 2026); Zambia Daily Mail, “Mwewa installed as Lusaka mayor” (8 Oct 2026); News Diggers, “Mwewa sworn-in as Lsk Mayor” (8 Oct 2026); Daily Mail, “LCC now wants decongested CBD” (6 Oct 2026); Lusaka Times editorial on trader numbers (1 Oct 2026); Zambian Economist on Operation Clear Path and the cholera context (1 Oct 2026); ECZ results via News Diggers (20 Aug 2026); Rio Times on the election petition (Sept 2026).