'What is this hullabaloo?': Hichilema says there is no crisis — and tells social media they are scaring away the investors he fought to win

The occasion was administrative — the swearing-in of Patricia Malaila as Deputy Auditor-General for the Audit Division at State House on Friday. The speech was not. President Hakainde Hichilema used the ceremony to deliver his most direct answer yet to a month of crisis talk: there isn't one.

"There is no issue in this country," the President said. "We have had an election, Zambians voted, decisions are made by Zambians. We move on. What is this hullabaloo, creating a crisis where there is none?" It was a rejection aimed in two directions at once — at the opposition figures who say the post-election detentions amount to repression, and at European Union resolutions on post-election repression, which have dominated the diplomatic conversation around Zambia this month.

His sharpest words were reserved for the platform where, in his telling, the crisis is manufactured. "I scan social media," he said. "The kind of stuff that is thrown in there, you don't realise what you are doing; you are scaring off an investor we have worked so hard to attract. What is your intention?" Zambians abroad were urged to remain law-abiding; Zambians at home were told that some of those painting the country dark were motivated by disappointment at not holding public office. "Let's love our country; let's not do things that damage our country consciously," he appealed.

Then came the line that will be quoted back at him. "Let's stay within the law. If you veer off the law, then you will pay. It doesn't matter how old you are; the law does not recognise age, it recognises wrongdoing." The President named no one. But the sentence landed in the same week that 1970s-veteran Dr Katele Kalumba was arrested at his Luapula home and charged with cyber harassment — a juxtaposition the opposition was quick to make and State House did not invite.

The economic passage was the one the President plainly wanted quoted. Inflation, he noted, has eased to 6.1 per cent in September, from 6.2 per cent in August, per the ZamStats bulletin released on Thursday; growth reached 7.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2026 against 4.5 per cent a year earlier, with the second quarter at 7.2 per cent. "You must read the writing on the wall, there's something good happening in this country and be part of that good," he said, urging citizens to protect the momentum of what his administration calls the Grow Zambia Agenda. "Let us accelerate this growth, let us not damage the growth by our carelessness as citizens."

There was also a defence of the room itself. "Let's not dilute this office and make it something else," he said of State House. "This office is sacred; it's for serious work." On public money, the message to officials was blunt: every kwacha saved matters to the agenda — a theme the new Deputy Auditor-General, sworn in at the same podium, will have a statutory role in enforcing.

What the speech did not address: the specific claims in the EU resolution, the condition of the 18 treason and sedition accused, or the third-term debate that State House and the UPND spent Thursday trying to close down, insisting no proposal exists and that the President's silence should be respected rather than read. The hullabaloo, as the President defined it, is noise. The week ahead — a sedition plea date set, a fuel-tax decision due, Parliament's opening announced for 9 October — will test how much of it the country agrees is only noise.

Sources: Lusaka Times, "Hichilema Dismisses Talk of Crisis, Warns Social Media Users Against Scaring Off Investors" (26 Sep 2026); ZNBC (26 Sep 2026); ZamStats September 2026 CPI bulletin; APA on State House/UPND third-term comments (25 Sep 2026).