K50, sausages and pens: the Lumezi South petition puts a farm linked to the Archbishop inside an election fight

Election petitions are usually arithmetic — miscounted ballots, misrecorded figures. The one unfolding in the Chipata High Court over Lumezi South has become something stranger: a sworn account of a political meeting on a farm associated with the Archbishop of Lusaka, told under oath the same week the Archbishop himself became a criminal defendant.

The petitioner is Lufeyo Ngoma, the UPND's losing candidate in the 13 August general election, asking the court to order a recount or nullify a result that returned Oliver Mwale of the National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity — the vehicle of losing presidential candidate Brian Mundubile — with 6,324 votes to Ngoma's 4,946. Ngoma's petition alleges the poll was marred by vote buying, intimidation, violence, discrepancies and the alteration of figures. But it was one passage of his testimony this week that carried the case out of the court and into the country's week.

Ngoma told the court that about a week before polling, he received information from polling agents that people were being given money and other items at a farm associated with Archbishop Alick Banda. More than 400 people were allegedly present on the first day, he testified; some were allegedly given K50 each, plus sausages and pens, and instructed to vote for Brian Mundubile and Oliver Mwale. He also told the court that Mwale and Archbishop Banda were present at the farm. Under cross-examination, the testimony narrowed considerably: Ngoma submitted that there are no videos or pictures from the farm, other than the account of a witness who has yet to testify, and he conceded he had seen no alternative results showing that he won. The allegations remain exactly that — allegations, untested and unattributed to any respondent's own case; the Archbishop is neither the petitioner nor the declared winner, and he has not been asked to answer any of it.

The timing does the story no favours, whichever way it cuts. For the State, a court hearing that a farm linked to a cleric now facing a Section 319 charge was a distribution point for campaign cash will be read as corroboration of a pattern. For the Archbishop's camp, it will be read as the opposite — a man's name being freely attached to allegations in a forum where he cannot defend them, in the week of his own arrest. Both readings are arguments, not findings. The court's work is narrower and harder: to decide whether Lumezi South's election failed badly enough to be counted again or annulled.

The petition joins a docket of post-election challenges still grinding through the courts after August 13, in a season where the electoral map is being redrawn by judges as much as by voters — Mandevu's fresh poll on 5 November exists because of what happened at its totalling centre, and Lumezi South's case now asks whether what happened at a farm belongs in the same category. The witness who has yet to testify is, by the petitioner's own account, the only thread to the farm. The court will pull on it soon enough.

Sources: Zambian Observer, "Lumezi South petition: UPND's Lufeyo Ngoma seeks vote recount or nullification of election," citing Breeze FM court reporting (29 Sep 2026); Lusaka Times, "Lumezi South UPND candidate seeks nullification of election or vote recount" (29–30 Sep 2026); Times of Zambia on the NRPUP and the Solwezi proceedings (26 Sep 2026).