For two months the question in Lusaka was when the Cabinet would be named. Once it was, News Diggers observed on Sunday, the question became who had been left out of it. President Hakainde Hichilema unveiled a 30-member Cabinet and ten provincial ministers this week, after Parliament approved enlarging the Cabinet from 25 to 30. The paper's reading is that the delay had been explained in two ways, as time taken to find replacements for ministers who lost their seats, or as room to reward new alliance partners, and that almost nobody had expected ministers who had won their seats and defended the administration to be dropped. Among the former ministers it names as casualties are Cornelius Mweetwa, Rodney Sikumba and Chipoka Mulenga.
Mweetwa has answered the speculation himself. In remarks published by Kalemba and carried by the Zambian Observer on Sunday 1 November, the Choma Central MP said he did not feel entitled to a Cabinet post, that the President's power to appoint ministers rests on national interest, skills and other constitutional considerations, and that no member of Parliament, whether elected, nominated or seated through proportional representation, has an automatic right to a ministry. He rejected the idea that he had been fired or deliberately excluded. The previous Cabinet, he said, dissolved with the general election and a new one had to be built, which he compared to a football coach assembling a new line-up for a new season.
I don't have a sense of entitlement to be appointed by the President in the midst of members of Parliament.
— Cornelius Mweetwa, Choma Central MP and former Minister of Information and Media, as reported by Kalemba and carried by the Zambian Observer on Sunday 1 November
The party question
The second rumour he addressed was about his loyalties. Mweetwa denied any link to former UPND members or to the opposition, and denied that he planned to form a new party with other former ministers, calling the claims political fallacies. He said he remained committed to the UPND and to the President, thanked Hichilema for the five years he had spent at the Information ministry, and urged party members, including those who lost in August, to stay united behind the Grow Zambia agenda. Neither report says where or on what date he spoke.
I have one party that I belong to, the UPND, and I have one President that I support.
— Cornelius Mweetwa, in the same remarks reported by Kalemba and carried by the Zambian Observer
The exit matters beyond one constituency because of the job Mweetwa held. As Minister of Information and Media and chief government spokesperson he was the administration's public voice through its first term. The new ministry list, and who now speaks for the government, were covered in Lusaka Brief's editions of 29 and 30 October; what was missing from them until this weekend was any account from the departed ministers themselves. Mweetwa's is the first.
Sources: Zambian Observer, “I'm not entitled to be appointed to Cabinet – Mweetwa” (1 Nov 2026); News Diggers, “Mweetwa, Chipoka, Sikumba among 'casualties' of HH's new Cabinet” (1 Nov 2026).