By Brian Matambo | Media Director | 14 June 2026

A tense political standoff is unfolding on the Copperbelt after heavily armed police officers surrounded and barricaded FATMOLS Lodge, where President Brian Mundubile and his running mate, Hon. Makebi Zulu, are staying after attending a church service in Chipulukusu earlier today.

According to Hon. Makebi Zulu, who posted the incident on his Facebook page, the operation is being led by Copperbelt Police Commissioner Yuyi Mwala, who allegedly demanded that the two opposition leaders leave the province immediately because President Hakainde Hichilema is expected in Ndola this afternoon.

In a sharp response, Makebi Zulu rejected the order, stating that he and President Mundubile are citizens of Zambia with the same constitutional right to be on the Copperbelt as President Hichilema. “We will not leave the Copperbelt Province, we have every right to be here, we will not run, we will not hide,” Zulu wrote.

Images from the scene show a heavy police presence around the lodge area, with armed officers, police vehicles and visible security activity around the premises. The posture of the operation appears less like routine crowd control and more like a political lockdown. The message is clear: opposition movement is being treated as a security threat.

This latest incident comes barely five days after a similar confrontation in Chipata, where President Mundubile and Hon. Makebi Zulu were hounded out of Protea Hotel after attending the funeral of His Majesty Paramount Chief Mpezeni. In that case, government spokesperson Thabo Kawana later attempted to frame the operation as a police action linked to alleged suspects, but witnesses at the scene rejected that explanation as inaccurate, misleading and detached from what actually happened.

The pattern is now difficult to ignore. In Chipata, police chased a presidential candidate and his running mate through the city after the alleged suspects had reportedly already been arrested. On the Copperbelt, police have now barricaded their lodge and allegedly ordered them out of the province because the sitting President is expected in the area. This is not policing. This is political insecurity in uniform.

The central question is simple: since when did the presence of the Republican President in a province make it illegal for opposition leaders to be in the same province? Zambia is not a royal courtyard where citizens must disappear when power arrives. It is a constitutional democracy. Citizens do not need permission from a police commissioner to move, worship, sleep in a lodge, visit supporters or conduct lawful political activity.

What is even more disturbing is the apparent normalisation of state intimidation around opposition movements. Police resources that should be used to protect citizens from crime are increasingly being deployed to monitor, chase, barricade and intimidate political opponents. That is how democracy begins to suffocate, not with one dramatic announcement, but with many small abuses dressed in official language.

For the UPND government, this incident is politically dangerous. It feeds the growing perception that the state is uncomfortable with opposition visibility, especially when citizens respond warmly to alternative leadership. If the government is confident in its popularity, it should not fear the presence of Mundubile and Makebi on the Copperbelt. Political confidence does not need barricades. Only fear does.

President Mundubile and Hon. Makebi Zulu’s refusal to leave the Copperbelt may now become a defining moment in the opposition’s campaign narrative. Their message is blunt: Zambia belongs to all citizens, not only to those in power. And if the police continue to act as gatekeepers for political territory, the country will be forced to confront a painful truth: the battle for 2026 may not only be about winning votes, but defending the basic freedom to campaign, associate and exist without being hunted by the state.