The former Zambian President Edgar Lungu who had been receiving specialized treatment in South Africa has died at the age of 68.
The Patriotic Front (PF), his party has said in a statement that Lungu who led Zambia for six years from 2015, but lost the 2021 election to the current President Hakainde Hichilema by a large margin.
After that defeat he stepped back from politics but later returned to the fray and had ambitions to vie for the presidency again but at the end of last year the Constitutional Court barred him from running after it ruled that he had already served the maximum two terms allowed by law.
Lungu’s daughter Tasila Lungu said that the former Head of State, who had been under medical supervision in recent weeks died today at a clinic in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria.
“In this moment of grief, we invoke the spirit of ‘One Zambia, One Nation’ – the timeless creed that guided President Lungu’s service to our country,” Tasila said in an emotional statement.
The late Lungu first became President of Zambia in January 2015 after winning a special presidential election triggered by the death of Michael Sata and after completing Sata’s term, he won a further five years in power in 2016 taking just over 50% of the vote.
But after six years at the helm, Lungu was blamed for a struggling economy and high unemployment and lost in 2021 by close to a million votes with President Hichilema tapping into widespread dissatisfaction among the electorate.
After losing to Hachilema, he said he was retiring in the aftermath of the vote, but returned to frontline politics in 2023 as his successor’s popularity waned.
“I am ready to fight from the front, not from the rear, in defence of democracy. Those who are ready for this fight, please come along with me, I am ready for anything,” Lungu is reported to have told supporters at the time.
However, after returning to politics, the former President complained of Police harassment and at one point last year he said he was virtually under house arrest and in May 2024, he alleged that he had been barred from attending a conference abroad and from travelling for medical treatment.
It should also be remembered that in 2023, the Zambian Police warned him against jogging in public, describing his weekly workouts as political activism.
However, the government responded and said that Lungu had never been placed under house arrest and that he was free to exercise his rights.
Lungu was a lawyer by training but enjoyed a meteoric rise in politics after winning a seat in parliament as a PF MP in 2011 and entered government as Deputy Minister in the Vice-President’s office in that year and rose to become Minister of Home Affairs in just over 12 months and he later became Minister of Defence and then Justice.
A close friend described Lungu as a “good foot-soldier, lawyer and politician, father, husband and grandparent”.
Lungu was born on 11th November 1956 and graduated with a law degree from the University of Zambia in 1981 and also underwent military training at the then Miltez Army College in Kabwe and he later worked at Andre Masiye and Company Advocates, Barclays Bank and Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines.
Additional Reporting from Associated Press
