“Sometimes the law answers the question of what can be done.Politics answers the harder question of whether it should be done that way, at that moment, to that person.” The summoning of Lusaka Archbishop Dr. Alick Banda by the Drug Enforcement Commission has now crossed a critical threshold. It is no longer merely a legal matter or a political controversy.
It has become a national moment, charged with memory, faith, fear, and unresolved mistrust between the State and one of Zambia’s most influential institutions. On the surface, the State insists there is nothing extraordinary about the matter. The DEC has maintained that the summons is a routine investigative step linked to a long-running case involving the disposal of Zambia Revenue Authority vehicles.
Its Director General, Nason Banda, has stressed that no citizen is above the law, that a call-out is not a declaration of guilt, and that due process demands every person whose name arises in an investigation be given a chance to respond. However, Zambia is not responding to this matter as if it were a courtroom file. It is responding to it as a story layered with history.
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For many Zambians, the name Alick Banda does not surface in isolation. It resurfaces alongside memories that were never resolved. They recall the moment when the Archbishop was publicly denounced as “the Lucifer of Zambia” by a senior ruling-party official.
They recall accusations that he was partisan, aligned with opposition politics, stripped of clerical neutrality in political rhetoric. They recall scenes of police presence at Catholic spaces, and years of hostility that were never formally acknowledged or corrected. So when the State now says, “This is just procedure,” a significant portion of the public does not hear procedure.
It hears pattern. The timing has only deepened the unease. The summons was issued on New Year’s Eve, a day traditionally reserved for prayer, reflection, and national thanksgiving.
For church leaders and congregations, it was a moment heavy with symbolism. The question that immediately followed was simple yet powerful: what was so urgent that it could not wait a day or two? Why summon a sitting Archbishop at the threshold of a new year, when discretion could have achieved the same legal purpose?
None of this renders the Archbishop immune to questioning. That point bears repeating. No citizen, cleric or otherwise, is above the law.
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