GUEST ARTICLE: You Claim No Scared Cows, UPND Bilden Is Your Choice To Prove It!
The man who stormed Mazabuka Municipal Council on Wednesday and attacked former MP Gary Nkombo during his nomination filing is not some nameless cadre scraped from the bottom of the barrel.
His name is Bulden. On his Facebook profile, he lists his workplace as Presidential Security Service. Photos circulating on social media show him in the company of President Hakainde Hichilema, at State House, in presidential spaces, moving with the Head of State. This is not a peripheral figure. This is someone with access. Someone who knows exactly where the corridors of power lead.
And he walked into a government building, in broad daylight, during a constitutional process, and physically attacked a former cabinet minister. He tore the man’s shirt. He and others, some with covered faces, assaulted Nkombo while police officers seemed incapacitated to act. Nkombo’s own wife was doing more to defend her husband than the uniformed officers present.
President Hichilema has condemned the attack. We stand with that condemnation.
It was the right thing to say and it needed to be said without delay. The President called it unacceptable, undemocratic, and a direct violation of the rule of law. He ordered law enforcement to make arrests. Good. We take him at his word and we will hold him to it.
The police have said they are investigating. Also good. Investigations are how justice begins. But investigations must end somewhere. And that somewhere must be a courtroom.
UPND has said, repeatedly and loudly, that there are no sacred cows in this republic.
Fine. Here is the test.
Bulden is not anonymous. He is not a ghost. He has a name, a face, a Facebook profile, and apparently a close relationship with State House. He attacked a man on camera, in a public building, in front of police officers, during one of the most sacred processes in a democracy, the filing of a nomination to contest an election.
If Bulden is not arrested, charged, and prosecuted, not cautioned, not quietly reshuffled, not allowed to vanish into the machinery of impunity, then every speech UPND has ever made about ending caderism belongs in the dustbin of history.
This should embarrass the party deeply. We are barely a few months away from a general election. August 13 is around the corner. This is exactly the kind of moment that shifts the mood of an entire nation. Zambians do not forget these things easily. They talk about them at markets, at bus stops, at church. A man connected to the ruling establishment physically attacking a former minister who simply wanted to exercise his constitutional right, that image travels. It settles in the minds of undecided voters. It confirms the fears of those already skeptical. No political party in Zambia, ruling or opposition, can afford this level of indiscipline this close to an election. The margin for error is zero. UPND knows this. Their strategists know this. And yet here we are.
The party has spent years condemning the caderism of its predecessors. It built its brand on being different. On being better. Wednesday in Mazabuka was a direct assault on that brand, carried out by someone who appears to have had no fear of consequence whatsoever. That is the most troubling part.
Nkombo filed his papers. He was later admitted to Mazabuka District Hospital, reportedly with high blood pressure and injuries sustained during the attack. He still filed. That is the story of a man who refused to be stopped.
Now the story shifts to the state. Zambia is watching whether the institutions of this country, the police, the courts, the party in power, are willing to apply the law equally, even when the accused has a State House pass.
Arrest him. Charge him. Prosecute him. Make him an example, not for political theatre, but because the law must mean something.
Submitted by a concerned Zambian citizen.
The Speech Analyst
21.05.2026