Zambia's president Hakainde Hichilema was sworn in for a second five-year term on Tuesday before thousands of cheering supporters at Lusaka's National Heroes Stadium — even as the man he defeated sat in a police cell facing a treason charge, in a country now bitterly split over how it got here. The Washington Post and Al Jazeera both covered the ceremony, held one day after his defeated rival was formally charged.

The Electoral Commission of Zambia declared Hichilema the winner of the Aug. 13 vote with 2,965,326 ballots — about 61 percent — against 1,856,217, or 38 percent, for opposition leader Brian Mundubile. Vice-President Mutale Nalumango was sworn in alongside him.

Mundubile never conceded. He said his own parallel vote count showed him ahead, and accused authorities of altering result forms, letting the military seize tally centres in Mufulira, and ordering officials in North-Western Province to stop releasing figures. His bid to challenge the result in court collapsed when, he says, the courts closed before his filing deadline.

A Killing, a Raid, a Treason Case

The dispute turned deadly fast. A day after the vote, security forces raided a Lusaka house tied to Mundubile, and gunfire during the operation killed former transport minister Mutotwe Kafwaya, 49. Authorities say Mundubile's party was stockpiling "high-grade" weapons and running an "insurgency"; Mundubile calls the allegations "total fabrications" and has been in hiding since. On Aug. 29, prosecutors charged Mundubile and his running mate, Makebi Zulu, along with 16 others — 18 people in all — with treason, a charge that can carry the death penalty in Zambia. Bloomberg reported the arrests capped weeks of mounting pressure on the opposition.

International monitors were unusually blunt. The European Union's observer mission called the Aug. 13 vote itself largely peaceful, but delivered a harsh verdict on everything around it.

"LATE LEGAL CHANGES, LEGAL UNCERTAINTY AND UNEQUAL CAMPAIGN CONDITIONS DISTORTED THE PLAYING FIELD."

Hichilema, a 64-year-old former cattle-ranching tycoon who won the presidency in 2021 on his sixth attempt, spent his first term steering Zambia through a landmark restructuring of roughly $3 billion in international bonds after a 2020 default, backed by a $1.7 billion IMF program. He used Tuesday's address to extend an olive branch while unveiling an economic blueprint. "To those who chose other candidates or other parties, we say with equal sincerity, we have heard you," he told the stadium crowd, pledging a "Grow Zambia Agenda" targeting 10,000 megawatts of power generation, three million tonnes of copper and five million annual tourists.

What happens next hinges on a courtroom, not a ballot box. Mundubile's team says it will keep contesting both the election result and the treason case from custody, while rights groups warn the prosecution could set a precedent for how Zambia — long cast as one of southern Africa's steadier democracies — treats political opposition going forward. Hichilema's government has given no sign the charges will be dropped.