State tells High Court Mukandila should have appealed to the Home Affairs Minister before challenging his cancelled NRC and passport

The Attorney General has asked the Lusaka High Court to dismiss an application by Tonse Alliance Secretary General Celestine Mukandila, arguing that he should first have appealed to the Minister of Home Affairs before going to court over the cancellation of his National Registration Card (NRC) and Zambian passport. Mr Mukandila, a Lusaka lawyer, has applied for permission to start judicial review proceedings to quash Government Gazette Notice No. 1418 of 2026, the notice the government used to cancel and invalidate the two documents. The Attorney General, Mulilo Kabesha, is cited in the case on behalf of government. The notice was issued by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security, Dickson Matembo, in early September. It declared the NRC and passport cancelled with immediate effect, citing allegations that they were obtained through fraud, false declaration and misrepresentation. It warned the public, financial institutions, border authorities and law enforcement against accepting the documents, said any use of them would be an offence, and told anyone holding them to surrender them to the Department of National Registration, Passport and Citizenship, the nearest police station or a passport office. Before the notice, Immigration Department officers arrested Mr Mukandila on 20 August over allegations that he concealed his true national identity and unlawfully possessed a Zambian NRC. In early September the High Court granted him leave to pursue habeas corpus proceedings and ordered the State to produce him in court. The State opposed the application, saying he had been charged and that the docket had been sent to the National Prosecution Authority. In his affidavit, Mr Mukandila says he is a Zambian citizen by descent. He says he was born in Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo on 20 February 1990 to a mother who was a Zambian citizen at the time. "My mother was a Zambian citizen at the time of my birth," he states.