Has local government been asked to carry too much?

And this is where Zambia’s current arrangement deserves reconsideration. The country already has a Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development. It carries an enormous mandate. Among its responsibilities are urban and regional planning, public places, refuse removal, solid-waste disposal, stre

The question should not be whether Mwewa can personally clean Lusaka. Any politician can announce a clean-up. The difficult question is what happens afterwards. Who maintains the cleanliness? Who manages the waste? Who provides the infrastructure? Who keeps the traders in properly designated spaces? Who ensures those spaces are economically viable? Who enforces the rules consistently? Who maintains the public areas? Who makes sure that the next mayor does not simply reverse everything?

This is where governance becomes more important than personality. If Lusaka becomes orderly only because Simon Mwewa personally insists upon it, then Zambia has found an energetic mayor. If, however, the Lusaka experiment produces systems that continue working regardless of who occupies the mayor’s

His appointment should therefore be understood as a test of something much larger than Mwewa himself. Can the country identify an individual who has demonstrated a particular governing philosophy and then convert that philosophy into national institutions? Can the lessons from one city be turned into systems that benefit the entire country? And, perhaps most importantly, can an institution be built that eventually makes the individual who created it unnecessary?

That last question matters. The ultimate success of a Ministry of the Interior should not be that Simon Mwewa is permanently inspecting streets. It should be that Simon Mwewa does not need to. The minister should not need to personally supervise every waste-collection truck. The mayor should not nee

For years, Zambians have asked why the towns look the way they do. Perhaps the wrong question has been asked. Perhaps the real question is: Who, in the architecture of the Zambian state, has actually been given responsibility for what Zambia looks like?

It is time that responsibility was created.

Why Zambia Needs a Ministry of the Interior, and Why Simon Mwewa Should Be Appointed as Its Official Minister

Opinion

By Jesse Sikombe

22 October 2026

Why Zambia Needs a Ministry of the Interior, and Why Simon Mwewa Should Be Appointed as Its Official Minister

There is something almost uniquely Zambian about the way the country complains about itself. People complain about the rubbish. They complain about the potholes, the congestion, the markets, the street vendors, the state of public spaces and the general disorder that has gradually become part of the physical character of the towns. They complain about buildings that have been allowed to deteriorate, monuments that are barely noticed anymore, and town centres that appear to have grown without anyone ever sitting down to decide what they should actually look like. They complain about what Zambia looks like. They complain about how the towns function. They complain about the deterioration of places that ought to give citizens a sense of civic pride. Then, almost as quickly, the conversation moves on to the next complaint. ## Who is responsible for Zambia's interior? Perhaps the deeper problem is that the country has never quite decided who should be responsible for the interior of the Republic. Not its borders. Not its foreign relations. Not its military defence. Not its internal security in the conventional sense. The actual interior: the streets, towns, markets, public spaces, waste systems, monuments, civic buildings, urban landscapes and the physical environments in which Zambians live their daily lives. ## The Lusaka clean-up And this is where Simon Mwewa enters the conversation. Mwewa’s tenure as Mayor of Lusaka has brought an old problem into unusually sharp focus. His administration has made cleanliness, order and the regulation of public space an early priority, including the removal of street vendors from undesignated areas and the subsequent effort to move traders into designated trading spaces. The Zambia Daily Mail reported on 7 October that the first phase of the Lusaka clean-up had been completed, with streets in the CBD reported cleaner and waste bins installed as the city moved into a second phase. One could dismiss this as a municipal story.