A Job Offer, Her Father, and a Refusal. Iris Kaingu Is Giving HH a Headache

A day after President Hakainde Hichilema urged Mwandi residents to reject her candidature, independent parliamentary aspirant Iris Kaingu has responded directly, alleging that the President had personally offered her an appointment and a place on his campaign team if she withdrew from the race, and that he had first approached her father to try to change her mind.

She was speaking on a live facebook broadcast to her page, and referencing the "Candle" symbol she and four other independent candidates recently fought to keep after a legal battle with the Electoral Commission of Zambia, Kaingu said Hichilema had called her roughly two months ago in a conversation she understood to be private.

"My answer has not changed," she said, addressing the President directly. "You should have told the people yesterday what it is you're offering me that I said no to."

According to Kaingu, the offer came after nominations had already closed. She said Hichilema guaranteed that if she withdrew her candidature, she would be appointed to a government position, citing her status as a young woman, and would be included on the UPND's national mobilisation and campaign team.

MUVI TV has not independently verified these claims, which describe a private conversation with the President, and the UPND has not responded to this specific allegation at the time of publication.

"All these things do not amount to the love I have for the people of Mwandi," Kaingu said. "This was a very, very tempting offer. In this economy, I don't know that many people would have said no."

She went further, alleging that before speaking to her, Hichilema had contacted her father to try to persuade her to accept. She said her father's response was that she was "a grown woman who can make her own decisions," and directed the President back to her.

Kaingu, a former Patriotic Front aspirant for the same seat who joined UPND before resigning from the party on 3 June 2026 after what she said was rejection by local party structures, framed her decision to stay in the race as a matter of principle rather than politics. "I am a politician," she said. "I want to be the leader that my people expect me to be, not one person that can be bought or sold."

She used the platform to catalogue what she called Mwandi's neglect: a 120-kilometre stretch of road from Kazungula that has never been graded, children walking more than 20 kilometres to school, women giving birth in ox-carts or in their huts without maternity care, and a case in Magumbo Ward in which she said a woman died after health workers had to use a cell phone light to find a vein because there was no electricity. "For as long as the people of Mwandi consume this calibre of water... I say no to your offer," she said.

Kaingu also pushed back on the idea that Western Province is UPND political territory, noting the province backed the party even before it formed government in 2021, and argued that five years on, basic infrastructure and services had not followed.

She questioned the distinction between UPND and the Patriotic Front, saying much of UPND's current membership had defected from PF ranks.

She closed by thanking independent candidates who had stayed in their races despite pressure to withdraw, and appealed to donor organisations for support in bringing safe water to the district.

President Hichilema, addressing the same Mwandi crowd a day earlier, had urged residents to back UPND's adopted candidate, Sibeso Sefulo Kakoma, telling them Kaingu had shown disrespect and greed by seeking the party's nomination soon after joining.

"You have just come, you want to be adopted by UPND and you don't respect the people you have found, it means you are greedy," he said, according to a report on his remarks.

Zambians vote on 13 August 2026.