From Deputy Army Commander to Election Referee: Meet Vincent Mukanda

The second profile in MUVI's series on the people running Zambia's elections is also the one whose career began furthest from politics: Major General Vincent Mbaulu Mukanda (Rtd), ECZ Vice Chairperson, spent 35 years in the Zambia Army before ever sitting on an electoral commission, and is, notably, the only current commissioner to have served under two different presidents.

A MILITARY CAREER, THEN A TURN TOWARD PEACE STUDIES

Mukanda joined the Zambia Army in 1975 and rose over more than three decades to become Deputy Army Commander and Chief of Staff, one of the most senior positions in the country's military hierarchy, before retiring. According to the Commission's own biography, he did not step away from public life afterward.

He became a Research Fellow on the graduate programme in Peace and Conflict Studies at the Dag Hammarskjold Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies at Copperbelt University, an institute named for the UN Secretary-General whose 1961 death outside Ndola MUVI examined in an earlier piece in this series' broader coverage, and later managed the university's Lusaka office.

The arc, from a career built around military readiness to postgraduate study of how conflicts are resolved without it, is an unusual one among Zambia's senior public appointees.

TWO PRESIDENTS, ONE COMMISSION

Mukanda's tenure at the ECZ began well before the current administration. President Edgar Lungu appointed him a Commissioner in 2020, alongside Emily Sikazwe as Vice Chairperson and Ndiyoi Mutiti, an appointment Parliament ratified unanimously that September.

That makes Mukanda the only member of the current four-person Commission to have first been appointed by Zambia's previous government and then retained, rather than newly installed, under President Hakainde Hichilema, a distinction that sets his position apart from Chairperson Mwangala Zaloumis and Commissioner McDonald Chipenzi, both appointed fresh by Hichilema in 2022.

Hichilema elevated Mukanda from Commissioner to Vice Chairperson in April 2026, replacing Ali Simwinga, whose tenure had ended, in a move announced alongside the appointment of Zevyanji Sinkala as a new Commissioner.

Both appointments went to Parliament for ratification. Mukanda was formally sworn in at State House on 14 May 2026, three months before the general election he would go on to help administer. "I will work with the renowned team at ECZ to carry out the Commission's core mandate of delivering credible elections," Mukanda said at the time, describing his appointment as "a significant call to duty."

The timing of the April 2026 appointments, arriving just months ahead of a general election, drew some public scepticism online over whether reshaping the Commission's leadership so close to polling day was appropriate, according to Zambian Observer reporting at the time, though the criticism appears to have centred on the timing of the appointments generally rather than allegations specific to Mukanda personally.

During his original 2020 vetting, the Southern African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (SACCORD) told Parliament's Select Committee it had found no adverse information about Mukanda and supported his appointment, a formal civil society endorsement on the public record.

A NOTE ON THE COMMISSION'S COMPOSITION

Mukanda's elevation raises a small but unresolved question MUVI has flagged in earlier profiles in this series: the ECZ's own published list of commissioners currently shows four members, Zaloumis, Mukanda, Mutiti and Chipenzi, but does not include Zevyanji Sinkala, whose appointment as Commissioner alongside Mukanda's elevation was separately announced and reported in April 2026. MUVI has not established whether Sinkala's appointment was not ultimately ratified, whether he has since left the role, or whether the Commission's public list is simply out of date, and has sought clarification from the ECZ.

For now, Mukanda sits as Vice Chairperson on a Commission navigating the most contested count of his time there, one that a career spent first preparing for conflict, and later studying how to end it, may or may not have prepared him for.