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Africa · Politics · Zambia Source-checked
Nelly Mutti was returned as Speaker of the National Assembly at the first sitting of the 14th Assembly, with two deputy speakers also elected.
Nelly Mutti has been re-elected as Speaker of the National Assembly at the start of the 14th National Assembly, which follows the 2026 general elections. Mwebantu reports that she was declared elected after being nominated without opposition. Its report is dated 2 October 2026, so this story is background to the formal opening of Parliament by President Hakainde Hichilema, which other outlets say is taking place today.
Zambia Monitor reports that the House also elected Attractor Chisangano, who kept her post as First Deputy Speaker, and Nshamba Muzungu, a journalist who recently won the Mufumbwe seat, as Second Deputy Speaker.
Mwebantu describes Ms Mutti as Zambia’s first female Speaker and a Lusaka lawyer. It says she first took office on 3 September 2021 as the seventh Speaker, and that she is also a vice president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union after her election in 2025. It adds that the House now has 226 constituency members, up from 156, after a constitutional amendment in 2025 that added 40 proportional representation seats for women, youths and persons with disabilities, as well as presidential nominees.
In her acceptance speech, quoted by Zambia Monitor, Ms Mutti said she would act with fairness, impartiality and loyalty to the Constitution. She said members from every party, independents, nominated members and proportional representation members would get a fair hearing. She promised to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, and the majority from the tyranny of obstruction. She called for debate based on reason and evidence rather than insults.
She also said the Assembly was convened under the Grow Zambia agenda and that every bill and budget should be judged by whether it helps the country grow.
The total size of the House is described differently across the outlets we saw, so we are not giving a total seat count here.
The Speaker controls how debate runs in the National Assembly, which matters for how laws and budgets are scrutinised in the new term.
The total number of seats in the House is reported differently in different outlets, and we could not open the Lusaka Times pieces on today's opening. The Mwebantu report is dated 2 October, and the Zambia Monitor report carries no date that we could read.
Each link goes to the specific article or document we used. Two articles carrying the same wire report count as one source.
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