A former Zambian finance minister and prominent businessman, Mr Ronald Penza, was shot dead on the morning of 6 November 1998
The flamboyant former minister, who was sacked earlier, was shot and killed by armed men who broke into his house in the affluent Ibex Hills area of Lusaka. Ronald Penza, had his life robbed by six mask wearing intruders who broke into his house around 05.00
He was fired after an obscure falling-out with the then President, Frederick Chiluba.
Within six hours of the killing police made an unusually fast response gunning down five suspects. And two weeks later then police spokesperson Beenwell Chifwembe announced that 3 more suspects had been gunned down, bringing to eight the number of suspects killed by the police.
Although his killers fled without taking anything, the police immediately announced that robbery was the motive. Later that morning, a large squad of police shot dead five men who they claimed were members of the Penza murder gang as they allegedly tried to rob a petrol station.
The police claimed to have been acting in self-defence after the "bandits" fired on them, but only one weapon was recovered and several witnesses told newspapers that at least one man had been shot dead as he tried to surrender.
By the following Monday even the government-controlled Times of Zambia was questioning the police's unusually rapid success against the "robbers". 
In the independent Post, the columnist Fred M'membe went further: "Over the past three days I have not come across anyone who is not questioning the police's conduct of events following Ronald's death.
Among the first five suspects killed by the police was Chanda Chafya, a security guard who switched shifts with colleagues to guard Penza’s residence in Kabulanga area. Plain clothes police picked Chafya from his work place in the morning, six hours later he was dead.
After a post-mortem at the instruction of Lusaka magistrate Freda Chulu, the pathologist at the country’s University Teaching Hospital Mahendra Garg gave a preliminary report saying: “I believe the deceased died from multiple bullet injuries.
One Western economist based in Lusaka speculated that Penza may have been killed because he knew too much about government corruption, including its stewardship over the crumbling remains of Zambia's biggest industry, the state-owned Zambian Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM).
Coincidentally or not, Mr Chiluba's government was that same week negotiating with Anglo American Corporation for the final privatisation of the bulk of ZCCM's assets.
During the time at the helm of Zambia’s ministry of finance, Penza is remembered for reformist policies, including the weeding of excess workforce in the public service, hiving off subsidies to the farming sector and opening the economy to private investors.
For a long time people in Zambia did not mind to know all about economics because the UNIP regime gave almost everything for free. Penza taught the country the basics of making choices and fiscal discipline.
At Paris Club, the group of eight (G8), and among the Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank and International Monetary Fund), Ronald Penza was held as one of Africa’s finest ministers of finance.
Zambians, in reference to the abundant of luxury goods that saw canned coca-cola, apples, buttercup and an end to the queuing for commodities common during the UNIP era, called the new economy “Penzanomics”.
But early in 1998, Penza fell out of favour with his boss President Chiluba. What went wrong between the two is still obscure. At the end of that year November 6, in the early hours of Friday morning, Ronald Penza’s life was snatched by the bullets of 5 mask wearing assassins
The question about who killed Ronald Penza is a puzzle, chequered with more questions than answers, and marred by incorrigible explanations by the police in an attempt to rule out political motives for his killing.
The question of this murder is also heavily riddled as to how the Zambian police, which was so senile at the time, managed to investigate the case in rapid response and managed to gun down five suspects within six hours after the killing took place at Penza’s home.
Source - Brutal Journal, The independent & The Irish Times
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