What an eventful five years it’s been for opposition politics in Zambia!
Picture: Socialist Party Zambia (SPZ). leader Dr. Fred M'membe, flag bearer of the People's Pact in the Thursday 13th August 2026 Tripartite Election has been summoned, arrested and currently appearing in several courts in Zambia in the last five years. On one such traumatic experience, wife Mutinta Mazoka -M'membe (right in yellow dress) escorted her hubby Dr. M'membe (centre) alongside then SPZ member, Kelvin Kaunda (left).
By Kellys Kaunda Sunday 11th April, 2026
Since August 24, 2021, when Hakainde Hichilema assumed the reigns of power, the opposition has faced systematic decapitation and debilitation.
Every inch of the political space since then has been politically mined threatening its viability.
The full weight of State institutions – the executive in the lead, the judiciary and the legislature in toll – have each played their individual roles that have collectively made opposition politics feel like Iran up against the US and Israel.
The opposition has seen it all – state-assisted intraparty fueds, state-assisted change of records at the Registrar of Societies, recognition by the Speaker of the House of a new leader of the opposition at lightening speed, introduction of laws that threatened free speech, clear dubious judicial processes that stalled intraparty fueds, interference with the free movement of opposition figures, their arrests, police detentions, convictions and imprisonment with some fleeing the country for legitimately fearing for their lives.
What an eventful five-year-reign of Hichilema it has been! If this were an athletic event, participants would be panting for air and struggling to breath while literally dragging their feet towards August 13, 2026, the finish line.
It’s even unbelievable that under these circumstances, they are still in the race.
An opposition victory under these circumstances is a mark of classic faith of Biblical proportions.
The political space in Zambia is as politically dangerous and unfair to the opposition as the Strait of Hormuz is to innocent sailors.
It is also as dangerous as a minefield to returning refugees.
Tragically, the nation has had its collective political sensibilities and sensitivities systematically so assaulted, it’s become numb, hardly feeling and hardly seeing anything wrong.
But that’s a survival mechanism. When someone is abused too many times, they stop to fight overtly choosing to retreat inwardly where the fight continues in the heart and mind.
Hence the streets are quiet of protests and demonstrations.
The consolation is that this is not the first regime to tighten the noose around the necks of the opposition.
Colonial Britain, United National Independence Party (UNIP), Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) and Patriotic Front (PF) – all did it. But inevitably, the political minefields were cleared and the political Strait of Hormuz opened giving way to freedom and a new chapter in the country’s ongoing democratic experiment.
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