News Diggers Misleading Headline On Mundubile’s People-Driven Campaign Fundraising Platform

NEWS DIGGERS A MISCHIEF PAPER

News Diggers Misleading Headline On Mundubile’s People-Driven Campaign Fundraising Platform

By Namukolo Miyanda, Pan-Africanist and Governance Expert

3rd August, 2026

The News Diggers has run a screaming headline: “Out Of Cash Mundubile Adopts Sangwa’s Formula, Asks Voters To Fund His Campaign.” The title is bad rethoric. It is propaganda. It is a deliberate distortion designed to mislead voters 10 days before 13th August 2026.

That kind of rhetoric reflects the mindset of a political party opponent that has not had the courage to declare itself in the open, but is already doing the dirty work of attacking the NRPUP through proxies in the media.

The behaviour of the man who misleads the village is something Chinua Achebe captured clearly in Things Fall Apart. He wrote about the man in the village square who stands up and tells stories not to inform, but to confuse. “He was a man who had many wives and many children and he thought he could live forever. But he was deceived by his own tongue”. The village elders eventually stopped listening because they learned his words never matched his actions. News Diggers is playing that same role. The title “Out Of Cash” does not reflect the true reality on the ground and it does not portray the strategic intent and target of the NRPUP campaign.

The facts show this is a people-driven, not a broke campaign. As a matter of fact, NRPUP presidential candidate Brian Mundubile during the launch of the campaign fundraising platform clarified that Zambians are being invited to support his campaign through voluntary contributions. He described it as a people-driven campaign.

This is not desperation. It is democracy. Crowd-funded campaigns are a standard and legitimate tool in modern politics. In the United States, President Donald Trump raised over $250 million in small-dollar donations during the 2020 election cycle through direct appeals to voters, branding it a “people-powered movement”. No serious analyst called that “running out of cash.” They called it political mobilization.

To pretend that introducing a similar platform in Zambia is a sign of failure is dishonest. Even the UPND, while in opposition in 2016 and 2021, launched similar campaign fundraising initiatives asking supporters to contribute. The difference now is that Mundubile’s approach and timing is much smarter, more transparent, and directly tied to voter protection.

The movement of BM8 is people-centred and people-driven. Launching a campaign fundraising platform empowers the people to determine its pace and scale, and most importantly it helps tighten voter protection mechanisms and tactics ahead of polling day.

What Mundubile has promised also matters. Unlike a politics of deception, Mundubile has used the platform to make concrete commitments. He has promised to revise school grants upwards once he forms government.

All well-meaning Zambians should commend this initiative because it clearly shows that a Mundubile government, once elected, will not allow corruption and deception. It will strictly adhere to the rule of law, and to principles of people-centric governance, transparency and accountability. The people will be respected. The people will be consulted. The people will not be intimidated, as is the case today under the current administration.

In conclusion, to support democracy is to reject deception. The News Diggers headline is a textbook example of rhetoric intended to delegitimize before voters decide. But Zambians are not fools. A campaign fundraising platform is a welcome and strategic initiative. Any Zambian and any other well-wisher should voluntarily support it in the interest of democracy and in the interest of promoting a better Zambia.

August 13 is about choosing leadership with integrity, not headlines built on lies.