Crying Persecution While Breaking the Law No Longer Works

⬆️ EDITORIAL |  Crying Persecution While Breaking the Law No Longer Works

The reaction within the Patriotic Front following the arrest of Miles Sampa has been predictable. The language of persecution has returned. The reflex to cry foul has been activated. But this moment deserves something more honest than emotional mobilisation.

The PF has not been weakened by arrests or institutions. It has been weakened by its refusal to evolve.

For years, the party’s political survival rested on propaganda, ethnic signalling, confrontation, and the calculated erosion of public trust in institutions. Those tactics thrived in an environment where rules were selectively enforced and disorder was politically useful. That environment no longer exists.

Zambia’s political terrain has shifted. The Electoral Commission of Zambia, the courts, and law enforcement agencies are now operating within a tighter legal framework. The space for reckless claims, incitement, and institutional intimidation has narrowed. What once passed as political mobilisation is now subject to scrutiny and consequence.

Miles Sampa understands this reality. He was asked to apologise by the ECZ. He did. He acknowledged that his claim about a fake polling station was incorrect. That should have been the end of the matter politically. But accountability does not stop at apology when the law has been invoked. Once a formal complaint is lodged, the process moves beyond personalities and party comfort zones.

The PF base insisting that this is persecution is avoiding a harder truth. Many of its leading figures are entangled in legal trouble not because they are opposition, but because they remained anchored in an old political culture that treated laws as obstacles rather than boundaries. Politics has changed. Behaviour has not.

This is not unique to Sampa. The shrinking PF circle is a result of attrition caused by adjustment failure. A party that once rewarded rule-breaking now finds itself exposed in a rules-based system. Cadres who were energised by confrontation are struggling to function in a space that demands discipline, evidence, and restraint.

The United Party for National Development did not outlaw PF politics. Institutions did. Laws did. A society tired of chaos did.

If Zambia is to move forward, opposition politics must be redefined. Dissent must be grounded in policy. Criticism must be supported by fact. Mobilisation must respect institutions. Anything else will continue to collapse under legal pressure, no matter how loudly persecution is claimed.

The Miles Sampa episode is not the criminalisation of opposition. It is a test case for political maturity.

Zambia is outgrowing politics built on disorder. Parties that refuse to grow with it will keep mistaking accountability for victimhood.

© The People’s Brief | Editor-in-Chief