🇿🇲 EDITORIAL | Cutting PF Loose as the Best Tonse Alliance Decision
The Tonse Alliance’s decision to formally cut ties with the Patriotic Front is not an act of hostility. It is an act of political hygiene. For the first time since the opposition began rearranging itself after 2021, an alliance has acknowledged a hard truth: no coalition can move forward while carrying the full political baggage of the Patriotic Front.
PF is not an ordinary opposition party. It is the only party in the current opposition ecosystem that has tested power at the highest level and was decisively rejected by voters in 2021. That rejection was not abstract. It was anchored in corruption, abuse of state power, cadre violence, and the weaponisation of tribe in national politics. Those are not allegations invented by rivals. They are facts recorded in court cases, commissions, and electoral history. Any alliance that ties its future to PF inherits that record, whether it likes it or not.
This is where the danger lies for smaller parties. PF does not enter alliances to share ideology or build collective programmes. PF enters alliances to launder its image. The pattern is consistent. It insists on dominance without accountability. It demands the presidential ticket while offering no credible renewal. It treats alliances as political dry-cleaners, not partnerships. That is why no alliance that centres PF has survived intact, from the United Kwacha Alliance to Tonse itself.
The contradiction has always been glaring. How does a party that fractured its own structures, lost state power, and remains locked in legal and leadership crises insist that the presidential candidate of a whole alliance must come from its ranks? Why should an alliance subordinate its future to a party still fighting over its past? This posture alone exposes the problem. PF is not building for victory. It is fighting for relevance, leverage, and revenge.
The Tonse Alliance’s resolution to open the presidential contest to all its leaders is therefore not rebellion. It is democracy. It is an overdue correction. Alliances are not funeral trusts for fallen giants. They are vehicles for contesting power. If PF truly believed in shared leadership, it would have welcomed an open race. Instead, it reacted with outrage. This reaction tells the story. PF does not want competition. It wants control without consent.
We are clear as a publication. We support the Tonse Alliance’s move. Not because it guarantees success, but because it removes paralysis. For months, Tonse has been stuck waiting for PF to resolve its internal wars. In that waiting, time has been lost, structures have weakened, and momentum has drained. Elections are not paused for party court cases. Campaign clocks do not stop for factional negotiations. Politics punishes delay.
Contrast this with what is happening elsewhere. The ruling party, the United Party for National Development, is already in motion. Its president is back on the ground. Its campaign machinery is active. Its arithmetic is constituency-based, not sentimental. While sections of the opposition are still litigating legacy and mourning political loss tied to the memory of Edgar Chagwa Lungu, the governing party is counting wards, seats, and turnout.
PF’s current politics is not about policy. It is about bitterness. It is body politics. It is grievance politics. It is the belief that shared anger is enough to win power. It is not. Zambians removed PF once. They will not reinstall it by proxy through an alliance that pretends PF’s record does not exist.
This is not to say Tonse is now guaranteed victory. Far from it. But for the first time, it has chosen movement over stagnation. Leadership over nostalgia. Strategy over sentiment. That matters. Alliances that survive are those that accept reality early, not those that postpone it until defeat explains it for them.
The opposition now has a choice. Build forward-facing coalitions with open competition, clear messages, and disciplined organisation, or remain trapped in PF’s unresolved past. Tonse has taken a step away from that trap. Others would do well to learn the lesson quickly.
August 2026 will not reward hesitation. It will punish it.