DR. SISHUWA WARNS OF DEMOCRATIC SLIPPAGE AND ETHNIC DIVIDES
By BRIAN MATAMBO
KBN TV’s “State of the Nation” on 4 September 2025 hosted historian and Stellenbosch University senior lecturer Dr. Sishuwa Sishuwa for a blunt assessment of Zambia’s political direction. Speaking with calm insistence, he traced the country’s democratic slippage, condemned ethnic bias in public appointments, and reflected on lessons from the late former president Edgar Lungu. The picture he painted was sober. The prescriptions were exacting.
DEMOCRATIC REGRESSION UNDER UPND
Dr. Sishuwa credited the current administration with repealing the Defamation of the President statute, then argued the gesture has been blunted in practice. He said authorities have leaned on other statutes, including provisions of the Penal Code, cyber laws and sedition, to police speech and restrict assembly. Four years into the UPND’s tenure, he added, the Public Order Act remains unreformed despite being a central promise when the party sought office
The result, he said, is a familiar cycle. Critics face preemptive barriers to peaceful protest. Opposition mobilization is treated as a public order problem rather than a democratic right. Citizens self censor out of fear of online surveillance or arbitrary detention. In his telling, Zambia risks reproducing the very repressive patterns that voters rejected under the PF. The government has praised student marches that support the presidency, he noted, yet parallel demonstrations that challenge policy are seldom permitted or are managed into silence.
Democracy cannot be reduced to elections every five years, he argued. It requires routine, protected exercises of speech and assembly between elections, and it requires a governing party confident enough to hear dissonant voices without calling in the police.
TRIBALISM AND THE LAW THE COUNTRY IS BREAKING
Turning to ethnic politics, Dr. Sishuwa said both PF and UPND have indulged regional favoritism in appointments. He cited Article 259 of the Constitution, the clause that obliges appointing authorities to respect gender balance, youth representation, inclusion of persons with disabilities and, crucially, regional diversity. This is not guidance, he said, but a constitutional duty.
He warned that concentrating senior posts within one region corrodes national cohesion and violates the spirit of Article 259. He pointed to the security services to illustrate how perceptions of imbalance can harden into grievance. When citizens conclude that top commands cluster around a single region, the message is exclusionary and the costs are national. The remedy, he said, is not rhetoric but visible compliance. Cabinet, commissions and command structures must show the country back to itself, across provinces, genders, generations and abilities.
Dr. Sishuwa called tribalism a national cancer. He insisted that it was wrong when practiced by the PF and remains wrong under the UPND. Elevating merit across Zambia, he said, is the surest inoculation against fragmentation, and it is a constitutional requirement, not a favor.
LESSONS FROM EDGAR LUNGU
In a reflective passage, Dr. Sishuwa described his interviews with former President Edgar Lungu in South Africa in the months before Mr. Lungu’s death. The sessions were part of a book project on presidential decision making and how good intentions sour in office. Mr. Lungu, he said, expressed regret that he did not listen to critics while in power and warned about the seductions of sycophancy. Flattery, Mr. Lungu suggested, is a solvent that erodes judgment and isolates leaders from reality.
Contrary to ongoing claims, Dr. Sishuwa said Mr. Lungu did not anoint a successor to lead the PF. Instead, he is said to have favored opposition unity behind a credible figure outside PF ranks, a concession to the party’s damaged brand and the need to broaden appeal. Dr. Sishuwa added a sharper accusation for the present. He said President Hakainde Hichilema had sought to capture the PF through Mr. Chabinga, a move he framed as part of a strategy to weaken the main opposition ahead of 2026.
The lesson he drew from these conversations was not nostalgia. It was admonition. Leaders who disregard dissent repeat the mistakes of those they replaced. Parties that mistake flattery for support lose the ability to course correct. A governing party that tries to choose its opponent undermines public confidence in the contest itself.
THE TEST AHEAD
Dr. Sishuwa’s argument landed on accountability. If the UPND wishes to distinguish itself from what came before, it must reform the Public Order Act, stop using adjacent statutes to police thought, and open political space even to its harshest critics. If it wishes to heal the country’s fractures, it must obey Article 259 in letter and spirit, then show the results in the composition of cabinet rooms, commissions and command councils. If the opposition wishes to be taken seriously, it must put unity and credibility above faction and nostalgia.
Zambians have removed powerful leaders before without violence. They will measure the government by delivery against promise and the opposition by seriousness against spectacle. In that reckoning, Dr. Sishuwa suggested, there is only one reliable path to legitimacy. It is the hard work of constitutional obedience, institutional fairness and a politics that treats every citizen as fully Zambian.
Why Zambia Will Not Slip Into Doom
Dr. Sishuwa, your analysis is sharp and your passion for accountability is clear. But your forecasts of Zambia’s collapse into repression and ethnic fracture simply won’t materialize. Ours is a country with a stronger backbone than the gloom you outline.
A History of Peaceful Change
Since 1991, Zambians have changed governments at the ballot box without violence. Kaunda, Chiluba, Banda, and Lungu all discovered that power here is never absolute. The people know their vote counts, and that fact alone prevents any permanent slide into authoritarianism.
Ethnic Identity vs. National Unity
Yes, regional favoritism in appointments is real. But Zambia has never descended into ethnic conflict. Intermarriages, shared churches, football rivalries, and friendships across provinces weave bonds that politics cannot easily cut. Ordinary citizens refuse to be boxed into tribes for political expediency.
Resilient Institutions
Our courts, civil society, and media are noisy, sometimes messy, but they survive every attempt to silence them. Previous governments tried; they failed. The same resilience will keep any future overreach in check.
The People’s Daily Priorities
Zambians care less about political games than about jobs, mealie meal prices, transport, and electricity. Leaders who neglect these basics quickly lose legitimacy. Bread-and-butter issues, not tribalism or censorship, decide elections here.
A Built-In Corrective Mechanism
Even when parties abuse power, Zambians have always found a way to organize and vote them out. That is how one-party rule ended, how MMD was humbled, and how PF was removed. UPND is not immune from that same reckoning.
Your warnings remind us where to stay vigilant, but Zambia’s destiny is not doom. It is correction, renewal, and an enduring truth that no leader or party is bigger than the people.
Zambia has had too many FALSE prophets going as far back as 1991 when Nevers Mumba prophesied that there would be chaos if KK lost power. Now another self appointed prophet in academic dress prophesies the same. Zambians should not be underestimated. They reject UNIP, they rejected Chiluba’s third term, they rejected Family corruption with RB, they rejected corruption and cadreism with ECL and come August 2026, they will give their sober and considered judgement on UPND.
Shisuwa, just come out like kBF , that ECL, groomed you outside PF. In other words you are just saying,none within the PF central committee was found worth to lead PF by ECL. He only set you aside and told not to mention it to anyone.