EDITORIAL | Imperialism for Applause, Amnesia for Accountability

🇿🇲 EDITORIAL | Imperialism for Applause, Amnesia for Accountability

The backlash from sections of the opposition to President Hakainde Hichilema’s recognition by The Telegraph has followed a familiar script: dismiss the praise, invoke imperialism, and recast foreign engagement as betrayal. Brian Mundubile calls the accolade a “bouquet” that wilts in the face of domestic hardship.

Saviour Chishimba brands it a “national disgrace,” arguing that Western approval signals exploitation rather than progress. Both rely on a famous warning attributed to Samora Machel: “If one day you hear the Europeans praise me, know that I have betrayed you.”

The rhetoric is emotive. The history is selective.

Mundubile writes, “The Telegraph may see a statesman; Zambians see a salesman of hope who forgot to deliver.” Chishimba adds that foreign praise “confirms how imperialistic entities are praising HH for the benefits that their countries are getting from our country on the blood and sweat of poor citizens.” These claims land because economic pain is real. High living costs, tight liquidity, power cuts, and delayed payments weigh heavily on households.

But an honest assessment requires confronting the economic record that precedes the current administration and the contradictions embedded in the opposition’s critique.

The Patriotic Front built its economic model on external borrowing from the very “imperialists” it now condemns. Under Michael Sata, Zambia issued Eurobonds into European markets.

Under Edgar Lungu, debt expanded rapidly through Chinese financing. Those decisions culminated in Zambia’s 2020 default, the first African country to do so during the pandemic. That collapse did not come from Western praise. It came from unsustainable fiscal choices, weak controls, and a political culture that treated borrowing as revenue.

Today’s international recognition is not a lifestyle award. It reflects specific policy moves: restoring relations with creditors, restructuring debt, tightening fiscal controls, and stabilising the macro framework after default. These are the conditions that reopened budget space. They are also the conditions that enabled large-scale public sector recruitment, including tens of thousands of teachers and health workers, and expanded education financing.

One can argue, legitimately, that social outcomes lag. One cannot credibly argue that the fiscal turnaround is imagined.

There is another contradiction. While condemning Western “imperialism,” PF figures have repeatedly sought Western platforms when it suited their politics. Miles Sampa and Raphael Nakacinda petitioned the United States Embassy with allegations against the Zambian government. Emmanuel Mwamba resides in the United States. Harry Kalaba has engaged the British Embassy. None of these interactions have been framed as betrayal at the time.

The label appears only when engagement produces outcomes the opposition dislikes.

Chishimba’s economic prescriptions underline the literacy gap. He promises to scrap PAYE outright and replace it with unspecified tariffs on natural resource exports while “streamlining” government. There is no costing, no transition path, no explanation of revenue replacement in a country where PAYE remains a core, predictable income stream. This is not a plan. It is a slogan.

Mundubile’s essay leans on vivid metaphors but avoids policy detail altogether. Neither addresses how to finance health systems, pensions, energy expansion, or debt service without destabilising the budget again.

By contrast, Hichilema’s acclaim abroad rests on integration into global financial frameworks that PF governments struggled to navigate. This difference is not ideological. It is technical.

PF politics has historically thrived on populist mobilisation and street credibility. Its founder, Michael Sata, was an effective campaigner with limited engagement in international financial regimes. That legacy shaped a party comfortable with rhetoric and impatient with constraints. UPND, for all its shortcomings, has invested in technocratic engagement and creditor diplomacy. That is why markets listen, even as voters remain unconvinced.

None of this absolves the government of unmet promises or daily hardship. Foreign headlines do not lower mealie meal prices. They do not end load shedding. They do not clear arrears. Voters will judge outcomes, not editorials. But dismissing international recognition as betrayal while ignoring the debt wreckage left behind is not accountability. It is evasion.

The truth sits between applause and anger. Zambia’s recovery is fragile. Pain persists. Yet the fiscal space that exists today was rebuilt, not inherited. Opposition leaders are free to reject praise. They are not free to rewrite history.

Economic credibility is earned through numbers, not noise. And literacy, not indignation, is what turns critique into an alternative.

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