EDITORIAL | John Sangwa and the Line He Must Never Cross

🇿🇲 EDITORIAL | John Sangwa and the Line He Must Never Cross

John Sangwa’s recent decision to step into ordinary spaces and engage people directly is not a stunt. It is a late but necessary correction. Politics does not begin in court filings, legal seminars, or elite conversations. It begins where people live. That reality has now caught up with him, and to his credit, he appears to be listening.

When Sangwa burst onto the political scene last year, he arrived with confidence and intellectual force. For a brief moment, parts of the opposition were excited. Then the distance set in. Not because Sangwa lacked value, but because he did not fit neatly into their narrow political project. That project is not reform. It is not policy. It is not vision. It is survival.

Most of the opposition figures dominating today’s airwaves are politically descended from the Patriotic Front. They carry PF instincts even when they wear different logos. Their politics is built around grievance, anger, and one overriding fixation: removing the current president. Not replacing ideas. Not competing on solutions. Just removing a man.

Listen to them carefully on radio and television. The anger is loud, but the substance is missing. There is no coherent plan for jobs. No serious alternative on education. No credible anti-corruption framework. No economic vision that survives scrutiny. The entire message collapses into one tired slogan: change government.

Zambians rejected that emptiness in 2021. Decisively. That rejection did not happen by accident. It happened because people were exhausted by politics driven by fear, intimidation, and personal survival. The former president, Edgar Chagwa Lungu, was not voted out because of bad luck. He was rejected because of how power was used, how institutions were treated, and how the country was governed.

Today, when PF-linked figures speak about Lungu, they speak as if Zambia did not live under that reign. As if arrests, intimidation, selective justice, and economic drift never happened. As if memory must be suspended. Death does not rewrite history. It does not turn failed leadership into sainthood. It does not absolve brutality. Lungu is now invoked almost as a political deity, a spirit to be summoned for mobilisation. That is dishonest politics, and it insults the intelligence of the electorate.

John Sangwa must never reduce himself to that.

He is not PF. He has no obligation to inherit their baggage, their grief politics, or their obsession with resurrection narratives. PF politics today is built around mourning, not meaning. Around grievance, not governance. Around identity, not ideas. It is backward-looking and emotionally manipulative, and it has no future.

The context has also changed. Tribal mobilisation, once a reliable campaign tool, is now a criminal offence. And suddenly, those who thrived on it are crying about freedom of speech. What they are really mourning is the loss of a weapon. Division is no longer protected politics. That is not repression. That is accountability.

This is why Sangwa’s path matters. He has real assets. He understands institutions. He has professional credibility. He has networks that extend beyond party nostalgia. But none of that will matter if he chooses to orbit a political culture that has already been rejected by the people.

If he aligns himself with PF-style opposition figures, he will be swallowed by their failure. They will not build him. They will drain him. Their politics is not about Zambia’s future. It is about personal relevance in a country that has moved on.

Zambia does not lack opposition noise. It lacks an alternative government. Free education is policy. Debt restructuring is policy. Social protection is policy. Anyone who opposes these must answer a simple question: what replaces them. Silence is not a plan.

The uncomfortable truth is that, right now, Zambia has no credible alternative government-in-waiting. That vacuum is real. It will not be filled by shouting, nostalgia, or myth-making.

John Sangwa still has a choice. He can build a new political language, grounded in listening, humility, and policy clarity. Or he can become another angry voice shouting from the ruins of a rejected past.

Yesterday’s engagement with ordinary people was not a photo opportunity. It was a warning. It was also an invitation.

If Sangwa listens, this path can grow. If he imitates PF politics, it will end him before it begins.

Zambia has moved on. Those who refuse to move with it will be left talking to themselves.

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