🇿🇲 EDITORIAL | Kalaba is Right, But Politics is Not a Seminar
Harry Kalaba is saying out loud what many opposition figures whisper in private: PF does not know how to share space.
On Emmanuel Mwamba Verified, Kalaba described a familiar pattern. Unity talks begin, handshakes follow, and then PF arrives with the same script every time: we provide the candidate, we control the secretariat, we remain the anchor, everyone else becomes an escort. Kalaba’s point is simple. Citizens First was not formed to validate PF’s return to power. It was formed because PF politics had become rotten, corrupt, and unserious. He did not leave to become a passenger in the same vehicle.
He is correct.
PF has never fully adjusted to opposition life. It still behaves like a party that owns the country by default. Every alliance becomes a takeover. Every negotiation becomes a coronation. Smaller parties are expected to clap, not contribute.
This mentality has killed opposition unity before, and it will kill it again.
But Zambia’s politics is not driven by moral arguments alone. It is driven by numbers.
Kalaba can speak about equality and partnership all day, but elections do not reward speeches. They reward structures, ground strength, and transferable votes. Recent by-elections have exposed this brutally.
Citizens First finished third in both Chawama and Kasama. PF did not even contest directly, yet its backed vehicle, FDD under Tonse, won Chawama and came second in Kasama. That is the uncomfortable truth: PF still has voters. PF still has remnants of machinery. PF still has value, even when legally disfigured and internally collapsing.
So PF’s arrogance is not just ego. It is also leverage.
This is where the opposition reality becomes ugly. Kalaba wants unity without subjugation. PF wants unity with dominance. One side fears absorption. The other fears irrelevance if it gives up control.
Subjugation is exactly what is happening across the opposition space. Tonse is now splitting. Mundubile is building a parallel centre. Lubinda is expelling. Makebi is being unveiled by another party. Everyone is shouting unity while grabbing territory.
Kalaba is right to warn against being buried in PF’s coffin while still alive. PF politics is heavy. It drags everyone into its chaos, its court battles, its legacy fights, its addiction to Edgar Lungu’s name like it is a religion.
But Kalaba must also face the hard arithmetic. Standing alone may preserve purity, but it does not win elections. Politics is not a seminar where everyone gets equal marks. It is a majority contest.
Zambia’s opposition has two choices.
Either build a coalition based on clear rules, shared programmes, and discipline, or continue this cycle where PF demands worship, smaller parties demand respect, and UPND quietly collects seats.
Kalaba deserves credit for refusing to be swallowed. He should keep building Citizens First as a serious post-PF alternative. His future is longer than PF’s memory.
But the opposition must stop pretending that unity will come from good intentions. Unity will only come when parties accept one reality: alliances cannot be built on dominance, and they also cannot be built on slogans.
Kalaba is right.
PF must learn partnership.
And Zambia’s opposition must learn that without structure, law, and clarity, unity will remain just another press statement.
© The People’s Brief | Editor-in-Chief