🇿🇲 EDITORIAL | PF And Its Infighting DNA
There is a pattern that has followed the Patriotic Front for more than a decade. Whenever the party approaches a moment that requires unity and strategic thinking, it turns inward and begins to fight itself.
The current turmoil inside PF is therefore not an accident. It is a continuation of a political habit the party has never fully resolved.
History offers a clear starting point.
When Michael Sata died in 2014, the PF suddenly found itself without the one figure who had held its many factions together through sheer political authority. What followed was not an orderly transition but a struggle for survival inside the party. Then Vice President Guy Scott attempted to reorganise the party leadership and pushed for a convention that many believed would favour Miles Sampa. The move triggered resistance from Edgar Lungu’s camp, and the contest quickly escalated into a bitter factional battle.
In the end, the grassroots of the party forced a compromise. Lungu emerged as the candidate largely because the party’s rank and file rallied around him, not because the leadership structures were functioning smoothly.
PF survived that moment, but the internal scars never disappeared.
Today, the party is once again confronting a familiar scene: competing factions, rival claims of authority and a leadership struggle playing out in courts, press conferences and party corridors.
One group points to court decisions and insists the party has already been restored. Another faction points to the Registrar of Societies documents and insists the official structures tell a different story. On one side, statements are issued declaring that PF is reorganising itself. On the other, documents are released suggesting that authority lies elsewhere.
For ordinary PF members, the message is confusing. One day the courts are cited as the source of legitimacy. The next day the Registrar’s office becomes the centre of the argument. The party’s supporters are left asking a simple question: who actually speaks for PF?
Meanwhile, the leadership struggle continues to produce new rivalries.
Given Lubinda, acting in a leadership capacity within the party, has attempted to consolidate control through organisational reshuffles and promises of a convention. Yet those moves have not silenced dissent. Rising figures within the party are positioning themselves for influence, while others have begun exploring alliances outside PF altogether.
The departure of figures aligned with Brian Mundubile into new political arrangements illustrates how fragile the party’s internal cohesion has become. A political organisation that once governed Zambia now spends much of its time negotiating its own identity.
That is the central dilemma.
PF is no longer the ruling party with access to state machinery, institutional protection and the gravitational pull of government. It is now an opposition party operating in a far more competitive political environment. That shift demands discipline, organisation and a clear political message.
Instead, PF is repeating its oldest mistake.
It is fighting itself.
A convention has now been promised within days, a move that many members have long demanded. Conventions, however, are not magic solutions. When poorly managed, they can deepen divisions rather than resolve them. In a party already fractured by competing ambitions, the stakes are unusually high.
The irony is difficult to ignore. PF once built its identity around the language of order, strength and decisive leadership. But at critical moments in its history, the party has struggled to impose order within its own ranks.
Politics is unforgiving to organisations that cannot manage internal competition. Voters may tolerate ideological disagreements, but they rarely reward confusion.
And confusion is precisely what PF risks projecting today.
Zambia is moving steadily toward the August general election. The political calendar does not pause while parties resolve their internal quarrels. The electorate is watching, measuring and drawing conclusions.
If PF intends to remain a serious national political force, it must do something it has repeatedly failed to do when the stakes are highest.
It must stop fighting itself.
Because in politics, a party that defeats itself rarely needs an opponent to finish the job.
© The People’s Brief | The Editor-in-Chief