OF ARROGANCE AND ARITHMETIC
By Rev. Dr. Elias Munshya
The best service we can render the Koloboi campaign is the service of reality. Or rather, the service of helping them see it.
The Koloboi candidacy has structural problems long before we even reach their fake promises. Mr. Koloboi has now arrived in Solwezi. And as usual, his campaign is calling it a grand entry into a UPND stronghold.
I pity Koloboi. The numbers simply do not add up for them.
Let me lay out the reality, province by province, with the actual figures from the certified 2026 register of 8,786,300 voters.
Reality one. Lusaka and the Copperbelt are not sweeping provinces.
Lusaka carries 1,430,889 registered voters. The Copperbelt carries 1,296,446. Together that is 2.7 million, and it looks like a mountain until you understand how cities behave.
Cities do not sweep. They split. They are diverse, mobile, and cross cutting. Realistically these provinces deliver a fifty fifty outcome, or at best a sixty forty split either way. And a sixty forty split in an urban province cannot deliver a national victory to anybody.
Let me demonstrate this with hard arithmetic.
HH will win the cities. But suppose we hand Mr. Koloboi both Lusaka and the Copperbelt at exactly the strength President HH himself achieved there in 2021. That is 56.3 percent on the Copperbelt and 53.6 percent in Lusaka. A generous gift.
Run the numbers across all ten provinces at reasonable turnout, and the result is this. HH takes roughly 3,518,000 votes. Mr. Koloboi takes roughly 2,604,000. That is HH at 57.5 percent against Koloboi at 42.5 percent. A margin of over 914,000 votes.
Give Koloboi both great urban prizes and he still loses by nearly a million.
Reality two. There is no landslide waiting for him in the north and east.
President HH has made real inroads into the north and the east. Incumbency and rural investment do that. CDF in every constituency. Free education in every village school. Social cash transfer to 1.6 million people. Veep Nalumango is going village to village over there and attracting decent numbers. It is likely that HH improves on his 2021 numbers in those regions rather than declines. This is true once we add both central and eastern to this mix.
So the question for Koloboi is brutal and simple. Can he beat Abayashi’s 2021 numbers in the east and the north?
We see no evidence that he can. And without improving upon Abayashi’s performance there, a Koloboi victory is arithmetically impossible.
Let me show even this generously. Suppose Mr. Koloboi does not merely win the north, which of course he can’t. But for argument’s sake. Suppose he sweeps it. Copperbelt at 60 percent. Lusaka at 55 percent. Northern at 70 percent. Luapula at 75 percent. Muchinga at 80 percent. Five whole provinces, delivered with margins stronger than HH’s own urban record.
The outcome? HH still wins with roughly 3,322,000 votes to Koloboi’s 2,800,000. That is 54.3 percent against 45.7 percent. HH prevails by more than 523,000 votes.
Read that carefully. Mr. Koloboi can win Lusaka. He can win the Copperbelt. He can sweep the entire north. He can take five of the ten provinces of this Republic. And he still loses.
That is not a campaign deficit. That is a structural impossibility. An impossibility due to Koloboi’s problematic candidacy.
Reality three. The arrogance in Solwezi.
And now to North Western, where the campaign has arrived declaring a grand entry.
Already Koloboi is drunk on arrogance. They think they have entered the bedroom and are busy changing the bedsheets. What they fail to understand is that this very arrogance is what puts North Westerners off. This northern arrogance that Koloboi and his friend Paraffin are emitting is not a strategy. It is a repellent.
Could they scrape a few votes in North Western? Perhaps. But I doubt Koloboi can improve on Abayashi’s 2021 numbers in that province.
And there is a further concern. Koloboi has no credible surrogates in North Western. His team there comprises losers and political lightweights long since rejected by the people. These losers bring no value whatsoever to his campaign, or any campaign for that matter. The likes of Samakayi, Kapita, and Mulusa. You cannot enter a house on the shoulders of men the household has already shown the door.
Reality four. The west remembers.
After North Western he must go to Western Province, and then to Southern. He will draw a few people to a rally or two. He will not make credible gains.
Let us be honest about why. His own surrogate Mutotwe Kafwaya recently insulted the people of Western Province by suggesting that they have nothing going for them to warrant an international airport. They heard him perfectly well.
To his credit, Mr. Kafwaya has since apologised profusely, and the Barotse Royal Establishment has forgiven him. These are honourable people, and their forgiveness is genuine and complete. That matter is closed and I will not reopen it.
But political fallout is not the same as royal pardon. The Koloboi movement may find that voters, unlike royals, keep their own counsel.
And beyond the insult lies the deeper problem. Koloboi has no ground game in Western, none in Southern, and none in North Western. He is banking on music. He arrives, he tosses a coin into the air, and he hopes it lands his way.
That is not campaigning. That is gambling.
Reality five. The insult that sank the south.
In Southern Province, Mr. Koloboi will have an interesting time. The South will welcome him. The South will smile at him. The South is hospitable that way.
But the South also remembers.
At a campaign rally in Mwansabombwe on or about July 8, 2026, in Luapula, Mr. Chishimba Kambwili stood before the people and hailed tribal insults against President HH. He argued that while Koloboi and Paraffin had political experience, having served as junior and provincial ministers under the government of Abayashi, President HH had no experience because while his friends were gaining it, he was merely following “ifintu fimo ne micila kunuma.”
This is the same insult Kambwili and the PF campaign deployed repeatedly in 2021.
And what did Koloboi and Paraffin do? They were present. They heard it. They chuckled. They laughed. They did not condemn it. A decent leader would have pushed back. A decent leader would have stood and said, not on my platform, not in my name, not against any Zambian. Silence in the face of tribal insult is not neutrality. It is endorsement.
That single moment may well have sunk their entire southern campaign. And frankly, it deserved to.
The duty of reality.
The numbers are dire for Koloboi. And I suspect they know it.
My concern is that this information must be placed publicly before the nation, so that what they declare through arrogance may be corrected by reality. That is a humble duty and I discharge it here without malice.
To Mr. Koloboi and his team, take this as free counsel from a fellow Zambian. You cannot win a national election on half the map. You cannot build a national character on tribal insult. You cannot substitute credible surrogates with rejected losers. And you cannot beat arithmetic with attitude.
The register says 8,786,300. The threshold says 50 percent plus one. The map says all ten provinces.
Reality is not partisan. It simply counts.
By. Rev. Dr. Elias Munshya.