Hichilema Re-enters the Arena

🇿🇲 EXCLUSIVE | Hichilema Re-enters the Arena

For several days, the online narrative was clear and relentless. President Hakainde Hichilema had disappeared. He had collapsed. He had been privately evacuated to South Africa. Opposition-aligned platforms amplified the claims, feeding a familiar election-season instinct to frame uncertainty around power as weakness.

Then came the counter-image.

Not a press briefing. Not a medical bulletin. But a brief stop at the Daniel Munkombwe Toll Plaza in Choma. The President greeting motorists and workers, exchanging handshakes, smiling for phone cameras. A small moment, but politically deliberate. Today, the President was briefly live from his ranch.

Presence as denial. Visibility as response.

Over the last two days, State House aides have been privately dismissing the rumours as “noise,” confirming that Hichilema had been in Choma since December 31 on what they described as a working holiday.

One aide told The People’s Brief, “There was no urgency to rebut speculation formally. Sometimes you let the story exhaust itself, then you appear.”

He is now set to appear again.

On Wednesday, the President is expected to hold a major public engagement in Choma, drawing participants from all 15 districts of Southern Province. Officially, the meeting is framed as a response to requests from citizens seeking direct interaction with the Head of State. Politically, it carries deeper undertones.

Southern Province is not just home territory. It is UPND’s historic base, red since the days of Anderson Mazoka, and part of the wider uncontested red base where the party currently holds every parliamentary seat.

Provincial minister Credo Nanjuwa says the engagement will allow citizens to raise both local and national concerns, with Constitution Amendment Bill No. 7 expected to feature prominently. Behind the scenes, aides describe a broader intent.

“This is about re-anchoring the message,” one senior official said. “Explaining decisions in a familiar space, in a familiar language, and reconnecting emotionally.”

Language matters here. Since UPND’s ascent to power, the Tonga speech community has become more visible in national political discourse, including in Lusaka. Politics amplify dialects. For supporters, this signals inclusion and confidence.

For critics, it feeds long-standing anxieties around identity and power. The President’s choice to begin his renewed public engagement in his birthplace inevitably sharpens those undercurrents.

The timing also aligns with a wider campaign rhythm. Another State House aide described the recent quiet as “strategic silence before movement.” While public attention has been dominated by church–state tensions and opposition mobilisation in Lusaka, the ruling party’s machinery has been active elsewhere, particularly in regions once considered out of reach.

Across the Northern Circuit, Presidential Political Adviser Levy Ngoma has been on the ground for weeks, engaging local leaders and consolidating support in territory historically loyal to the Patriotic Front since the Michael Sata era. Several local government officials who previously identified with PF structures have either crossed over or begun cooperating openly with UPND.

A source familiar with the northern strategy said, “The objective is not instant conversion. It’s to dismantle the idea that the region is permanently locked.”

The stakes are higher because the electoral map has expanded. With 226 parliamentary constituencies now in play, the 2026 election is increasingly about arithmetic rather than rhetoric. Two sources familiar with UPND planning say the party believes it can secure as many as 140 parliamentary seats if opposition fragmentation persists, a target viewed by critics as ambitious but taken seriously within ruling party circles.

This ambition feeds opposition fears, some speculative, that UPND is positioning itself for long-term dominance. Claims that a large parliamentary majority could be used to re-engineer constitutional changes to remove presidential term limits abound, though no formal proposals exist.

What is clear is that UPND is investing heavily in ground organisation, aided by international networks, strong fundraising capacity, and incumbency advantages.

By contrast, the opposition remains divided and reactive. The PF’s internal fractures persist, and its prevailing alignment with sections of Catholic clergy has energised its base while narrowing its political bandwidth. “They are fighting symbolism,” one ruling party strategist observed. “We are counting wards.”

As President Hichilema prepares to address supporters in Choma, the optics are carefully calibrated. Home ground. Large crowds expected. Familiar cultural cues. A listening posture. It is a reminder that incumbency does not always translate into distance, and that campaigns can be relaunched quietly, through presence rather than proclamation.

Whether this strategy resonates beyond the red stronghold remains the central question. But one fact is now clear. The President is no longer absent from the political stage. He is repositioning. And as August 2026 approaches, the contest is shifting, steadily, from noise to numbers.

© The People’s Brief | Gathering —Mwape Nthegwa; Reporting —Ollus R. Ndomu