Kalaba Walking Hichilema’s Old Road on Power; Echoes Are Loud

🇿🇲 EDITORIAL | Kalaba Walking Hichilema’s Old Road on Power; Echoes Are Loud

Citizens First leader Harry Kalaba has found the oldest shortcut in Zambian opposition politics. Promise the end of load shedding the moment you take power and you will sound heroic. It is the same path President  Hakainde Hichilema walked when he dismissed the PF blackout crisis as incompetence and refused to accept the drought argument.

President Hichilema spoke about the Dubai formula and asked how a desert city had reliable power when Zambia had waterfalls. Those lines went viral because they fed public frustration. Now the red base cannot defend him because his own posts and videos have become evidence against him. Time has given him post nut clarity. He knows today what he denied yesterday.

Kalaba is now lifting that script with the same confidence Hichilema once had. He says Zambia will say goodbye to load shedding the moment Citizens First enters State House. He says the crisis is not drought driven but a result of poor leadership. He says the country must suspend exports to Namibia and South Africa until domestic supply is stable. He says the Chinukula power plant is the turning point and that once completed, Zambia will have enough power to saturate the market before a single watt leaves the country.

His tone is brave because he knows the public is tired. His rhetoric is sharp because he knows the incumbency has no easy defence.

The facts remain stubborn. Zambia is exporting under the SADC power pool through binding agreements. Past administrations, PF included, relied on the same exports to earn forex. The falling water levels that PF faced are the same cycles UPND is struggling with. The current shortage is a structural crisis built over years of weak investment, growing demand and climate shocks.

Chitalu Chilufya, a PF presidential aspirant, admitted that PF shares the blame because their infrastructure growth never matched population and industrial expansion. That confession removes the oxygen from Kalaba’s claim that this crisis is created by the current government alone.

Hichilema’s own words haunt him because they were crafted for the anger of the moment, not the truth of the problem. The opposition version of him spoke as if leadership alone could switch on Kariba, refill the Zambezi and supply Lusaka’s manufacturing belt. The presidency has shown him that energy cannot be bullied by slogans.

Kalaba has not reached that season yet. He is still in the sweet phase where promises cost nothing because he does not carry the burden of delivery. He speaks like Hichilema once spoke. He dismisses drought like Hichilema once dismissed it. He claims immediate solutions like Hichilema once claimed them. Zambians have heard this music before.

The 2026 election will punish whoever underestimates the political weight of energy. Lusaka and the Copperbelt are the most power hungry regions in the country and they decide who enters State House. They have the highest concentration of factories, markets, shops and homes that run on electricity. They suffered blackouts under PF and they are suffering blackouts under UPND. The people in these spaces do not want ideological lectures. They want light. They want refrigeration. They want productivity. They want predictability. They want leaders who speak truth even when the truth is costly.

Kalaba is betting on impatience. He is betting on frustration. He is betting on the silence of the red base that is tired of defending the President’s old posts. He is betting on Hichilema’s past mistakes becoming his present opportunity. But he is also betting on Zambians forgetting that PF sang the same song and failed to build beyond Kariba. He is betting on a public that does not interrogate the complexity of energy infrastructure.

It is a risky bet because voters are wiser than he thinks. They know load shedding is painful. They also know political sugar talk has never produced power.

This moment has clarity. Hichilema is living the consequences of yesterday’s bravado. Kalaba is enjoying the comfort of opposition innocence. The difference is simple. The man who is in State House has already learned that energy does not respond to campaign poetry. The man who is outside is still composing verses that will return to haunt him if he wins.

Zambia has no more room for illusions. Whoever seeks power must tell the truth, even if it costs them the election.

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