🇿🇲 BUILD-UP | PF’s New Fault Line: Mwila-Mwamba Fight, Exile Politics & the August Agenda
The Patriotic Front ecosystem is now arguing across four arenas at once, and the dispute between former PF secretary general Davies Mwila and PF information figure Emmanuel Mwamba has exposed the real pressure point. It is not only about who speaks for the opposition. It is about who controls the Tonse brand, who controls the Lungu family’s political symbolism, and who controls the narrative of victimhood around arrests and asset forfeitures
Here is the background. PF now functions as a constellation of factions and allied vehicles operating in parallel, and the Tonse Alliance itself is now split into competing camps. Brian Mundubile’s camp is trying to present itself as the organised, election-ready centre of gravity. Another camp, aligned with Given Lubinda and allies, disputes the legitimacy of Mundubile’s leadership track.
Into this comes Tasila Lungu, still in South Africa as the burial impasse over former president Edgar Lungu remains unresolved, and now placed at the centre of a new internal contest after her appointment as Tonse National Youth Chairperson in the Mundubile Tonse enclave.
The Mwila–Mwamba clash is best understood as an argument over who has the right to influence Tonse’s internal decisions, especially decisions involving the Lungu family. Mwila’s message is blunt: Mwamba is in exile and should not direct those “on the ground” on alliance matters. Mwila’s argument also frames exile as political limitation. If those at home fail to mobilise, then those outside cannot return. This is a strategic rebuke, not only personal.
Mwamba’s reported role, in turn, is perceived by the Mundubile camp as an attempt to block or delegitimise Tasila’s appointment by urging the family in South Africa not to “entertain” it. If accurate, it fits a wider pattern in PF politics where competing centres of influence seek to lock down the Lungu family’s position because the family is seen as carrying two assets. One is symbolic legitimacy in a scattered post-Lungu PF.
The other is perceived resource power, including networks, fundraising capability, and the loyalty economy built around the late president’s name.
This is where the politics turns from factional to moral. Mwila argues that the opposition’s mission is to win in August and release what he considers “political prisoners”.
Currently, many of the detained and convicted PF figures are facing corruption-related or violence-related cases, and the state’s asset forfeiture drive has become an additional pressure point. When a major opposition mobilisation message becomes “we must win to free our people,” it creates an optics problem. It narrows the opposition offer to self-preservation, even if supporters insist it is about justice, selective prosecution, or due process.
It is also politically risky because it hands the ruling party a clean contrast. UPND can argue it is governing, prosecuting, and recovering assets. PF factions then appear to be organising primarily for protection, negotiation leverage, and survival. You do not need propaganda to make the point. Voters tend to ask one simple question in election years. What changes in my life if you win.
If the loudest energy in the opposition space is about who returns from exile, who gets protected, and who controls the Lungu brand, it becomes harder to convince swing voters that the coalition is prepared to govern beyond the court docket.
The other danger is how grief is being used as political cover. Lungu’s burial dispute has already generated intense public emotion. When legal and financial accountability stories involving family members land alongside the burial standoff, it becomes easy for supporters to fuse them into one persecution narrative. It becomes “they are attacking the family while the body is still in South Africa.” This line can mobilise anger, but it also blurs two different questions.
One question is funeral dignity and state protocol. The other is whether specific assets were lawfully acquired under Zambia’s forfeiture framework. A serious opposition should be able to argue due process without converting every legal process into a funeral rally.
Zooming out, Mwila’s broadside exposes something deeper about PF’s current model of opposition. It is running on personality, legacy, and grievance, not policy contrast. Even the internal battle is not about ideology. It is about who inherits the right to speak in Lungu’s name, who gets to define the enemy, and who gets to distribute positions and protection.
If this trajectory continues, PF risks entering the election season with two weaknesses at once. It will be split organisationally, and it will be boxed rhetorically into a defence campaign. It will then rely heavily on Lungu’s residual loyalty to hold the base, while the ruling party continues to chip away at strongholds and present itself as the only coherent national machine.
© The People’s Brief | Analysis Desk