RELYING ON TREACHEROUS CHARACTERS TO WAGE A STRUGGLE
The last few years, months, and weeks of direct participation in Zambian politics have taught us many things – some of them the hard way.
We came into politics with a strict Leninist vanguard approach – “Better Fewer, But Better.” But we came under immense pressure to grow our numbers quickly, under the slogan that “politics is about numbers.” We succumbed to that pressure.
We allowed in a motley assortment of contradictory elements. We gave them senior positions at almost every level. We extended our political solidarity in every direction that asked for it.
For a while, this gave the party a certain glitter. But not all that glitters is gold. In no time, the destructive, opportunistic tendencies of these elements began to show themselves. And we paid a heavy price for it – politically, organisationally, and personally.
We are not writing this from a distance. We are writing it from inside the cost. The price of trusting the wrong people is not an abstract one. It is measured in energy
spent watching your back instead of fighting for the people you set out to serve. It is measured in colleagues who quietly drifted away because they no longer recognised the movement they had joined.
It is measured in plans compromised before they could
bear fruit. We say this plainly because we believe the public deserves honesty from those who ask for their trust, not a polished version of events.
And painful as this has been, we were not the only ones. Those who once laughed at the price we paid are now hearing the same bells toll for them. We take no pleasure in that. We mention it only because it confirms that what we learned was never really about us alone. It is about a pattern that repeats wherever movements mistake numbers for strength, and access for loyalty.
We have learned our political lessons. We have had our political baptism. We have known betrayal. We have climbed our own Calvary, carrying our own heavy political cross. And with God’s grace, we believe our political resurrection still lies ahead of us.
We share what we have learned not as theory, but as truth paid for in wounds. Relying on treacherous or untrustworthy characters to wage a struggle – in political history, in warfare, in literature – routinely leads to severe, often fatal, consequences. It is tempting, in a desperate moment, to believe that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. But inviting betrayal into your own ranks almost always undermines the very cause it was meant to serve.
A treacherous character’s loyalty is always up for sale. They are the first to switch sides, the first to leak what was shared with them in confidence, the first to abandon the struggle the moment the tide turns or a better offer appears. Every plan built with them in the room is a plan already halfway compromised.
Betrayal from within poisons trust faster than any enemy from without. Once a movement has been burned this way, honest followers begin to watch one another instead of watching the real fight. Energy that should go to the people they are meant to serve
is spent on suspicion instead. And good, principled people – the ones you can least afford to lose – quietly walk away. Not because they stopped believing in the cause, but because they stopped trusting the judgment of those leading it.
The public forgives struggle. It does not forgive dishonesty about who you kept close.
A movement’s legitimacy rests on the trust of ordinary people, and trust is the first thing spent when a movement is seen to protect or elevate those who do not deserve it. We would rather lose an alliance than lose the confidence of the people we are accountable to.
Even victory bought this way does not hold. History’s oldest warning is that revolutions devour their own children. Once the shared enemy is gone, those who were never loyal to the cause turn on it, and the very deceit that served them in the struggle becomes the character of what comes after. A struggle worth winning has to be a struggle worth trusting. Otherwise the peace that follows it will not last.
We offer these lessons plainly, and without bitterness, because they were worth what they cost us to learn – and because no cause, including our own, is served by others learning them the same hard way.
Fred M’membe
SP President