🇿🇲 INSIGHT | Term Limits: Today’s Advantage, Tomorrow’s Trap
Barely a month after Zambia’s general election, presidential term limits have returned to political conversation. UPND Proportional Representation MP Florence Chileshe Chama has argued that women “don’t want democracy but development” while calling for President Hakainde Hichilema to remain beyond 2031. UPND official Michael Chuzu has offered another justification, claiming Hichilema is completing the political term of the party’s late founder, Anderson Mazoka, and would begin his own term in 2031.
Neither statement changes the Constitution. Neither establishes that the UPND has formally adopted a proposal to remove presidential term limits. But both raise a question that deserves an answer: why has extending presidential tenure entered the conversation so early in a new mandate?
UPND Media Director Mark Simuuwe has defended the discussion. “Ngati bafuna ma Zambians, allow them to debate the term limit. Don’t stop the debate,” he wrote. He then drew a comparison with members of Parliament: “Democracy also means allowing citizens to choose leaders of their choice without being stopped as it is for MPs.”
Citizens are free to debate the Constitution, but the comparison overlooks a distinction in the offices themselves. An MP is one member of a collective lawmaking body. A President holds executive authority over the Republic. A limit on presidential tenure does not deny voters a choice of political party or programme. It requires parties to develop successors capable of presenting those programmes to the electorate.
Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha has said the coming constitutional reform process “will not be dictated by political commentary” and has assured Zambians, in remarks reported by Phoenix News, that they will have an opportunity to participate. His assurance should be read alongside Socialist Party President Fred M’membe’s warning: “A dominant political faction with a supermajority can rewrite the Constitution to suit its immediate political goals.” M’membe’s prediction that Hichilema will obtain every amendment he wants remains his political assessment, not an established Government plan.
The underlying institutional question is nevertheless serious. Parliamentary numbers can make an amendment possible; they cannot, on their own, establish that the country needs it. A government considering a change to presidential tenure must look beyond its majority and listen to citizens who voted against it as well as those who voted for it.
The election itself provides that reminder. Hichilema secured another mandate, while Brian Mundubile received more than 1.8 million votes. Those votes cannot be treated as consent to the Government’s every future proposal, just as a vote for the opposition cannot be taken as opposition to every Government policy. They show a country in which substantial numbers of citizens hold competing political views. The ordinary fortunes of democracy allow those citizens to organise, persuade others and contest power again. Before asking whether the presidency needs a longer constitutional horizon, governing-party figures could ask a more immediate question: what do voters who withheld their support still need to see from this government?
Zambia’s recent history offers a practical warning about laws written with today’s political advantage in mind. The Patriotic Front enacted the Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Act in 2021 under President Edgar Lungu. Critics argued that its provisions could be used against political speech. Later that year, the PF lost power and the UPND inherited the law. Former PF figures subsequently faced legal scrutiny over online statements, although each case must be assessed on its own facts and under the law applicable to it. It would be inaccurate to say that every such case arose under the 2021 Act, or that any particular PF official helped draft it without evidence.
The broader lesson needs no embellishment: a governing party cannot assume it will always control the powers it creates. The law remains when the government changes.
Scripture in the book of Esther offers an older illustration of the same reversal. Haman prepared a gallows for Mordecai, only to be executed on it himself after his position at court collapsed. Scripture is not a substitute for constitutional analysis, and Zambia’s politicians are not characters in that account. Its relevance is the danger of designing an instrument around an expected outcome while assuming circumstances will remain favourable. A party might remove presidential term limits expecting its incumbent to benefit, then lose an election. Its opponents would inherit the same rule.
Even without an electoral defeat, death, illness, resignation or a change in party leadership could place the expanded opportunity in the hands of a successor with a different programme. A constitutional amendment cannot be confined to the person its supporters have in mind.
That is why the argument cannot rest on an assessment of Hichilema’s personal qualities or the UPND’s policy record. Supporters credit this government with progress in economic management, education and public investment. Other citizens question whether national economic indicators have translated into affordable food, reliable incomes and sufficient jobs.
Both perspectives belong in the public debate. Chama’s statement that women “don’t want democracy but development” does not speak for every woman, and it presents a choice the country need not make. Development is the Government’s responsibility within the constitutional order. If the UPND believes its programme is working, it can build a succession system capable of carrying that programme into the next election without requiring one man to lead it indefinitely.
The question of priorities is therefore unavoidable. Why should a new administration devote political attention to presidential tenure before the public has seen the full results of its fresh mandate? The Government has programmes to implement and economic gains to translate into daily life. Its party has voters to retain, sceptical communities to engage and future leaders to prepare. The existence of opposition support across the Northern Circuit and Eastern Enclave is not an inconvenience to be explained away. It is information about the electorate.
A party that wants its policies to endure can examine why some citizens remain unconvinced and make its case through delivery, organisation and credible candidates. Constitutional change cannot perform that work on its behalf.
Zambia has confronted an attempt to extend presidential tenure before. In 2001, supporters of President Frederick Chiluba sought a route to a third term, but the proposal faced fierce opposition from civic groups, churches and members of his own MMD. The present circumstances are different: Hichilema has not announced a third-term bid, and no official proposal to remove the presidential limit has been established here.
Still, the historical question remains relevant. A constitution is not an ordinary party programme to be rewritten whenever political circumstances change. It sets the terms on which rivals compete and the restraints each must accept when entrusted with power. Those rules need legitimacy beyond the parliamentary majority of the day.
The People’s Brief’s concern is the durability of Zambia’s institutions. The country should not measure a constitutional rule only by what it might permit a president it trusts today to do. It must also consider what that rule would permit an unknown successor, or a political opponent, to do tomorrow. Kabesha’s promise of public participation provides a standard for any proposal that eventually emerges.
For now, the more immediate task is governing: making economic progress tangible in households and developing leaders capable of succeeding the current President. Political fortunes change. The Constitution must be built to withstand that change.
For the love of the country, good morning, Zambia.
-The People’s Brief | Ollus R. Ndomu