The Cultification of Power: How UPND Is Turning Governance into Blind Obedience- Thandiwe Ketiš Ngoma

The Cultification of Power: How UPND Is Turning Governance into Blind Obedience

By Thandiwe Ketiš Ngoma

There is nothing more dangerous to a democracy than a ruling party that believes it is chosen, pure, and beyond question. Zambia is now facing that danger head on as the UPND under President Hakainde Hichilema increasingly operates like a political cult driven by power, arrogance, and self-righteousness.

Let us be clear. This is no longer about policy disagreements. This is about a toxic political culture where loyalty is demanded, worship is encouraged, and dissent is punished. It is a culture in which the ruling elite behaves as though intelligence, morality, and patriotism were patented by one party alone.

Criticize the government and you are attacked, insulted, or branded an enemy of progress. Question failed promises and you are told you are ignorant. Demand accountability and you are accused of supporting corruption. This is the language of cults, not democracies.

UPND supporters have been conditioned to defend every failure, excuse every contradiction, and justify every abuse of state power, no matter how obvious. The economy is choking the poor? Be patient. Jobs are disappearing? Reforms take time. Selective application of the law? Trust the President. This blind obedience is not patriotism. It is political enslavement.

What makes this situation even more alarming is the behavior of UPND sympathisers themselves, which increasingly mirrors how people in cults operate. Facts are irrelevant to them. Lived experiences of suffering are dismissed. Independent thought is discouraged. Anyone who does not echo the party line is attacked, mocked, or dehumanized. This is classic cult psychology: defend the leader at all costs, even against reality.

UPND supporters do not engage in debate. They enforce belief. They do not interrogate policy. They rationalize failure. They do not listen. They preach. To them, President Hakainde Hichilema is not merely a leader chosen by the people of Zambia. He is treated as a moral authority, a savior figure, almost a messiah whose decisions must never be questioned. In their narrative, Zambia was dark before him and saved by his arrival. This is not political consciousness. It is ideological captivity.

A cult needs enemies to survive, and this government has mastered that tactic. Opposition leaders are harassed. Civil society is intimidated. Journalists are pressured into silence. Institutions that should act independently increasingly resemble enforcement wings of the ruling party. Fear is quietly replacing freedom, and arrogance has replaced humility.

Even more disturbing is the role played by President Hichilema himself in reinforcing and enjoying this cult mentality. Rather than consistently discouraging hero worship and reaffirming that he is merely a temporary public servant accountable to the people, he often carries himself as a man uniquely destined to fix Zambia, an enlightened figure surrounded by citizens who simply do not understand his superior vision. This posture feeds the belief that criticism is not democratic engagement but ignorance or hostility.

A true democrat welcomes scrutiny. A cult leader resents it.

President Hichilema is increasingly treated not as a constitutional office holder but as an untouchable figure, shielded by loyalists who react aggressively to any challenge to his authority. This messiah complex is poisonous. Zambia did not remove one dominant party only to install another leadership that believes it is intellectually and morally superior to the citizens it governs.

This is how democracies decay, not through tanks in the streets, but through intellectual bullying, selective justice, and political gaslighting. Citizens are told suffering is progress. Silence is called unity. Submission is called patriotism.

UPND once claimed to stand against authoritarianism. Today, it is flirting with it openly. Power has not humbled this government. It has intoxicated it. And intoxicated governments always follow the same path, becoming isolated, defensive, paranoid, and increasingly repressive.

Zambia does not belong to UPND. The Constitution does not belong to the President. The state does not belong to party cadres. Power is borrowed from the people, and any government that begins to believe it owns the nation is already a threat to it.

Let this be said plainly. No leader is special. No party is sacred. No government deserves worship. The moment citizens are bullied into silence and criticism is criminalized by propaganda, democracy is already bleeding.

Zambians must reject this cult mentality with courage and clarity. Not tomorrow. Now. Because history shows that once a ruling party convinces itself it cannot be wrong, it will eventually do everything wrong.

And when that happens, it is always the ordinary people who suffer first and longest.