THE DANGER OF INVENTING KINGMAKERS: ZAMBIA’S HISTORY IS BIGGER THAN ANY TRIBAL BLOC
By Farai Ruvanyathi
22nd September, 2026
Pastor Peter Chanda’s article, “The Kingmakers That Cannot Make Themselves a King: A Matter of the Bemba People from the Northern Block,” is cleverly and eloquently written. But beneath that eloquence lies an entitled and historically selective proposition: that Zambia’s political history can somehow be reduced to a special kingmaking role belonging to the Northern and Eastern regions.
That proposition is difficult to sustain against the historical record.
*HISTORY DID NOT BEGIN WITH THE NORTHERN BLOCK*
Zambian nationalism was never the private enterprise of one ethnic or regional bloc.
Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, a Southerner, led the African National Congress and was one of the central figures of African nationalism in Northern Rhodesia. Kenneth Kaunda himself served as ANC Secretary-General under Nkumbula before breaking away to establish ZANC.
When ZANC was banned and Kaunda imprisoned, another Southerner, Mainza Chona, became the first President of UNIP. When Kaunda was released, Chona relinquished the leadership to him.
These are not insignificant historical footnotes. They demonstrate that Zambia’s nationalist movement was built through sacrifice and cooperation among people from different regions.
Any suggestion that one ethnic bloc somehow historically “made” Zambia’s political leaders therefore ignores the diversity of the very movement that created the Republic.
*THE MYTH OF AN UNBROKEN BEMBA–EASTERN POLITICAL ALLIANCE*
The article also romanticises Bemba–Eastern political cooperation as though it constituted an enduring political compact.
History tells a considerably more complicated story.
During UNIP’s bitter leadership struggles of the 1960s, the contest surrounding Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe and Reuben Kamanga exposed precisely the regional tensions that the article conveniently overlooks. Political alignments at the time included Bemba and Tonga support around Kapwepwe, while Lozi and Eastern interests aligned differently around Kamanga.
The dispute became so intense that it threatened the cohesion of UNIP itself.
That history hardly supports the romantic picture of an uninterrupted Northern–Eastern political brotherhood.
Ichimbuya is an important and beautiful cultural tradition. But cultural cousinship should not be rewritten retrospectively as a permanent electoral alliance.
*1991 DESTROYS THE “NATURAL KINGMAKER” THEORY*
The return to multiparty democracy in 1991 provides an even clearer contradiction.
Frederick Chiluba and the MMD swept much of Zambia. Yet Eastern Province remained overwhelmingly supportive of UNIP, while Southern Province voted overwhelmingly for Chiluba and the MMD.
Chiluba received approximately 85 per cent of the presidential vote in Southern Province, while receiving only about 25 per cent in Eastern Province. The parliamentary voting pattern was similarly striking: the MMD secured approximately 84 per cent in Southern Province, compared with about 26 per cent in Eastern Province.
So where was this supposedly permanent Northern–Eastern kingmaking alliance in 1991?
A predominantly Tonga-speaking province gave overwhelming support to Frederick Chiluba, a Bemba-speaking candidate, while Eastern Province remained predominantly behind Kenneth Kaunda and UNIP.
History therefore refuses to fit comfortably into the tribal box constructed by the article.
*THEN CAME A NEW POLITICAL REALITY*
There is another development the “Northern–Eastern kingmaker” argument seriously underestimates: the emergence of what may broadly be described in contemporary political analysis as the Zambezi electoral bloc.
This political configuration has been centred principally on Southern, Western and North-Western Provinces, while attracting varying levels of cooperation from constituencies in Central Province, the Copperbelt rural, Lusaka rural and elsewhere.
Its significance is considerable.
Southern, Western and North-Western Provinces alone accounted for more than 2.25 million registered voters ahead of the 2026 election, representing more than a quarter of Zambia’s registered electorate.
The 2026 election further demonstrated the electoral weight of this configuration, with extraordinarily large presidential majorities recorded across Southern, Western and North-Western Provinces, accompanied by important support elsewhere.
This fundamentally changes the conversation.
THE ELECTORAL MAP HAS CHANGED
The point is not to replace a supposed Northern–Eastern “kingmaker” with a Zambezi “kingmaker”. That would merely reproduce the same intellectual mistake.
The real point is that Zambia’s electoral centre of gravity has evolved.
Under the constitutional requirement for a presidential candidate to obtain more than 50 per cent of valid votes cast, substantial cooperation across regional and provincial boundaries has become essential to building a winning national coalition.
The contemporary Zambezi electoral bloc therefore cannot simply be wished away. Any serious national political project must reckon with its substantial numerical and political weight, just as it must engage voters in Northern, Muchinga, Luapula, Eastern, Copperbelt, Lusaka, Central and the rest of the country.
Whether today’s alignments remain intact indefinitely is another matter. Political coalitions evolve.
And that is precisely the point.
NO COMMUNITY HOLDS A TITLE DEED TO STATE HOUSE
Zambia is a Republic.
Presidents are not kings. Provinces are not royal courts. Ethnic communities do not possess hereditary political franchises over other citizens.
The language of “kingmakers” therefore creates an unfortunate sense of ethnic entitlement to political power.
No Bemba, Tonga, Lozi, Ngoni, Chewa, Kaonde, Lunda, Luvale, or any other Zambian, is born a kingmaker.
The Zambian people collectively make governments.
Political power must be earned through ideas, organisation, leadership and the construction of sufficiently broad national coalitions.
*A CLEVER ARGUMENT BUILT UPON SELECTIVE HISTORY*
Pastor Chanda’s article is better understood as an appeal for Bemba political introspection than as a balanced account of Zambia’s political history.
Its calls for humility, integrity, national unity, economic development and rejection of tribalism are worthy of consideration.
But its historical scaffolding is selective and, at critical points, contradicts the national inclusiveness it professes to defend.
One cannot convincingly condemn tribal politics while simultaneously constructing a theory of Zambia’s political history around the exceptional destiny or kingmaking entitlement of one ethnic community.
That contradiction lies at the heart of the article.
*ZAMBIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN BIGGER THAN THIS*
Zambia’s independence was not delivered by one tribe.
Its democracy was not restored by one tribe.
Its governments have not been made by one tribe.
And its future cannot belong to one tribe.
Nkumbula, Chona, Kaunda, Kapwepwe, Wina and countless other nationalists came from different communities but contributed to one national project.
The contemporary emergence of the Zambezi electoral bloc should equally not become another doctrine of permanent regional entitlement. Rather, it demonstrates how profoundly Zambia’s political geography can change when citizens build new political coalitions.
Yesterday’s “kingmakers” can become tomorrow’s opposition. Yesterday’s opposition can become tomorrow’s governing coalition.
That is democracy.
The enduring lesson of Zambia’s political history is therefore much simpler:
ZAMBIA HAS NEVER NEEDED TRIBAL KINGMAKERS. IT NEEDS LEADERS CAPABLE OF BUILDING NATIONAL COALITIONS.
And ultimately, there is only one genuine kingmaker in a democratic Republic:
THE ZAMBIAN VOTER.
Farai Ruvanyathi is a Zambian international political and governance analyst based in Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa. He writes on African democracy, regional diplomacy, international institutions and the rule of law