THE STOOL BELONGS TO THE WORKERS AND THE PEASANTS: AN INTELLIGENCE-LED RESPONSE TO COMRADE COL. MUNAMUNUNGU’S LAST ORDERS
Comrades, compatriots, and members of the press,
Our nation has recently been treated to a profound piece of strategic clarity. The reflections of Retired Colonel Hamwiinde Munamunungu, titled “The Stool Belongs to the People,” must not be read merely as the nostalgic poetry of a retired veteran. It is a clinical, intelligence-led national security brief.
It identifies where Zambia’s deepest vulnerabilities lie and where our true strength must be anchored.
As one who carved my own military understanding during my 1976/77 compulsory Zambia National Service (ZNS) military training, and having spent a lifetime studying global military trends and developments across the world, I understand the Colonel perfectly. I know the discipline that shaped his pen.
I know the strategic doctrine that informs his warning. When a seasoned military intelligence expert warns a nation about its internal fracture points, a serious leadership does not just listen it acts.
My understanding of this struggle is deep, lifelong, and tested. While I was not part of Zambia’s 1964 independence struggle, my formative years were spent in the trenches of liberation politics within the South African Communist Party (SACP), the African National Congress (ANC), and other allied formations of that great movement. It was there that my Marxist-Leninist convictions were forged.
When our own historical moment arrived, I found myself at the absolute center of the struggle for Zambia’s return to multiparty politics in 1990/91. For over a quarter of a century, from 1991 to 2017, I stood at the centre of promoting and defending that hard-won multiparty democracy as the Editor of The Post newspaper, until it was viciously closed down by the Patriotic Front (PF) government of Edgar Lungu. I know what it means to defend the “palaver.” I know the heavy cost of standing up to autocrats who try to steal the people’s stool.
As the Socialist Party, we receive the Colonel’s brief with the highest revolutionary regard. His observations validate what we have long argued through the lens of political economy: The stool of sovereignty does not belong to the political elites, domestic capital interests, or foreign puppet masters. It belongs strictly to the workers, the peasants, and the working intellectuals of Zambia.
From a position of shared strategic understanding, I fully endorse and contextualise the Colonel’s four tactical orders into an asymmetric national security framework for our time:
1. On the Palaver and the Ballot: Neutralizing Internal Security Threats:
The Colonel rightly notes that the palaver under the mango tree and the ballot box in Lusaka are the ultimate defence mechanisms of our state. Having weaponised the printed word for decades to guard our democracy, I know that suppressing free dialogue and shrinking the civic space is a high-risk failure of governance. When a state chokes alternative viewpoints, discontent does not disappear; it goes underground, transforming into an asymmetric threat to internal stability. We demand an immediate halt to the weaponisation of law enforcement and state machinery against political opponents and civic voices. To protect the state, we must protect the right of the working class to speak and vote freely.
2. On the Maize: Human Security as the Primary Defence Line:
The Colonel delivers a masterclass in human security by declaring that “Hunger is the most powerful opposition party.” In modern warfare and statecraft, we know that a nation cannot command loyalty or maintain strategic resilience if its population is starving. You cannot defend a hungry nation, even with 10,000 soldiers. The current neoliberal economic framework has commodified our food systems, turning agriculture into a playground for multinational corporate profit while leaving the pots of ordinary Zambians empty. A Socialist government will treat agriculture not as a market enterprise but as a critical line of national defence. We will counter the threat of food insecurity not with neoliberal rhetoric but with radical food sovereignty, secure water distribution, and economic dignity for our small-scale farmers.
3. On the Forest and the Rain: Resource Security and Ecological Integrity
The vanishing forests of Kapiri Mposhi, where my own generation marched during our ZNS training in the late 1970s, represent an environmental intelligence crisis. The depletion of our natural canopy directly compromises our rainfall patterns, destroying our capacity to produce maize and ultimately threatening the survival of Zambia itself. When poverty forces our people to deplete resources for immediate survival, it is a structural failure of the state. We must treat environmental protection as an issue of national resource security. We must transform our economy so that collective survival and ecological preservation take precedence over short-term private accumulation
4. On Civil-Military Relations: Upholding the Constitutional Oath:
Zambia’s proudest international medal is its unblemished record of peace and civilian rule. The Colonel’s reminder to our young soldiers is timely and absolute: the military oath is to the Constitution and the people, never to the personal ambitions of an individual leader. The military belongs in the barracks, the politicians belong in State House, and the power to transition between them belongs exclusively to the voter. However, as students of global trends, we must also warn the political elite: the ultimate guarantor of civil-military stability is social justice. When politicians use state power to abuse the masses, close down independent press houses, and plunder national wealth, they actively manufacture the conditions for state failure.
Our Strategic Mission for the Generation of 2050:
The Colonel’s generation successfully fulfilled its historical mission by delivering political independence in 1964. My generation stood up in 1990/91 to secure a return to multiparty democracy. The strategic task laid before our generation today is to secure economic independence and structural justice.
The Socialist Party is building a template for a truly inclusive meritocracy. We are fighting for a Zambia where any child, whether from the floodplains of Mongu, the hills of Mwinilunga, the valleys of Choma, or the compounds of Lusaka, is guaranteed the free education, healthcare, and economic stability required to rightfully take the stool through peaceful, democratic service.
The veteran has delivered his final operational brief from his farm in Mumbwa. The strategic warning has been given. Our mission to execute it is just beginning. Let us secure our resources, let us protect our working class, and let us permanently return the stool to its rightful owners, the people of Zambia.
Aluta Continua!
Real Change is Coming!
Fred M’membe
SP President