Tonse prepared to win without loss management plan

🇿🇲 INSIGHT | Tonse prepared to win without loss management plan

Something is going wrong inside the Tonse opposition ecosystem, and its supporters need to confront it. Nearly a month after the August election, a powerful section of the alliance’s online messaging remains built around one expectation: Brian Mundubile somehow returning to the political position his supporters believed he had won. Former diplomat Emmanuel Mwamba, broadcasting from the United States, continues to host discussions describing Zambia as being in a “post electoral crisis” and Hakainde Hichilema’s second term as “illegitimate”. The difficulty is no longer simply the strength of those claims. It is what those claims are doing to supporters who were never psychologically prepared for defeat.

Harry Kalaba exposed part of the problem during his conversation with Mwamba this week. While calling for the release of Mundubile, Makebi Zulu and other detainees, Kalaba also spoke about moderation and dialogue. Significantly, when asked what he would do as President, he said he would call Mwamba and ask him to tone down. That statement should not be dismissed as humour between political allies. It points towards a growing difference between opposition leaders trying to navigate Zambia’s situation on the ground and diaspora voices whose political influence is exercised largely through broadcasts and social media.

There are legitimate matters for the opposition to pursue. NRPUP official Joseph Kaseya and 42 others have gone to court alleging unlawful detention and mistreatment after the election. Kaseya says armed men in military attire intercepted and assaulted him while he was an ECZ-accredited monitor. Those are serious allegations and deserve judicial scrutiny. The EU Election Observation Mission also documented deterioration in parts of the tabulation process after the August 14 suspension, including an intimidating military presence at some totalling centres and failures in prescribed results-recording procedures. The opposition does not need to invent problems. There are documented problems it can pursue.

But documented irregularities are not automatically proof of a stolen presidency. Tonse voices repeatedly claim their agents possessed polling-station records showing Mundubile winning where ECZ later announced different figures. If so, this is potentially powerful evidence. Gen 20 forms are physical records. Party agents had phones. Zambia has thousands of opposition activists online.

Where are the comparative forms? Where are the polling-station-by-polling-station discrepancies? Where is the organised database showing one figure signed at the station and another announced by ECZ? In an election followed minute by minute on social media, an allegation of systematic substitution should eventually produce a trail capable of public inspection.

There is another piece of evidence Tonse supporters are rarely encouraged to examine. The Christian Churches Monitoring Group deployed 1,500 observers to a nationally representative sample of polling stations and received reports from 1,491. Its independent PRVT estimated Hichilema at 56.0% ±1.7 and Mundubile at 42.3% ±1.7. CCMG did find important discrepancies between its estimates and the official figures and called for further scrutiny. But its central finding remained clear: Hichilema received the most votes and exceeded the 50% threshold. This does not absolve ECZ of transparency failures. It does, however, create evidence which anyone claiming Mundubile actually won must seriously answer.

This is where Tonse appears to have made its larger strategic mistake. The alliance prepared its supporters to win. It did not prepare them to manage a loss. For months, victory was presented not simply as possible but almost inevitable. For some diaspora figures, a Mundubile presidency carried another expectation: political exiles could return, old cases would be revisited and PF-linked figures facing legal difficulties could expect a different political environment. When the result went the other way, there was no transition from campaigning to opposition politics. The campaign simply continued, now built around the proposition that victory had been stolen.

The consequences are becoming visible. Mundubile and several colleagues are confronting serious criminal proceedings. Their guilt or innocence must be determined by evidence before the courts, not by government statements and certainly not by social-media broadcasts. But supporters do them no favour by creating expectations that political pressure, international statements or an imagined reversal of government will somehow make the legal process disappear. False hope is not solidarity. A detained politician needs competent lawyers, evidence, due process and a disciplined political organisation outside the prison walls. He does not need supporters being told every evening that constitutional reality is about to change.

This is also why Kalaba’s comments deserves attention. His argument for dialogue can be debated, and his suggestion that the President holds the key to releasing accused persons raises its own constitutional questions. A President should not casually substitute himself for prosecutors and courts. But Kalaba appears to recognise something more basic: Zambia must eventually return to ordinary politics. Opposition parties have MPs, councillors, structures and voters to organise. They have a government to scrutinise. They have another political cycle to prepare for. An opposition which spends five years relitigating the previous election risks arriving at the next one without having built the machinery required to win it.

Mwamba and other diaspora voices have every right to criticise Hichilema, ECZ, the Army and the courts. Distance does not cancel citizenship or political rights. But influence carries responsibility. People broadcasting from Europe or America do not experience the immediate consequences when rhetoric produces confrontation inside Zambia. The people who attend police interviews, visit prisons, brief lawyers, organise constituencies and live within the political temperature are here. This may explain the growing disconnect between some voices abroad demanding escalation and figures at home increasingly talking about restraint and dialogue.

Tonse supporters therefore need something more useful than reassurance. They need an honest audit. If Gen 20 forms prove manipulation, publish them systematically. If soldiers assaulted election monitors, take the evidence to court and demand accountability. If ECZ figures cannot be reconciled with polling-station records, demonstrate the discrepancy constituency by constituency. But if the evidence ultimately shows Mundubile lost, the alliance must have the political maturity to say so and begin rebuilding.

The strongest rebuttal to misinformation is not a counter-narrative. It is a record people can inspect. Tonse cannot build its future by keeping its supporters emotionally trapped inside an election that has already ended.

– The People’s Brief | Ollus R. Ndomu