Why Fred M’membe’s Socialist Message Doesn’t Land With Voters

 CONTEXT | Why M’membe’s Socialist Message Doesn’t Land With Voters

Fred M’membe is right about one thing. People are “resigning” from the Socialist Party positions they never held, and many are doing it for pure survival. But the real story is bigger than opportunism. It goes to the heart of why the Socialist Party -SP-  has failed to gain political traction in a country where ideology has never been the fuel that drives voter behaviour.

Yesterday, M’membe wrote:

“Some people are dramatically resigning from SP positions they were never appointed to… desperation is driving many to jump on any carrot dangled before them.”

He framed it as treachery. The truth is simpler and more brutal: Zambia’s political marketplace is not built for ideological parties. It is built for identity, tribe, region, patronage and familiarity. And on all five fronts, the Socialist Party has no political muscle.

In the 2021 election, M’membe received 16,644 votes. That is 0.34 percent of the presidential tally. In the National Assembly race, the party collected 61,325 votes, just 1.27 percent, and won zero seats. These numbers are not the result of poor messaging alone. They are the product of a political culture where voters reward those who can solve immediate problems, not those who quote Marxism or promise cooperative farming ten years down the line.

SP is a party with ideas, but it is competing in a system built on survival. The voter in Mandevu, Kanyama, Mpulungu or Chawama is not choosing between capitalism and socialism. They are choosing between a party that may give them land, a job, a licence, a contract, a bursary, or at least a political godfather who can speak their language, literally and figuratively. That is why PF and UPND remain the gravitational centres of Zambian politics. They are not ideological platforms; they are broad coalitions of identity, mobilisation, and reward.

M’membe’s frustration with “engineered resignations” exposes the gap his movement has struggled to cross. SP has a manifesto. It has vocabulary. It has moral arguments. But Zambian politics does not reward ideological purity. It rewards proximity to resources, ethnic belonging, local networks, and a sense of political certainty. A party with no MPs, no councils, no regional stronghold, and no patronage machinery cannot anchor loyalty. Members drift because they see no path to power, no path to visibility, and no path to protection.

This is not a judgment on the Socialist Party’s ideas. It is a judgment on political reality. In Zambia, ideology is a luxury. Voters gravitate toward the familiar, the tribal, the regional, and the materially beneficial. SP offers none of that. It offers a vision, but visions do not feed households or secure jobs.

M’membe says:

“They left the SP but the SP hasn’t left them.”

He is correct in one sense: many who exit still use his talking points because the ideas are compelling. But compelling ideas are not political currency in Zambia. Electoral power flows through networks, tribe, patronage and grassroots machinery.

Until SP learns that lesson, the resignations will continue, and the party will remain what it currently is, that is, an ideological movement in a country that votes for identity and survival.

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The People’s Brief | Context | 16/11/25