You Cannot Campaign With a Defeat

🇿🇲 EDITOR’S NOTE | You Cannot Campaign With a Defeat

Brian Mundubile’s declaration that he will “rule like Edgar Lungu” is not just a political statement. It is a strategic position. And like all strategy, it must be tested against history, numbers, and public memory. On all three fronts, the proposition is weak.

Zambians did not remove Edgar Lungu from power by accident. They did so decisively, with a margin of nearly one million votes. That was not a protest vote. It was a verdict. It was a rejection of a governing style, an economic direction, and a political culture that had become burdensome to the electorate. To now present that same model as a campaign blueprint is to ignore the very reason power changed hands.

Debt is the first place to look.

Under the Patriotic Front, Zambia accumulated unsustainable debt levels that culminated in a sovereign default. Infrastructure was built, yes, but at a cost that the economy could not carry. The roads were visible. The debt burden was heavier. Citizens voted not just against absence of development, but against the cost of that development. Any attempt to revive that model without addressing its fiscal consequences will immediately run into credibility problems.

Then there is governance.

The PF era became synonymous with cadreism. Markets, bus stations, and public spaces were effectively captured by party-aligned groups who operated with impunity. Violence was not incidental. It became embedded in the political ecosystem. Citizens experienced it directly. Businesses paid for it. The state struggled to control it. That memory has not faded. It sits quietly in the background of every political message that references that period.

Corruption followed closely.

Public perception hardened around procurement irregularities, opaque contracts, and abuse of office. Whether proven in court or not, the political damage was already done. Elections are not won in courtrooms. They are decided in the minds of voters. By 2021, the perception had settled. Government was seen as compromised. That perception translated into votes.

Then came the politics of division.

The PF campaign machinery leaned heavily into regional and tribal mobilisation. It was effective in pockets, but it narrowed the national appeal of the party. Zambia has always punished overt division when it reaches a certain threshold. In 2021, that threshold was crossed. The electorate responded by consolidating behind a message that promised unity and national reset.

This is the context Mundubile is stepping into.

To invoke Edgar Lungu as a governing template is to reopen that entire record. It invites comparison, not just to the positive elements, but to the full balance sheet. And politics is not selective memory. Voters remember the whole story.

There is also a deeper strategic flaw.

Elections are not won by looking backwards. They are won by offering a credible alternative to the present. President Hakainde Hichilema has defined his administration around free education, social programmes, fiscal reforms, and an open governance posture. Whether one agrees with these policies or not, they form a clear governing framework. Opposing that framework requires more than nostalgia. It requires a counter-plan.

So far, that counter-plan is missing.

What is being offered instead is a return to a past that voters have already assessed and rejected. That is not a campaign message. It is a reminder of why change happened in the first place.

The hard truth is this.

Edgar Lungu’s name does not carry electoral capital in the current political climate. It carries history. And that history is contested, complicated, and ultimately settled at the ballot box in 2021.

If Mundubile intends to be taken seriously as a presidential contender, he must move beyond inherited narratives. He must define his own economic model, his own governance framework, and his own political identity. Borrowed legacies rarely win elections, especially when that legacy ended in defeat.

Zambian voters are not waiting for a restoration.

They are waiting for a proposition.

© The People’s Brief | Editors