President Hakainde Hichilema’s Vision Is Patriotic, Clear and Firmly Anchored on Zambia’s Long-Term Recovery
By Magret Mwanza
President Hakainde Hichilema continues to face a steady stream of misrepresentation, not from policy debate, but from those who benefit from sowing confusion. His words are twisted, his intentions caricatured, and his progress dismissed by voices more interested in noise than nation-building.
Yet the record speaks plainly. What defines his leadership is not rhetoric, but a consistent, long-term strategy to pull Zambia back from the edge of economic and institutional collapse.
This is not leadership built on grievance, tribe, or theatrics. It is leadership rooted in discipline, focused on restoring systems, rebuilding trust, and returning opportunity to ordinary citizens.
Those who distort his message often do so not out of concern, but because real progress threatens their relevance. When stability replaces chaos, their playbook loses power.
And the progress is real. After years of fiscal freefall, Zambia’s economy is on a steadier footing. Mining, once mired in disputes and uncertainty, is functioning again. Major producers are paying their fair share, tax revenues are holding firm, and investor confidence, fragile for so long, is quietly returning.
This is not optimism. It is arithmetic. The numbers reflect deliberate reforms: tighter fiscal controls, transparent negotiations, and a refusal to fund today’s promises with tomorrow’s debt.
That stability has created space to invest where it matters most. For too long, mining licenses were gatekept by a narrow circle of insiders while Zambian entrepreneurs watched from the sidelines. Today, artisanal and small-scale miners are receiving licenses at unprecedented rates, giving citizens direct access to the country’s mineral wealth, not through favour, but through process.
In public services, the shift is equally profound. Tens of thousands of teachers and health workers have been hired in the past few years, reversing decades of neglect that left rural clinics and schools understaffed and under-resourced. These are not abstract figures. They are paychecks supporting families, classrooms with functioning teachers, and clinics where patients no longer wait days for care.
Free education, once dismissed as unaffordable, is now a reality for millions of children. For households that once chose between school fees and meals, that relief is more than policy. It is dignity.
Then there is the Constituency Development Fund. No longer a tool for political patronage, it has become a vehicle for local agency. Communities are deciding their own priorities: repairing bridges, grading feeder roads, equipping youth skills centres, and supporting women-led cooperatives. This is decentralisation not as a slogan, but as practice.
Hichilema’s style, quiet, deliberate, and often understated, can be mistaken for passivity by those who equate leadership with volume. But his critics’ frustration runs deeper. This government is fixing what was broken, cleaning what was hidden, and proving that competence can outlast chaos.
Whenever progress becomes undeniable, the backlash shifts tactics, manufacturing outrage, reinterpreting neutral remarks, or recycling old narratives as if nothing has changed. But Zambia has changed.
The country now demands leadership that thinks beyond election cycles, beyond regional loyalties, beyond score-settling. That is precisely the direction this administration has pursued since day one.
Perfection? No. But purpose? Clear. And results? Increasingly visible.
Zambia’s recovery is not happening by accident. It is the outcome of tough choices, unpopular reforms, and a president who understands that rebuilding a nation requires patience, not just promises.
Zambians should not let manufactured controversies obscure tangible gains. Those who continually misrepresent the President do so because they know that if citizens see the full picture, the growing jobs, the better schools, the open mining sector, they will have little left to offer.
What is at stake is not just one leader’s legacy, but a national project: stable finances, stronger services, empowered citizens, and a resource sector that finally works for Zambians.
President Hichilema’s commitment to that vision is evident, not in speeches, but in policy. Not in slogans, but in outcomes. And for the millions whose lives are improving quietly, day by day, the truth does not need amplification.
It just needs to be lived.
Every President, All over the world, some people will like him some won’t like him. It is just very normal. Why crying over non issues?
Hh is indeed very patriotic. He has so far done very positive challenging national needs, but the buffoons who indeed hate him for their prejudice, jealous, tribal and selfish political ambitions, pretend and hypocritically not to accept the good works of HH. But the truth is that HH, has proved to be one of the benefits leaders in Africa and the world at large
HH is the best president in Africa.
Indeed on of the best in the world.
The HH government has outlined a plan for equitable long term recovery and resilience, an approach to unlock all areas of potential economy. We have all seen years of gains and free fall. There were no principles for sustainability. This time is different, we have President HH with a great vision.
History will be the ultimate judge since HH’s fixture or political football match is just over half time.Maybe ,just maybe he’ll win a second term or extended time play and things go very wrong then what will we have to say?
Let’s judge or asses him proper after he leaves office .
What needs to be discussed is HH and IPND successes and failures. The writing is on the wall. He has FAILED than any other president Zambians have put in office. After 20 years of being in opposition HH should have mad grand changes to the economy in a second. It is evident he had no plan but to just sell the country to his foreign friends. The Zambian economy does not favor Zambians but a few selected ones that are eating with him.
The Bally Will Fix it slogan was a lie. It surely must have meant Bally Will Fix You. Whenever people talk in support of HH, all of them DON’T point at anything but those government teaching jobs. Now stale story. They also point at Free Education which in fact was truly free in KK and UNIP time. Free and better schools with everything and classes of not more than 40 students sitting on desks and with texts books. Stop giving us this mediocrity as success.
Now please praise singers, give us his true success on hospitals, cost of living, employment, infrastructure, cholera, people’s financial positions, poverty reduction, mining benefits to the people of Zambia. Look at how divided Zambia is. Zambia has never been so divided. It is now a tribal nation. That’s one great achievement HH has scored. I would say this, he has lamentably FAILED. No matter how sing praises because of where you come from, he has failed.
In all fairness to the praise singers, please give us HH success. HH has never been mocked or unfairly criticized. It is his own speeches that are compared with his failures. Sometimes his current speeches are a 180° u-turn on what he said in opposition. Please Madam Mwanza, if that’s what you mean as patriotic, you need to relearn the word and its meaning. What Traore has done in Burkina Faso is patriotic.
Giving our minerals and wealth to foreigners and oneself is not patriotic. Not paying farmers on time is not patriotic. Load shedding for 21 hours because you sold electricity to neighboring nations is not patriotic. 80 students in free education classroom is not patriotic. No medicine in hospitals is not patriotic. Highest unemployment in the region is not patriotic. Shooting at the youth looking for a living in Mufumbwe is not patriotic. Giving black mountain to yourself and ministers is not patriotic. Taking away Kasenseli from artisanal miners and giving it to friends and foreigners is not patriotic. The list of his bad deeds is longer than the failed Ndola-Lusaka dual carriage road. So, Bamayo landeniko fimbi.
Yes loooong term. It will be a long time before Zambia conquers loadshedding. Not even the opposition will conquered it.
Just what are the plans to end loadshedding should be the election question next year.