By Guest Editor
Zambians were promised fuel at K12 a litre. Five years later, they are still waiting.That single gap, between what Hakainde Hichilema pledged in 2021 and what his government has delivered since, has become the defining question of the August 13 election. He rode into State House on the slogan “Bally will fix it,” promising mealie meal at K50, fuel at K12, fertiliser at K250, an end to load shedding, lower electricity tariffs, ministers driving Toyota Corollas instead of luxury government vehicles, and universities in every province. He also pledged zero tolerance for corruption, with unfettered autonomy for the institutions mandated to investigate and prosecute it.
Former Patriotic Front minister Chishimba Kambwili put that record to voters directly. Campaigning in Mwansabombwe alongside opposition candidate Brian Mundubile and running mate Makebi Zulu, he asked whether anyone was buying fuel at K12, noting the President found pump prices at K17 and promised to bring them down, not up. Kambwili said electricity units that once lasted a household a month now barely last three days, and questioned whether any of the promised provincial universities had been built.
Academic and columnist Sishuwa Sishuwa frames the problem differently. He wrote that Hichilema’s difficulty is not a failure to communicate his achievements but a failure to have delivered on his commitments in the first place, citing unmet pledges on the cost of living, corruption, regional balance in appointments, civil service reform and democratic rights. Zambians, he said, do not need to be told they are suffering. They live it daily in the price of petrol, diesel, fertiliser, cooking oil, mealie meal and transport.
Sakwiba Sikota, chairperson of the SakiWoza/Tonse/Pamodzi alliance, has told Hichilema not to add national reserves to that list. Citizens have already been through load shedding, hunger and unmet promises on farming inputs, he said, and reserves should stabilise prices rather than fund speeches.
State House disputes the scale of the shortfall. Government figures credit the administration with reintegrating more than 2.5 million children into school under free education, recruiting roughly 41,000 health workers, restructuring around 80% of the national debt and lifting the Constituency Development Fund from K1.6 million per constituency in 2021 to K40 million today. Officials also point to GDP nearly doubling, from about $18 billion in 2021 to close to $36 billion, and to a mining sector revival under a new local content law.
The load shedding years complicate that account. Zambia endured roughly four years of rolling blackouts after drought hit water levels at Kariba, and in April the government reversed one of its own reforms, reinstating fuel subsidies it had scrapped four years earlier as Middle East tensions pushed pump prices higher ahead of the vote.
Writer Thandiwe Ketis Ngoma has catalogued the shortfall under six headings, from fuel prices reaching record highs instead of falling, to persistent caderism despite a pledge to end it, to a cabinet billed as a “Champions League” team that she says has fallen short. The government’s habit of dismissing critics as bitter or as opposition sympathisers, she wrote, deepens the credibility problem rather than resolving it.
A campaign strategy commentary put the coming vote in stark terms: did Bally fix it. It argued that Mundubile’s task is to hold Hichilema to his own five-year record rather than compete on fresh promises, since every new pledge the President makes, including an international airport once promised for Western Province, can be measured against commitments already broken.
Not everyone reads the gap as dishonesty. One reader response noted that no political party anywhere fulfils a manifesto in full, from the United States to Russia, and that voters choose the party closest to their own convictions. A separate audit, published by a UPND alliance partner, credited free education and the CDF increase as promises kept immediately, while treating food and fuel prices as unfinished business rather than broken pledges.
Hichilema enters the 2026 campaign with a fresh round of commitments, a $1.6 billion recapitalisation of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority, a $65 million dry port at Kapiri Mposhi, and a dual carriageway from Lusaka to the Kafue Bridge among them. Voters will decide on August 13 whether those commitments deserve more trust than the ones made in 2021.
This is not a Lusakatimes Stance or Opinion
