By Brian Matambo | Lusaka, Zambia

As we approach the 2026 general elections here in Zambia, I would like to urge opposition political parties to not only run emotionally driven campaigns with nice slogans and danceable music. They must invest heavily in data and systems if they are to avoid being shocked on 13 August. On election day, it is not slogans that decide outcomes. It is numbers.

And speaking of numbers, the nation, and particularly opposition politicians, may wish to know that the Electoral Commission of Zambia has been releasing figures that do not align with its own official records.

The most striking example emerges from Southern Province. ECZ publicly announced that the province had 1,119,174 registered voters in 2025. The figure travelled widely, shaping political calculations and public perception. Yet ECZ’s own official final register for Southern Province records only 858,103 registered voters. The difference, 261,071 voters, is not a technical inconvenience. It is a contradiction large enough to alter turnout analysis, provincial weight, and confidence in the entire electoral process.

In elections, numbers are not commentary. They are the legal architecture of legitimacy.

Demographic context sharpens the concern even further. Southern Province’s voting-age population in 2022 stood at approximately 1,135,121. Applying Zambia’s average annual population growth rate of 4%, the projected voting-age population for 2025 rises to roughly 1.27 million. Against this reality, a register of 858,103 represents a plausible and historically consistent registration rate in a largely rural province. A register of 1,119,174, on the other hand, implies a registration coverage approaching total saturation of eligible adults, a statistical outcome rarely achieved even in highly urbanised societies.

What unsettles the situation is not merely that two numbers exist, but that the public has not been taken through the journey from provisional to final with clarity. One number was announced. Another now governs the official register. Between the two, no reconciliation has been offered.

This pattern is not new. New Heritage Party President Chishala Kateka has raised similar concerns at the national level. In her article dated 10 January 2026, she noted that ECZ Chief Executive Officer Brown Kasaro reported 8,861,918 total registered voters in his mass registration statistics speech, yet ECZ’s own “Registered Voters Per Polling Station” document reflected only 7,073,513 voters. The difference was 1,788,405 voters, representing a variance of 25.28 percent.

“Granted, the figure in the speech by the CEO was provisional,” Kateka wrote, “however a differential of 1,788,405 in the number of registered voters, a significant and whopping 25.28 percent variance from the actual, surely should be a cause of concern to any perceptive person even if not savvy with statistics.”

Her words echo directly into the Southern Province case. Different scale. Same pattern.

In both the national and provincial cases, the issue is not that provisional figures differ from final ones. That is expected. The issue is that the difference is vast and the explanation absent. Numbers change, but the public is not told why. And in elections, unexplained change does not remain neutral. It invites doubt.

The Southern Province discrepancy fits neatly into this wider pattern. No electoral commission is protected by silence. It is protected by transparency. Clear reconciliation reports, open explanations, and disciplined public communication are not favours to the nation. They are obligations to it.

When numbers refuse to agree, citizens do not become cynical by choice. They become cautious by necessity. And when numbers begin to argue, democracy has every right to worry.

The opposition continues to wrestle with itself, while time moves quietly but firmly on.

In the meantime, President Hakainde Hichilema has managed to change the tone of the national conversation. Load shedding, once a daily source of anger and political mobilisation, has been largely stabilised. The lights are back in many homes and businesses. The Kwacha is gaining ground, offering at least some breathing space to traders and households.

These things matter.

Politics is not won on press statements alone. It is won on lived reality. When electricity improves and economic signals begin to stabilise, excuses shrink and expectations rise. That is the context within which the opposition must now operate.

Yet instead of matching this moment with seriousness, what continues to play out is theatre.

Monday at the Cathedral was a painful reminder.

Politicians exchanged wide smiles and warm hugs, presenting an image of unity and sympathy following the summoning of Archbishop Dr. Alick Banda by the Drug Enforcement Commission. On the surface, it appeared dignified. In reality, many Zambians saw it for what it was, an opportunity to score political mileage disguised as solidarity.

The smiles looked rehearsed and the hugs felt strategic.

What makes it worse is that these same leaders who smiled and embraced on Monday are often locked in bitter rivalry behind closed doors. The egos remain intact. The mistrust remains unresolved. The exaggerated belief in individual political muscle remains unchecked.

And the public knows it.

I genuinely wish those smiles could be real. I wish those hugs could translate into humility, unity, and discipline. I wish opposition leaders could finally set aside ego and accept a simple truth, there can only be one President at a time. Leadership requires patience, compromise, and at times the courage to support another rather than sabotage them.

Zambians are tired of unity that lasts only as long as the cameras are rolling. Tired of sympathy that doubles as self-promotion. Tired of leaders who look united on Monday and fractured by Tuesday.

Time continues to move, and the political ground is shifting. Load shedding is no longer the blunt weapon it once was. Economic signals are changing the mood. The window for excuses is closing.

If the opposition does not turn staged smiles into genuine unity, hugs into honest reconciliation, and ambition into disciplined leadership, it risks being overtaken by events already unfolding.

Time does not wait. Voters are watching.

Simon Mulenga Mwila
Aspiring Mayor of Lusaka
(DBA Candidate, MBA, LLM, LLB, Legal Practitioner, Commissioner for Oaths, Notary Public)

Political Commentary | 9 January 2026

By Brian Matambo

Brian Mundubile’s withdrawal from the Patriotic Front conclave has been presented as an act of principle. In truth, it reads more like a calculated attempt to hold the process hostage.

Zambia’s politics has suffered enough from leaders who confuse personal ambition with party survival. At this delicate moment in PF’s history, what is required is maturity, courage, and openness. What Mundubile has offered instead is strategic sulking disguised as constitutional loyalty.

His statement is carefully written to offend no one while unsettling everyone. He praises the elders yet undermines their process. He condemns misconduct yet refuses to name those responsible. He claims commitment to unity while walking away from the very platform designed to restore it. This is not leadership. It is political hedging.

If Mundubile truly believes the conclave has been corrupted, then honesty demands that he says by whom and how. Zambians are tired of leaders who speak in shadows. Vague references to “some underhand methods” only protect wrongdoing and weaken accountability. Silence in the face of alleged injustice is not dignity. It is complicity.

More troubling is the political intention behind the withdrawal. Mundubile knows that a conclave without him appears incomplete. He knows his absence creates uncertainty. He knows others will now be forced to negotiate around him. That is not sacrifice. That is leverage.

In Zambia, we must stop celebrating this behaviour as clever politics. It is precisely this style of leadership that has kept political parties in permanent conflict and citizens in permanent disappointment. Mature leaders do not walk away to be begged back. They stay, confront, argue, persuade, and build.

Mundubile wants to be seen as a constitutionalist, yet he destabilises the very process meant to enforce constitutional order. He wants to be seen as a unifier, yet he weakens unity at its most fragile moment. He wants to be seen as principled, yet his actions serve his positioning more than the party’s healing.

PF does not need hostages. It needs adults.

If Mundubile believes he is wronged, he must fight his case openly within the process. If he believes the conclave is compromised, he must expose the compromise with evidence. If he believes he is essential to PF’s future, he must prove it by leadership, not by absence.

Zambia is watching. PF members are watching. And history will not be impressed by political cleverness dressed as restraint.

This is a moment for Brian Mundubile to rise above tactics and step into responsibility. Not as a contender protecting his relevance, but as a leader protecting his party.

Until he does so, his withdrawal will not be remembered as principled. It will be remembered as political hostage-taking at a time when PF could least afford it.