….There is no verifiable, documented, or judicially established evidence that Zambia is under dictatorship, tyranny, or one-man rule
By Magret Mwanza
Ambassador Emmanuel Mwamba has perfected a dangerous and cynical craft. When facts abandon him, he manufactures fear. When evidence refuses to cooperate, he replaces it with metaphor, innuendo, and recycled conspiracy.
His recent outburst alleging that President Hakainde Hichilema is “stealing democracy in silence” is not political analysis. It is political deceit dressed up as moral outrage, designed to rescue a collapsed political relevance.
Let us be clear from the outset. There is no verifiable, documented, or judicially established evidence that Zambia is under dictatorship, tyranny, or one-man rule. None.
What exists instead is a defeated political class, removed from power through the ballot in August 2021, struggling to come to terms with the consequences of its own record in government. That class now seeks to criminalise reform, demonise institutions, and portray accountability as persecution.
Mwamba’s narrative relies on repetition, not proof. He throws around names of institutions, courts, judges, statutory instruments, and constitutional offices without presenting a single binding judgment declaring the President’s actions illegal.
He does not cite authoritative court rulings. He does not provide comparative constitutional analysis. He simply demands that Zambians accept his suspicion as truth. Zambia, however, is governed by law, not by political monologues.
The allegation that democratic institutions have been “hijacked” collapses under even minimal scrutiny. The Speaker of Parliament, the Chief Justice, and the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission were not installed by fiat.
They were appointed through constitutionally provided processes, operating under laws enacted long before the current administration. To suggest that institutions become illegitimate simply because they no longer serve Patriotic Front interests is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order.
It is especially cynical for Mwamba to posture as a defender of democracy given his own political history. The Patriotic Front, while in power, normalised cadre violence, weaponised the police, intimidated judges, harassed the media, and treated state institutions as party appendages.
Opposition leaders were arrested, meetings were disrupted, and courts were openly disregarded. Mwamba was not alarmed then. His sudden discovery of “dictatorship” coincides neatly with his loss of access to state power.
On elections and by-elections, Mwamba again misleads deliberately. Electoral disputes in Zambia are resolved by courts, not by political press statements. Where courts ruled, those rulings remain on record.
Where the Electoral Commission erred, judicial processes addressed those errors. That is not tyranny. That is the rule of law at work. Dictatorship is when courts are ignored, not when their decisions are enforced.
Perhaps the most intellectually bankrupt claim is that President Hichilema “stole” the Patriotic Front. Political parties are not private property of disgruntled elites. The PF imploded under the weight of internal indiscipline, leadership failure, and refusal to respect constitutional order after losing an election.
Its endless court battles are self-inflicted wounds, not evidence of presidential manipulation. Blaming the President for PF’s collapse is an attempt to outsource responsibility for political incompetence.
On corruption and prosecutions, Mwamba again confuses accountability with victimhood.
Zambia established specialised courts because grand corruption had become routine under the previous administration. Billions were looted, debt ballooned to unsustainable levels, and public resources were treated as private spoils.
To demand immunity for politically connected suspects is not a defence of democracy. It is an argument for elite impunity.
The truth Mwamba cannot confront is this. President Hichilema did not dismantle democracy. He inherited a state hollowed out by recklessness, lawlessness, and contempt for institutions.
What the current administration has pursued is fiscal discipline, institutional restoration, and re-engagement with the international community to stabilise a battered economy.That process is uncomfortable for those who thrived in chaos.
This is why Mwamba cries dictatorship while freely publishing his attacks.
This is why opposition figures insult the President daily without being jailed. This is why courts continue to issue rulings against the state when warranted. Dictatorships do not permit this. Zambia does.
Finally, dragging the Church into partisan paranoia is both irresponsible and reckless. Invoking religious institutions to dramatise political desperation does not strengthen democracy.
It corrodes national cohesion. Zambia’s democracy is not perfect, but it is alive, functioning, and governed by law, not by manufactured fear.
Zambians must reject this propaganda with the contempt it deserves. Not because government is beyond criticism, but because democracy dies when deceit is allowed to parade as truth.
The real theft here is not of democracy, but of honesty. And that theft has a name.