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.