By Brian Matambo

When a respected scholar of Zambian politics warns that our democracy is being hollowed out from within, we should listen. In a widely circulated essay titled “Zambia’s 2026 election: How Hichilema is tilting the playing field against opponents,” historian Dr. Sishuwa Sishuwa argues that President Hakainde Hichilema has “weaponised the courts to primarily function as assassins of his political opponents,” packed the Electoral Commission with loyalists, blocked opposition assembly, and captured the main opposition party through the Registrar of Societies and state power. He frames the pattern with chilling clarity, quoting Levitsky and Ziblatt’s reminder that democratic decline is often gradual, in plain sight, and executed by elected officials.

Taken together, the conduct Sishuwa documents looks less like ordinary partisanship and more like a coordinated project to end meaningful competition. That is why many Zambians now see the UPND not as a normal governing party but as a political machine behaving like a criminal enterprise, one that treats institutions as tools to eliminate rivals and entrench rule.

PARTY CAPTURE AS A METHOD OF CONTROL
Sishuwa details how state agencies have been used to install pliant figures over the Patriotic Front, then to validate their authority for critical moments like nominations. He recounts how leadership cases were parked before friendly benches, how factional chaos prevented PF candidates from filing in by-elections, and how recognition from the Registrar of Societies became a gatekeeping weapon. His conclusion is stark, “In taking control of the main opposition party using the Registrar of Societies and his puppet in Chabinga, Hichilema is motivated by three main objectives,” including blocking a PF presidential candidate and denying sitting PF MPs the ticket they need to defend their seats.

This is not the normal hurly burly of politics. It is the systematic neutralizing of a rival through state power, a hallmark of organized capture.

BANNING RALLIES, SHRINKING THE PUBLIC SQUARE
The opposition’s right to meet exists on paper, yet Sishuwa catalogs how the police have repeatedly blocked rallies while the President campaigns freely. The Inspector General’s justification, that the ruling party might attack the opposition, is an admission that law enforcement is being used to keep challengers off the field. Sishuwa quotes Socialist Party’s Cosmas Musumali to underline the betrayal of promises to expand civic space, and he reminds us that big rallies have historically signaled elite courage in courts and institutions. Silencing the square is not incidental, it is strategic.

PACKING THE ECZ, REWRITING THE RULEBOOK MIDSTREAM
Sishuwa notes the removal of a respected ECZ leadership that managed the 2021 poll, the appointment of the President’s former personal lawyer as chair, and the elevation of another ruling party supporter as commissioner. He then shows how new nomination conditions, like party adoption certificates that track the Registrar’s favored lineup, become chokepoints to exclude opponents. This is how a competitive arena is converted into a controlled track, rigged by procedures that look technical but bite politically.

RECONSTITUTING COURTS TO PRE-BAKE OUTCOMES
According to Sishuwa, Hichilema stacked superior courts, transferred magistrates, and then flooded opposition leaders with criminal charges that keep them in court or in custody as the election nears. He warns that convictions timed before nominations could allow the electoral body to strike candidates off the ballot. He further explains how changes at the Constitutional Court, including adding more judges and installing a friendly deputy president who assigns panels, create a pipeline where cases can be rigged from the start by panel composition. In his words, if a sitting president can both rig an election and control the court that hears the petition, it becomes near impossible to remove him lawfully.

BILL 7 AS THE CROWN JEWEL OF ENTRENCHMENT
Sishuwa calls out Bill 7 as a vehicle to legalize the use of public resources in campaigns, redraw constituencies to advantage the ruling party, and, critically, to weaken Article 52 safeguards that allow courts to disqualify corrupt candidates at nomination stage. He reports that the Constitutional Court ruled the process unconstitutional, yet ruling figures vowed to reintroduce it. He cites allegations of cash inducements to MPs to back the Bill. This is not reform, it is a fix, and it matches the behavior of a machine seeking legal cover for political ends.

THE PATTERN THAT NAMES ITSELF
No single act proves intent, but patterns do. Capture the opposition’s legal identity, block its rallies, seed the electoral body with loyalists, stack the courts, criminalize rivals, and change the constitution to close the last escape hatches. Sishuwa’s analysis reads like an indictment of methods, not just motives. It is the architecture of authoritarian consolidation executed one file, one transfer, one ruling, one guideline at a time.

The language may sound severe, yet it describes what many citizens now feel. A party that treats the state as a private instrument, that bends the law to preselect winners and disqualify opponents, that purchases constitutional change to avoid accountability, is not acting like a democratic competitor. It is acting like an enterprise built to control outcomes, extract advantage, and inoculate itself against alternation of power.

WHAT MUST BE DONE
First, name the pattern, as Sishuwa has done. Second, defend the non-negotiables, equal access to nominations, neutral policing of assembly, an ECZ trusted by all sides, and courts assigned by transparent rules. Third, raise the civil cost of constitutional vandalism. Any new Bill must be preceded by genuine consultation, independently audited drafting, and publication of line-by-line effects before it ever reaches the Order Paper. Fourth, center civic vigilance, professional bodies, churches, unions, student groups, and businesses must insist that 2026 happens under rules that either side would accept if they were in opposition.

Dr. Sishuwa Sishuwa ends with a warning that frustration bred by load shedding, rising costs, and eroded trust could spill into undemocratic channels. He is right. When lawful competition is strangled, people look elsewhere. The surest way to keep peace is to restore fair play.

If the UPND rejects that path and continues the program Sishuwa describes, it will have confirmed what many now fear, that it is not governing a democracy, it is ending one.