Clearly, Makebi Zulu gives the UPND regime sleepless nights. His homecoming today, 19 January 2026, was no different. For the first time since surviving a serious road traffic accident in December, Makebi Zulu returned to his home in Malambo Constituency.
Collaboration, dialogue, and negotiated consensus are not signs of weakness, they are strategic necessities if a credible alternative is to emerge.
PF’s performance in Southern Province has historically been marginal, at times falling below one percent, with humiliating vote gaps in certain by-elections. The conclusion is unavoidable. Southern Province is not where elections are won for the opposition. Pretending otherwise is strategic fantasy.
The results make the deeper story unavoidable. FDD, backed by PF, obtained 8,085 votes. CF secured 1,534. Independent candidates together collected 894. NCP added 319. EPPP contributed 239. LM had 100. NDC recorded 93. When these opposition votes are placed together, they total 11,264. UPND managed 6,542.
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.
The programme did not resolve PF’s leadership question, nor was it intended to. What it did was strip away the illusion that delay carries no cost.
“My heart is in pain,” Mwamba said, noting that seven months had passed since President Lungu’s death without closure for his family or the nation.
A country does not become prosperous by optimising how it collects a small share of someone else’s wealth. It becomes prosperous by owning the asset that generates the wealth in the first place.
A Commentary by Brian Matambo | 3rd January 2026 There are moments in a nation’s life when clarity is demanded, not diplomacy. This moment that Zambia finds herself in is one of them. To suggest that Archbishop Alick Banda is an “ordinary man” is not merely an error of judgment. It is a failure to...
The statement also draws on Christian scripture, invoking the Golden Rule as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which instructs believers to treat others as they would wish to be treated themselves. Supporters say this principle should guide both the conduct of State institutions and the public discourse surrounding the Archbishop’s summons.