By the EditorZambia
If President Hakainde Hichilema stood before the nation today and stated a fact as plain as daylight, that the Mosi-oa-Tunya Falls is a natural wonder drawing thousands of tourists to Livingstone, some Zambians would still object, ridicule, or misrepresent him.
That is how absurd and deeply entrenched the levels of personalised criticism against the 7th Republican President have become since his election in 2021. 
This behaviour has nothing to do with any policy or issue at hand. It has everything to do with who is saying it. In short, President Hichilema is not just a president but a Tonga President from Southern province, a region some politically anointed Zambians feel should not produce a president.
And that “who” is the core of Zambia’s most unspoken political problem: an ingrained resistance to leadership that comes from outside the historically dominant political corridor,
what many analysts call the Chambeshi region.
For the first time since 1964, the presidency shifted decisively into what has become known as the Zambezi region comprising Southern, Western, and North-Western provinces and, to some extent parts of Central province.
The significance of this change can not be overstated. It disrupted a nearly 60-year political pattern, long normalised yet never openly acknowledged, in which power circulated largely within Northern, Luapula, Muchinga, and Eastern provinces.
It is this shift that lies at the heart of the unprecedented and often irrational levels of personalised criticism directed at President Hichilema.
The Attacks Are Not About Governance, They Are About Geography
Criticism is healthy. It is the oxygen of a functioning democracy.
But what President Hichilema has faced goes far beyond critique. It is an entrenched hostility that attaches to his person, not his policies.
Whether he embarks on an international trip, audits mining licences, reforms the debt system, advocates for a new constitution, or calls for national unity, the reaction from certain quarters is immediate dismissal.
A president can be criticised on legitimate grounds, but when every action, every statement, every breath becomes an opportunity for attack, then the issue is no longer governance. It is identity.
Something to note, the pattern of who is doing the attacking, tells the entire story.
From Chishala Kateka to Makebi Zulu, Harry Kalaba, Kelvin Fube Bwalya, Sean Tembo, Mumbi Phiri, Mulenga Kapwepwe, Brian Mundubile, Mutotwe Kafwaya, Emmanuel Mwamba and an endless parade of commentators, the loudest critics overwhelmingly come from the same cluster that has historically defined Zambia’s political direction.
And this can also be seen from their scramble to grab the presidency.
Even civil society organisations, certain NGOs, and segments of the clergy, including outspoken figures like Lusaka Catholic Church Archdiocese Bishop Alick Banda, have joined this chorus with a consistency that is too conspicuous to be coincidental.
It stretches into the sphere of social media activism, where a sizeable number of bloggers, influencers, and commentators echo the same sentiments.
They do not oppose President Hichilema’s ideas. They oppose him as a person.
The Convenient Amnesia About Who Introduced Tribal Politics
For years, the UPND has been lazily labelled a “tribal party.”
What many conveniently forget is that the Patriotic Front (PF) itself evolved from the Kola Foundation, a movement built explicitly around Bemba ethnic nationalism.
The PF’s earliest structures were anchored in tribal mobilisation. Its central leadership, membership patterns, and rhetoric often played openly with ethnic sentiment.
Yet for reasons more political than factual, the tribal tag stuck to the UPND, even as the PF solidified its identity through the prism of ethnicity.
To this day, many critics refuse to acknowledge what Zambia’s political scientists have long documented. The notion that the UPND is a purely Tonga party has always been a manufactured political tool.
But when President Hichilema became president of Zambia, that tool transformed into a weapon.
A Nation Conditioned to Equate Leadership with Certain Tribes
Zambia pretends to be uncomfortable discussing ethnicity, yet it is one of the most powerful forces shaping political behaviour.
The belief that Bemba and Eastern identities represent the “default setting” of Zambia has been cultivated for decades. The public face of the State, from Cabinet line-ups to civil service leadership. It was shaped by politicians from the Chambeshi corridor.
Little wonder that in social circles, political jokes, or church gatherings, to be “reasonable” or “objective” often implicitly meant behaving or speaking like a Bemba. Everyone else became imitundu, peripheral ethnic members of the republic.
It is within this hierarchy of belonging that the personalised hatred of President Hichilema must be understood.
The resistance to him is not only political; it is cultural. It is historical. It is rooted in a belief that leadership has geographical boundaries, and he crossed them.
The Historical Echoes:
Kapwepwe, Sata, and the Politics of Belonging
This tension did not begin with President Hichilema. Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe broke away from UNIP partly due to internal ethnic marginalisation, forming the UPP as an expression of Bemba political identity.
Michael Chikufya Sata’s politics also carried strong ethnic signals. His mockery of Emmanuel Kasonde as “Emmanuel Liswaniso” when the latter joined the Lozi-led National Party illustrated just how deeply ethnicity had seeped into political discourse.
These were not coincidences. They revealed the unwritten rules of political belonging.
Power Is Expected to Remain Where It Had Always Been
The sheer number of politicians emerging from Northern, Luapula, Muchinga, and Eastern provinces scramble for the presidency and majority maintaining strongholds in parliament, party structures, and opposition formations reinforces a long-held expectation that power should return to the Chambeshi region.
When President Hichilema won the presidency, especially after winning convincingly, this expectation was shattered. The backlash has been consistent ever since.
What This Means for Zambia
The danger is not that President Hichilema faces criticism. Every president must. The danger lies in the motive and the pattern.
When criticism is rooted not in policy, economics, or governance but in the discomfort of seeing State House occupied by someone “from the wrong tribe,” democratic debate collapses into tribal resentment.
When leaders are judged by ethnicity instead of competence, a nation lays the foundation for permanent division.
When tribal elites feel entitled to political power, governance becomes hostage to ethnic loyalty rather than national interest.
A Hard Truth Zambia Must Confront
The personalised criticism of President Hichilema is, at its core, a symptom of an illness Zambia has refused to treat.
Until the nation admits that tribal identity continues to shape political legitimacy, every future president from outside the Chambeshi corridor will face the same hostility, no matter how competent, visionary, or transformative they may be.
President Hichilema is not being fought because he is wrong.
He is being fought because he is ethnically different.
Until that changes, Zambia’s democracy will remain vulnerable to the oldest and most corrosive force known to politics as tribal entitlement.
