By EditorZambia
Sishuwa Sishuwa’s essay, “Prepare for the worst, hope for the best: why Zambia’s 2026 election is like no other”, reads less like sober political analysis and more like a carefully curated script of catastrophe. It is long on insinuation, selective history, and speculative leaps, but strikingly short on balance, evidence, and intellectual restraint.
In presenting Zambia as a “tinderbox on the verge of conflict,” Sishuwa does not merely warn; he appears to wish calamity into being. That is not scholarship. It is alarmism—and a dangerous kind. 
Zambia’s democratic record, while imperfect, has been one of resilience, peaceful transfers of power, and institutional self-correction. To suggest, as Sishuwa does, that the country is careening inexorably toward civil war in 2026 is to disregard this history and to trivialise the maturity of Zambian voters, institutions, and security services. Worse still, it risks normalising the idea that violence is an inevitable outcome of elections—an idea that can become self-fulfilling if repeated loudly and often enough.
Start with Sishuwa’s core premise: that the absence of a living former president actively backing a candidate makes the 2026 election uniquely dangerous. This is a curious argument. If anything, the decline of ex-presidential kingmaking should be welcomed as democratic progress, not framed as a liability. The implication that Zambians require the blessing of former strongmen to vote responsibly is patronising. Voters are not orphans without political godfathers; they are citizens capable of independent judgment.
Equally problematic is the claim that the lack of a “strong opposition challenger” automatically spells instability. Democracies across the world routinely conduct elections without a single dominant opposition figure, and Zambia itself has held competitive polls amid fragmented opposition before. Sishuwa’s suggestion that this vacuum will trigger an “anyone but President Hakainde Hichilema” revolt rests on an alleged “confidential” poll whose provenance cannot be verified. Anonymous surveys attributed to shadowy State agencies are not evidence; they are rumours dressed up as data.
The article then escalates into a familiar trope: the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) is partisan, compromised, and captured. Yet the same ECZ framework—constitutional, legal, and procedural—oversaw Zambia’s 2021 election, which Sishuwa himself acknowledges, brought President Hichilema to power. If the system was legitimate enough to deliver an opposition victory, then it cannot suddenly become illegitimate merely because the incumbent may benefit from it now. Legal qualification is not nullified by past professional associations, and to insist otherwise is to impose a moving standard designed to discredit outcomes pre-emptively.
Sishuwa’s treatment of the military is perhaps the most irresponsible part of his essay. He strings together selective quotations, conjecture, and worst-case interpretations to paint a picture of an army poised to slaughter civilians at the behest of the president. This is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence, which is conspicuously absent. Zambia’s military has, for decades, demonstrated professionalism and constitutional loyalty. To suggest that this entire institution is on standby to subvert democracy is not only implausible; it is inflammatory. It risks sowing distrust between civilians and security forces, undermining national cohesion for the sake of a dramatic narrative.
The same pattern repeats in Sishuwa’s discussion of democratic institutions. Every arrest becomes “selective,” every legal reform “authoritarian,” every disagreement “ethnic.” There is no acknowledgement that governments—any governments—have the authority to enforce laws, regulate assemblies, or pursue constitutional amendments through prescribed procedures. One may criticise the manner or wisdom of such actions, but to conflate governance with tyranny is intellectually lazy.
Most troubling is Sishuwa’s descent into character assassination. Labelling an elected president as a man with “a character that knows no restraint” and insinuating ethnic entitlement crosses from analysis into invective. It essentialises communities, imputes collective motives, and weaponises identity in a country that has largely resisted ethnic polarisation. This is not only unfair; it is reckless in a multi-ethnic society.
The repeated comparisons to Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Malawi, and even colonial-era chiefs selling their people are rhetorical devices designed to shock, not enlighten. Zambia is not Kenya. It is not Tanzania, and it is not on the brink of Balkanization. To insist otherwise is to deny Zambians agency over their own political destiny.
Predictions of rigging, violence, and civil war—offered months before ballots are cast—do not protect democracy. They poison it. They prepare minds for rejection of outcomes that do not align with the author’s preferences. They turn elections into existential battles rather than civic exercises.
Zambia’s 2026 election will indeed be competitive. It will be noisy, contentious, and passionately debated. That is the nature of democracy. But to frame it as a life-or-death struggle orchestrated by a singular villain is to indulge in prophecy, not political science. Zambia deserves better than prophets of doom who mistake pessimism for profundity.
Criticism is vital. Vigilance is necessary. But alarmism that delegitimises institutions, demonises leaders, and terrifies citizens is neither responsible nor patriotic. Zambia’s future will be decided by voters—not by speculative essays, hoping disaster proves them right.
