By EditorZambia
The National Action for Quality Education in Zambia (NAQEZ) has, over the years, carved out a loud and persistent presence in the media, routinely positioning itself as a watchdog of government performance in the education sector.
On the surface, such vigilance may appear healthy for a democracy. Yet a closer, more critical examination raises deeply troubling questions about the NAQEZ’s legitimacy, mandate, transparency, and true political character. These questions are no longer academic. They go to the heart of whether the NAQEZ is an education advocacy organisation at all, or merely a partisan political vehicle that should be deregistered and banned. 
The NAQEZ is fronted almost exclusively by one individual, Dr Aaron Chansa, who serves as its executive director and near-permanent public voice. The organisation claims to have been formed in 2014 and registered in 2015 as a non-governmental, non-profit entity advocating for quality education. However, registration alone does not confer credibility, authority or representational legitimacy—especially when an organisation purports to speak on behalf of teachers without any formal linkage to the Ministry of Education or recognition under the legal frameworks governing the teaching profession.
At the centre of the controversy is NAQEZ’s self-appointed role as a spokesperson for teachers. Zambia already has legally recognised and democratically constituted teacher bodies such as the Zambia National Union of Teachers (ZNUT), the Secondary School Teachers Union of Zambia (SESTUZ), ZANAC and ZANEC. These organisations are grounded in law, have transparent leadership structures, audited books, defined membership, and clear mandates to engage the government on teacher welfare, salaries, and industrial action. NAQEZ is none of these. It is not a union. It is not recognised for collective bargaining, yet it routinely issues pronouncements on salaries, promotions, recruitment, and even calls for strikes. Who gave NAQEZ this mandate?
Even more worrying are reports that NAQEZ levies teachers for “membership.” If true, this practice raises serious legal and ethical concerns. Teachers are supposed to affiliate through registered unions for representation. Any parallel structure collecting funds without union status invites scrutiny from regulators and law enforcement. Where are NAQEZ’s audited books? Who accounts for these funds? Which teachers authorised this body to speak and act on their behalf?
Transparency—or the lack of it—is NAQEZ’s Achilles’ heel. Beyond Dr. Chansa, the organisation’s leadership is largely invisible. It claims to have a National Executive Committee, a Board of Governors, and coordinators across all 116 districts. Yet the public rarely, if ever, hears from these supposed officials. Their names, qualifications, and professional standing remain conspicuously absent from public records and discourse. An organisation that demands accountability from the government while shielding its own structures from scrutiny is engaging in rank hypocrisy.
The NAQEZ’s constitution and governance arrangements are equally opaque. There is little clarity on who sits on its executive, whether serving teachers have obtained the necessary permissions from the Teaching Service Commission, or whether the organisation complies with regulations governing teachers’ conduct outside their official duties. These omissions are not minor technicalities; they strike at the legality of the organisation’s operations.
Substantively, NAQEZ’s conduct increasingly betrays a partisan political agenda. Its media interventions—often carried prominently and predictably—are almost uniformly hostile to the current government UPND government. Policy announcements, budget increases, teacher recruitment drives, and reforms are seldom acknowledged constructively.
Instead, they are framed as failures, conspiracies, or evidence of incompetence. Criticism is legitimate, but when it becomes one-directional, reflexive, and devoid of balanced analysis or credible alternatives, it ceases to be advocacy and starts to look like opposition politics by other means.
The pattern is disturbingly familiar. Zambia has seen this movie before. Organisations such as the NGOCC, once respected civil society platforms, were gradually perceived—rightly or wrongly—as partisan instruments driven by a small clique of activists aligned to specific political interests. Figures like Beauty Katebe and Archbishop Alick Banda became lightning rods in debates about the politicisation of civil society. The NAQEZ now risks occupying the same space: a supposedly neutral organisation functioning as a political front, using emotive sectors like education to push a regime-change narrative.
If the NAQEZ genuinely exists to improve education, where are its policy papers, pilot projects, research publications, and collaborative programmes with government? Where are the books, the measurable outputs, the evidence of impact beyond press statements? Advocacy without substance is activism; activism without accountability is politics.
In reality, the NAQEZ increasingly resembles a one-man show. Dr. Chansa is its chief author, spokesperson, and agenda-setter. This over-centralisation contradicts claims of a broad national movement and undermines any assertion of collective legitimacy.
An organisation cannot credibly claim to represent teachers nationwide when its voice, vision and visibility are monopolised by one individual.
The government has a duty to protect democratic space, but it also has a responsibility to uphold the law and prevent abuse of civil society registration for partisan ends. Organisations that masquerade as professional or civic bodies while pursuing narrow political agendas undermine genuine advocacy and erode public trust.
For these reasons, the NAQEZ should be subjected to urgent regulatory scrutiny. If it cannot demonstrate lawful representation, transparent governance, audited finances, and a clear non-partisan mandate, then deregistration and a ban are not acts of repression but of institutional hygiene.
Zambia’s teachers deserve real representation—not political ventriloquism disguised as advocacy.
