By Editor Zambia
The so-called National Conference of Democratic Change Advocates, scheduled for 19–21 February 2026 in Lusaka, is being marketed as a historic gathering to “unite democratic forces” and unveil a “government-in-waiting” for Zambia.
Its sponsors—operating under the grandiose title of the Council of Elders for Ethical Leadership, Democracy and Development (CEELDD), want the country to believe that this initiative is about ethics, renewal, and national direction. However, when you strip away the slogans, what remains is an old, familiar project: the attempted rehabilitation of the Patriotic Front (PF) political culture under the camouflage of democratisation. 
One must ask a simple but uncomfortable question: Where were these elders when Zambia needed elders most?
Where were they when the PF administration presided over unprecedented plunder of public resources—plunder so brazen it angered even PF supporters in the party’s strongholds; Northern, Eastern, Muchinga and parts of the Copperbelt?
Where were these moral voices when inter-party and intra-party violence became routine, when cadres replaced institutions, and when fear displaced law? Where were they when tribalism rose to abnormal, shameless heights? Where were they when people were scared to be identified by their tribe names, poisoning national discourse and turning ethnicity into a political weapon? Silence. That silence was convenient.
Today, some of the same figures now parade themselves as guardians of democracy. Among them, were the architects of the 1991 political transition under an innocent name Movement for Multi Party Democracy (MMD). The irony is staggering. If the 1991 “revolution” is still a badge of honour, then it must also carry responsibility for what followed: weak institutions, elite recycling, and a political culture that treats the State as spoils. If that transition was so virtuous, why did many of its celebrated architects, including sone these championing the “government in waiting” motion abandon the project so early in the MMD years? Why did they retreat into comfort, diplomacy, or silence while governance decayed?
The CEELDD is now lamenting democratic fatigue. Yet during the PF years—when corruption metastasised and violence normalised—these elders were conspicuously quiet. That quietude speaks louder than today’s noise they are making. Moral authority cannot be summoned after the feast is over.
The conference’s stated aim—to assemble opposition parties, civic groups, faith leaders, youth, and women’s movements into a unified alternative—sounds noble. But in reality, it is a reunion of like-minded actors of tribalists, regionalists, and anti-Hakainde Hichilema miscontents bound less by a shared programme for Zambia than by a shared hostility toward President Hakainde Hichilema. This is not unity of purpose; it is unity of grievance.The organising body, the Centre for Policy and Dialogue (CPD), is presented as a non-partisan convener. Yet its sudden prominence, vague institutional history, and political alignment raise legitimate questions. Why now? Why this urgency? The answer is obvious to anyone following Zambia’s political trajectory: the 2026 elections are approaching, and the writing on the wall is clear. How can a non- partisan body initiate a change of a duly elected government? The CPD is partisan. It is operating like a branch of the PF.
President Hichilema is electorally competitive—indeed formidable. For those who thrived under the old order of extraction and impunity, panic is setting in.
So the strategy is familiar: launder the PF legacy through elders, rename it “ethical leadership,” and sell it as a government-in-waiting.
Let us call things by their proper names. This is not about democratisation. It is about restoration—restoration of access to the public purse, restoration of ethnic entitlement, restoration of a political economy built on ubomba mwibala-alya mwibala-meaning someone entrusted with money of property, must reward himself something from what he is entrusted to guard. Birds of a feather, indeed, are flocking together.
Zambians must ask themselves another hard question: how does one justify bringing back into power the PF, a party synonymous with corruption and lawlessness to replace a sitting president whose administration has restored a measure of sanity across economic, social, and political life? Love him or hate him, President Hakainde Hichilema has re-anchored governance in rules rather than rage. Debt restructuring, fiscal discipline, reduced cadreism, and a calmer political climate are not inventions of propaganda; they are lived realities.
To oppose a government is democratic. To oppose it by rehabilitating a disgraced past is reckless.
The persistent hostility toward President Hichilema cannot be divorced from Zambia’s long, uncomfortable history with hegemonic ethnic politics.
Today, it has found a new vocabulary: “elders,” “ethics,” “government-in-waiting, ‘‘reformists,’’ ‘‘democrats,’’ and ‘‘progressives.”
But a mask does not change the face beneath it.
Zambia does not need wasted forces announcing themselves as saviours. It needs accountability, memory, and honesty. Any elder who was silent in the face of plunder, violence, and ethnic hatred during the disastrous PF governance forfeited the moral right to lecture the nation on democracy. And any conference designed to sneak discredited politics back into power under the cover of unity deserves not applause, but scrutiny and condemnation.
History is watching. Zambians should be watching even more closely when senile clowns start masquerading as reformists.
