The Editor Zambia
The announcement of the Tiyende Pamodzi alliance within the Patriotic Front (PF) is being presented by its promoters as a bold political reorganisation.
In reality, it is yet another symptom of a party that has never truly recovered from the deep internal divisions that defined it both in government and after losing power. 
What Zambians are witnessing today is not the birth of a new political force. It is the fragmentation of an already fractured political movement.
The faction aligned to Given Lubinda, acting president of the PF, has begun mobilising supporters under the banner of the Tiyende Pamodzi alliance in what appears to be an attempt to consolidate influence ahead of the party’s long delayed general conference.
Yet even before the initiative has found its footing, it already reveals the central problem that continues to haunt the former ruling party: the PF cannot agree with itself. Lubinda has declared that the party is no longer part of the Tonse Alliance.
Instead of rebuilding a united opposition movement after losing power in the 2021 Zambian general election, PF leaders have spent the past several years constructing parallel alliances, rival factions and competing political structures.
Lubinda’s new alliance now joins a growing list of political vehicles inside the same party. On the other side stands the Tonse Alliance faction associated with Brian Mundubile, another senior PF figure who has attempted to project himself as a central opposition leader.
Instead of strengthening the opposition, the proliferation of alliances has only deepened confusion among supporters and exposed the level of mistrust within the party’s ranks.
Critics argue that both alliances are ultimately doomed for the same reason: they are built from the same political DNA.
The PF’s internal conflicts did not begin after it lost power. They began while the party was still governing under former president Edgar Lungu.
During those years, the PF was already divided into competing camps defined by personalities, patronage networks, and regional loyalties.
What held those factions together was not ideology, discipline, or a shared national vision. It was access to the instruments of state power.
As long as the party-controlled government, the rival camps tolerated one another because the rewards of office were plentiful.
Access to State contracts, government appointments, and public resources created a fragile unity built on convenience rather than principle.
Once power was lost, that fragile arrangement collapsed almost overnight.
Without the glue of government authority and state resources, the factions began openly competing for control of the party’s future. Court battles, rival conventions, leadership disputes, and endless accusations of illegitimacy became the new normal.
The Tiyende Pamodzi alliance, therefore, does not represent renewal. It represents the continuation of the same factional politics that has paralysed the PF since it left office.
Lubinda’s supporters describe the alliance as a broad coalition designed to mobilise political parties, civil society actors, and grassroots supporters ahead of the next national election. Yet even that ambition reveals the contradiction at the heart of the project.
How can a party struggling to unite its own members successfully unite external partners?
The deeper reality is that alliances formed within a divided party rarely produce stability. Instead, they create additional centres of power that compete for authority, recognition, and legitimacy.
In the case of the PF, the existence of rival alliances led by senior leaders only confirms that the party still lacks a single uncontested direction.
Both Lubinda and Mundubile are, therefore, attempting to lead alliances that are unlikely to travel far. As long as the main actors remain drawn from the same PF structures, the disagreements that have crippled the party will simply be exported into the alliances themselves.
The tragedy for the opposition is that while these internal battles continue, Zambians searching for a credible alternative political vision are left watching a party consumed by its own rivalries.
The PF once projected itself as a powerful political machine capable of governing the nation. Today, it looks increasingly like a house divided against itself.
The Tiyende Pamodzi alliance may have a new name and a new slogan, but it carries the same old problem.
A party that can not agree with itself can not unite a nation.
And worse still, while this circus is going on, PF faction acting president Robert Chabinga says he is still in charge of the party until Jesus Christ comes.
