Zambia must choose dialogue over division

Zambia has just come through a bruising election, and the burden of what happens next falls squarely on its leaders. Left unattended, electoral grievance hardens into national fracture. That responsibility begins with President Hakainde Hichilema and opposition leader Brian Mundubile, whom Malawi-based clergyman Pastor Dingiswayo Banda has urged to set the country above their rivalry and reconcile in the name of national unity.

A call for reconciliation is not a call to bury legitimate disagreement — quite the opposite. Democracy depends on it. Opposition parties exist to question government and hold it to account; government, in turn, is obliged to protect the rights of those who oppose it. What cannot be tolerated is a political contest curdling into a war between citizens.

Pastor Banda has named the danger precisely: rising division, mistrust, arrests and loss of life risk putting the nation’s hard-won stability on trial. A country cannot advance while its politicians spend more energy fighting each other than solving the problems of the people who elected them.

Leadership at moments like this is not measured only by who won. It is measured by who is willing to heal. Extending a hand to Mundubile, running mate Makebi Zulu and other opposition figures would cost President Hichilema nothing and demonstrate everything — the confidence of a leader secure enough in his mandate to sit across the table from his rivals. That obligation runs both ways: opposition leaders must match any olive branch with restraint, rejecting inflammatory rhetoric in favour of lawful, constitutional channels.

This is precisely where the Church holds ground no politician can occupy. Jimmy Ng’ambi, national executive director of House of Clergy Zambia, has urged pastors to use the pulpit to condemn divisive language and remind citizens that governments change while the nation endures. The Church’s credibility rests on its perceived impartiality — a trust that allows it to cool tempers that politics too often inflames. Anglican bishops have gone further still, declaring the pulpit “too sacred” for partisan politics.

Due process for those detained or facing prosecution is not a courtesy extended to government’s friends; it is a constitutional guarantee owed to everyone, and the rule of law proves its worth precisely when it shields the unpopular. Zambia does not need another cycle of confrontation. It needs leadership — political and spiritual — capable of recognising that unity is not weakness, but the foundation on which everything else is built.