The hostile outcry that accompanies many politicians who cross the floor to join the ruling or opposition party is usually made without any historical analysis. Zambia as a country has always operated like an open highway in terms of political allegiances or lack thereof whereby people change lanes at will sometimes without signalling. Political prostitution has been the order of the day in Zambia from colonial days to the present. This has been both a curse and a blessing. A curse in the sense that no matter whoever takes over the leadership of the country has never been able to transform the country because there are no hardline political differences or ideologies with the former party. They continue along the same trajectory. A blessing in the sense that because there are no hardcore political differences or ideologies, relative peace has been maintained in Zambia. Generalized Violence has generally not resulted from this political malaise.

Let's start from the present state of affairs going backwards. Dr. Nevers Mumba once headed his own political party until he was enticed to become Vice-president of Zambia under President Mwanawasa running the ship of state under the MMD government. He disbanded his own party for a more prestigious and well paying job. He sacrificed any principles he may have had that had animated him in forming his own party in the first place to join another party. Dr. Mumba and his supporters have no business criticizing MMD MPs who are campaigning for the PF or UPND parties. Mumba had done it before in a more brazen way because he was actually leading a political party! And it is the Zambian way, albeit not recommended and actually a phenomenon of political infantility.

Within the MMD, former President Rupiah Banda came back to engineer a political coup supported by some very people who are now criticizing some MMD MPs for jumping ship! Look also at some leaders of so-called political parties like Father Frank Bwalya who is campaigning for PF, abandoning his own one person political party! Look also at numerous other so-called political party leaders endorsing other parties. It is the Zambian way. Some call it pragmatic politics. Some would use other demeaning terms. Not even Nigeria with about 130 million people has so many political parties. Something must be buried at State House for so many people to want it!

Going backwards and looking both at the MMD and the PF. Top echelons of these parties when they were formed hailed from political parties that they had abandoned. Sata had been in MMD and previous UNIP governments. Trace Rupiah Banda and he goes back to the first UNIP government. Alex Chikwanda has been in every government, as has Daniel Daniel Munkombwe and VJ Mwaanga and many others.

Very few personalities in Zambia have emerged offering a different kind of politics and economic orientation. The majority are more of the same. President Kaunda had even managed to forcibly recruit back his old comrades with whom he had started his politics but who had dissented in the interim, those being, the Lion of Zambian politics, Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula and the most charismatic leader Zambia has ever seen, the incomparable Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe. All these people were made from the same stalk and espoused more or less similar political lines. They could not have led Zambia into any new direction.

Chiluba had a chance to fundamentally alter Zambia's political and economic fortunes because he was not entirely captured by UNIP's trappings since he was the leader of a Labour movement. As I analyse in my book, Class Struggles In Zambia, the labour movement constituted itself as an unofficial opposition party when Chiluba was head of ZCTU. As president, Chiluba reduced ZCTU to a political skeleton. But Chiluba had no escape route because he was surrounded by and surrounded himself with UNIP stalwarts. The PF which came to power in 2011 was constituted of former UNIP and MMD cadres. Sata could not outrun the past.

Has there been notable progress in Zambia notwithstanding? There has been tremendous progress, despite the glaring urban and rural poverty. Politically, Zambia is an amazing political democracy and the current campaigns are proof of this phenomenon.

By Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, PhD.
mhamalengwa@sympatico.ca