Authority is not declared by shouting: Law, legitimacy, and the Tonse question
By Dr Lawrence Mwelwa
WHEN a man points at the moon, the wise look at the moon, not the finger. Yet in moments of political anxiety, many prefer to debate the finger—its angle, its intention, its owner—while ignoring the larger question hanging in the night sky: who truly holds the authority to declare another institution illegal?
In the noise surrounding the Tonse Alliance, legality has been turned into a slogan rather than a principle, a weapon rather than a rule. Chinese wisdom teaches that when words lose their meaning, power rushes in to replace them. That is precisely the danger before us.
In the Analects, Confucius warned that disorder begins when names are not correct. If a minister is not a minister, if a ruler is not a ruler, confusion becomes the law of the land. Legality is one such name. It is not a personal opinion, not a press statement, not a political mood. It is a status conferred by a recognised authority acting within a defined jurisdiction.
To call a process illegal without holding the constitutional mandate to do so is like declaring oneself emperor by shouting it in the marketplace. The crowd may hear you, but the mandate of heaven does not descend by noise.
Chinese statecraft has long understood the difference between power and authority. Power can shout; authority does not need to. Power threatens; authority explains. Power relies on loyalty to personalities; authority rests on loyalty to institutions and rules. The question before the nation is therefore simple, though uncomfortable: which body, under which law, and by what procedure, has the power to declare the Tonse Alliance illegal? Silence follows that question because the answer is not found in political rivalry but in constitutional design.
Laozi taught that the Tao does nothing, yet nothing is left undone. True order operates quietly, through agreed rules and internal discipline. The Tonse Alliance, whatever one’s feelings about its politics, operates under a constitution agreed to by its members. Amendments were debated, adopted, and ratified through collective mechanisms. Decisions were recorded, leaders appended their signatures, and the process unfolded in the open. This is not the behaviour of an outlaw. It is the behaviour of an institution attempting, however imperfectly, to govern itself. To dismiss this as “illegal” without recourse to a competent adjudicator is to mistake disagreement for criminality.
There is an old Chinese legalist saying: the law does not travel outside its borders. Every institution has its own boundary of authority. A political party governs its members; an alliance governs its affiliates; the courts govern legality in the final sense. When one institution arrogates to itself the power to invalidate another, it crosses a boundary and invites chaos. Today it may be convenient to declare an opponent illegal. Tomorrow the same logic will return, sharpened, and strike its author. History is littered with men who built fires to burn others, only to discover the wind had changed.
Mencius wrote that the people are the foundation of the state, the state exists for their welfare, and rulers who abandon righteousness lose legitimacy even before they lose office. Public trust is not sustained by loud accusations but by fidelity to process.
When political actors bypass internal mechanisms and rush to the media with claims of illegality, they reveal not moral clarity but impatience with order. The wise leader, like water in Laozi’s metaphor, flows around obstacles, does not break the vessel, and finds the lowest place. He exhausts dialogue before denunciation, procedure before proclamation.
Who, then, has the power to declare illegality? In any serious polity, it is not a spokesperson of a rival organisation, not a commentator, not even a powerful party secretary. It is the law as interpreted by competent organs—courts, registrars, or authorities expressly empowered to make such determinations. Anything else is theatre.
Sun Tzu warned that warfare is based on deception, but he also cautioned that prolonged conflict exhausts the state. Turning every internal disagreement into a public war of legality weakens alliances, parties, and ultimately the democratic culture itself.
Chinese dynastic history shows that collapse often began not with invasion but with confusion of authority. When eunuchs issued decrees, generals judged law, and scholars commanded armies, the realm fractured. Stability returned only when roles were restored.
Zambia’s political space, like any living system, requires boundaries. An alliance must be allowed to manage its affairs; a party must do the same; the state must arbitrate only where the law is genuinely breached. Anything more is overreach disguised as vigilance.
There is also a moral lesson here. Confucius emphasised sincerity. To participate in a process, endorse its rules, benefit from its offices, and later denounce the same process as illegal when outcomes displease you is not rectification of names; it is their corruption. The gentleman, Confucius said, is ashamed when his words outpace his deeds. Political maturity demands consistency, not convenience.
In the end, legality is not a club to beat opponents into silence. It is a shield that protects all from arbitrary power. When claims of illegality are made casually, they cheapen the very concept meant to preserve order.
The Tonse Alliance may succeed or fail politically—that is the judgment of its members and the electorate. But to pronounce it illegal without lawful authority is to confuse rivalry with jurisprudence.
The sage does not ask who shouts the loudest, but who speaks from the rules. In that quiet space between law and ambition lies the answer. Until a competent authority speaks, legality remains what it has always been: a matter of constitutional mandate, not political appetite. And as Chinese wisdom reminds us, those who mistake the echo of their own voice for the mandate of heaven eventually discover how thin that sound really is.
