The Heart of the Matter, by Lanky Observer
The death of the Patriotic Front
NOT LONG ago, the Patriotic Front (PF) was Zambia’s most feared political machine. It won elections, mobilised crowds and dominated Parliament. Today, it can barely organise a meeting without ending up in court.
The collapse of the PF did not happen overnight, and it did not happen by accident. It has been driven by a lethal mix of leadership vacuum, bitter infighting, legal paralysis and a political environment that has not exactly encouraged opposition survival. The death of Edgar Chagwa Lungu removed the last figure capable of holding the party together. Since then, the PF has been tearing itself apart in public – while the ruling United Party for National Development (UPND) watches, benefits, even nudges events in its favour.
The result is not just the death of a party. It is a serious stress test for Zambia’s multiparty democracy.
To understand how far the PF has fallen, it helps to remember what it once was.
The party came to power in 2011 on a wave of popular anger and hope. Michael Sata’s PF positioned itself as the voice of ordinary Zambians – angry at elite arrogance, foreign exploitation and economic inequality. For a while, it worked. After Sata’s death, Edgar Lungu took over and, against expectations, held the party together long enough to win two elections.
But the PF never really matured into a stable, institutionalised party. It was personality-driven, centralised and often intolerant of internal dissent. Loyalty mattered more than rules. Power flowed from the top. As long as Lungu was alive and politically active, those weaknesses were masked.
Once that central figure disappeared, everything that had been hidden came spilling out.
Edgar Lungu was many things to many people – admired by supporters, resented by critics and polarising to the country at large. But inside the PF, he was the final referee. When factions disagreed, his word settled it. When ambitions clashed, his presence imposed discipline.
Even after losing the 2021 election, Lungu remained the undisputed centre of gravity in the party. Potential rivals knew that challenging him openly was political suicide. His authority kept internal battles contained.
That ended with his death last year.
Without Lungu, there was no agreed successor, no respected internal mechanism to decide leadership and no shared understanding of who legitimately spoke for the party. The PF did not simply lose a leader – it lost its anchor.
What followed was chaos.
Almost immediately, the PF split into rival camps, each claiming to be the “real” party.
There was Given Lubinda’s faction, presenting itself as the natural continuation of Lungu’s leadership. There was Robert Chabinga’s faction, claiming legal and organisational legitimacy. There were remnants of Miles Sampa’s earlier takeover attempt, which had already weakened the party. Around them were clustered MPs, councillors, and officials choosing sides, often based on survival rather than principle.
This was not healthy competition. It was open warfare.
Party offices were contested. Meetings were disrupted. Public statements contradicted each other daily. Supporters no longer knew which leadership to follow. The PF brand, once disciplined and aggressive, became a laughing stock.
Instead of preparing for the 2026 elections, the party was fighting itself.
As the infighting intensified, the courts became the battlefield.
Every major decision; leadership claims, use of party symbols, control of the secretariat, ended up before a judge. Injunctions were sought and granted. Counter-injunctions followed. Legal arguments replaced political ones.
The most damaging blow came when the courts stopped the PF from holding a convention.
In any political party, a convention is how you reset. You argue, vote, lose, win and move on. For the PF, a convention could have clarified leadership and restored some order. Instead, rival factions rushed to court to stop each other.
The result? An injunction barring one faction from holding a convention, using the party name, or even operating normally.
The PF has effectively frozen.
A party that cannot meet, elect leaders or organise legally is not a political force. It is a shell.
No discussion of the PF’s collapse is complete without talking about the United Party for National Development (UPND).
Officially, the UPND insists it has nothing to do with PF’s problems. And to be fair, much of the PF’s destruction has been self-inflicted. No one forced its leaders to fight in public or rush to court against each other.
But politics is not played in a vacuum.
The UPND benefits enormously from a weak, divided opposition. With the PF paralysed, there is no serious national counterweight to government power. Parliamentary pressure weakens. Public debate narrows. By-elections become easier to win.
PF supporters argue that the state has been anything but neutral. They point to police actions, selective enforcement of the law and the speed with which courts act on PF disputes compared to others. They see a pattern: legal processes that consistently land at the worst possible moment for PF unity.
Whether this is direct interference or simply political opportunism is open to debate. But the effect is the same – the PF keeps bleeding, and the UPND keeps consolidating power.
The situation has not been helped by episodes of political confrontation on the ground.
There have been reports of cadres storming party offices, disrupting meetings and intimidating opponents. Each side blames the other. The UPND leadership condemns violence publicly, but PF supporters remain convinced that the ruling party’s grassroots feel emboldened.
Even isolated incidents matter. They send a message: opposition politics is risky, unstable and unrewarding.
For a democracy, that is dangerous territory.
The court injunction stopping the PF from holding a convention is more than a legal technicality. It goes to the heart of political organisation.
Without a convention:
- There is no legitimate leadership
- There is no clear chain of command
- There is no authority to select candidates
- There is no credible strategy for 2026.
Every month that passes under injunction deepens fragmentation. Members drift away. Ambitious politicians look elsewhere. Ordinary supporters lose faith.
At some point, the PF risks missing electoral deadlines entirely – not because it lacks support, but because it lacks functionality.
That is how political parties die.
Zambia’s democracy has always depended on competitive politics. Power alternated because opposition parties were strong enough to challenge incumbents.
If the PF collapses completely, the consequences go beyond one party.
A dominant ruling party with no serious challenger is tempted to overreach. Accountability weakens. Parliament becomes less effective. Civil society carries a heavier burden – one it cannot always sustain.
Voters, meanwhile, disengage. When elections feel predetermined, turnout drops. Cynicism rises.
Democracy becomes procedural rather than meaningful.
The PF could still recover, but recovery would require painful compromises:
- Rival factions would need to abandon court battles
- Leaders would need to accept losing internal contests
- The party would need to rebuild internal rules and respect them
- Personal ambition would have to give way to collective survival.
So far, there is little evidence that this is happening. Time is running out.
If the PF fails to reorganise, Zambia’s political landscape will change permanently.
New opposition movements may emerge, as they already are. Smaller parties may try to fill the vacuum. Or the UPND may dominate for a long time – not because it is unbeatable, but because no alternative survives long enough to challenge it.
None of those outcomes are guaranteed to strengthen democracy.
The Patriotic Front is not just dying – it is dying loudly, publicly and painfully. Its collapse is a lesson in what happens when parties are built around individuals instead of institutions, power instead of process, loyalty instead of rules.
But it is also a warning to Zambia.
A democracy where the opposition collapses under pressure, internal or external, is a democracy at risk. The PF’s death, if complete, will not just mark the end of an era. It will expose how fragile Zambia’s multiparty system really is when one pillar falls.
Whether the country learns from that or repeats it with the next opposition party remains to be seen.
The author lives in Lusaka. Email feedback to observerlanky@gmail.com
