Grade 12 is not enough: The case for raising the bar for Zambia’s lawmakers
By Mehluli Malisa Batakathi
THERE is a peculiar irony embedded in the architecture of Zambian democracy. We ask our Members of Parliament to scrutinise trillion-kwacha national budgets, to legislate on matters as consequential as constitutional amendments, and to hold the executive branch accountable on behalf of over 22 million citizens and yet the supreme law of our land demands nothing more of these individuals than a Grade 12 school certificate.
That is the full extent of Article 70(1) (d) of the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act No. 2 of 2016, which states that a person is eligible to be elected as a Member of Parliament if that person “has obtained, as a minimum academic qualification, a grade twelve certificate or its equivalent.”
We should sit with that discomfort for a moment. A Grade 12 certificate, the same qualification required of aspiring councillors, is also sufficient to place a person in the chamber that appropriates public funds, enacts the laws that govern every citizen, and exercises oversight over the executive arm of the State. The question is not whether those who hold only a Grade 12 certificate lack intelligence or life experience, it is far more fundamental: in a republic whose Parliament is constitutionally mandated to perform the most complex functions of governance, can we afford to have the lowest intellectual threshold as the measure of adequacy?
The constitutional gravity of the lawmaker’s mandate
The role of a Member of Parliament in Zambia is not ceremonial. Article 63 of the Constitution mandates Parliament to enact legislation through Bills passed by the National Assembly, and to oversee the performance of executive functions, including ensuring equity in the distribution of national resources, appropriating funds for expenditure by State organs, scrutinising public expenditure, and approving public debt before it is contracted. Article 202 further empowers the National Assembly to approve the national budget, with the power to vary allocations. These are not administrative tasks but sophisticated, consequential acts of governance that demand a level of analytical rigour, technical comprehension, and policy acuity that a Form Five school leaver cannot realistically be expected to possess.
When Parliament debates the Zambia Development Agency (Amendment) Bill, or scrutinises the Public Debt Management Act, or holds cabinet ministers accountable for the deployment of public resources, it must do so with intellectual competence. The complexity of the modern State demands it. To send under-equipped representatives into that arena is not a triumph of democratic inclusion, it is a failure of national ambition.
This is not a new argument. Plato, writing in The Republic, warned humanity over two millennia ago that political authority must rest on knowledge, not wealth, tradition, or popular opinion. His concept of the philosopher king was not an argument for elitism for its own sake, but it was a recognition that governance is a craft, and like all crafts, it is best exercised by those trained and equipped to practise it. His most arresting declaration remains as relevant today as it was in ancient Athens: “There will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed of humanity itself, until philosophers become kings in this world, or until those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers.”
John Stuart Mill, in his seminal work Considerations on Representative Government, extended this reasoning into the modern democratic tradition. Mill argued that good governance is not merely the aggregation of popular will, but demands wisdom, competence, and judgment in those entrusted with the exercise of public power. He wrote that the excellence of a political constitution depends on whether the participation of citizens in governance reflects the “general degree of improvement of the community.” Mill’s argument is unambiguous: you cannot have excellent governance without excellent governors.
Zambia is not alone in grappling with this question, but our constitutional provision compares unfavourably with the standards set by nations that have invested more deliberately in the quality of their legislative class. Iran, whatever one’s views on its political system, requires candidates for Parliament to hold a minimum of a Master’s degree or its equivalent. The result is striking: approximately 40% of Iranian parliamentarians hold doctoral degrees, with the remaining majority holding Master’s qualifications.
The trend is unmistakable: in nations that take governance seriously, the intellectual calibre of legislators is treated as a matter of national importance. In Zambia, we have written into our supreme law a standard that equates the minimum requirement for a lawmaker with the minimum requirement for a school-leaver entering the job market.
It is often argued, in defence of the status quo, that politicians need not be the most educated individuals in the room because they are surrounded by technocrats; expert civil servants who provide the technical intelligence required for effective governance. While there is theoretical merit in this view, in Zambia’s specific constitutional and political context, this argument is dangerously thin.
The Zambian civil service is not an independent meritocracy insulated from political interference. Permanent Secretaries, the operational heads of every government ministry and the administrative engine of State policy, are presidential appointees, removable at the President’s pleasure pursuant to Article 270 of the Constitution. The revolving door of Permanent Secretary appointments and terminations following each election cycle, across successive administrations, demonstrates not a system of expertise-driven governance, but a system of patronage dressed in the language of public service. Senior civil servants who know their tenure depends on presidential favour have every incentive to serve the political interests of the appointing authority rather than the constitutional mandate of the office.
What has emerged, therefore, is not a technocracy augmenting democratic governance, but a patronage system in which the most senior instruments of policy implementation are calibrated to political loyalty rather than professional excellence. In such a system, the intellectual capacity of the lawmaker becomes even more critical, precisely because the independent check of an insulated expert civil service has been substantially compromised.
Lee Kuan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore and architect of one of the most remarkable national transformations in modern history, built his nation’s ascent on a single foundational principle: “In Singapore, we decided from the start that we were going to have a meritocracy. Everybody competes on an equal basis.” The results are not in dispute. Singapore, a small island with no natural resources, became one of the world’s most prosperous and well-governed nations within a generation, not because of geographic fortune, but because its governance structures placed the most capable individuals at the apex of both political and administrative power.
The development literature is equally instructive. Research consistently demonstrates that the quality of governance, measured in large part by the intellectual and technical capacity of those who make policy, is among the most powerful determinants of national development outcomes. Nations that invest in meritocratic governance structures, where talent is rewarded and credentialed expertise is demanded of public leaders, consistently outperform those that treat public office as an entitlement for whoever can command sufficient electoral support regardless of qualification.
Zambia cannot develop its agricultural sector, cannot navigate the complexities of its mining fiscal regime, cannot effectively service its public debt, cannot legislate credibly on matters of competition policy, environmental law, or digital governance, if the chamber entrusted with these responsibilities is populated in part by individuals whose formal academic preparation ended at secondary school. The complexity of the challenges we face: climate change, artificial intelligence governance, regional trade law under the AfCFTA, health system financing etc. demands lawmakers who have been trained to think, to analyse, and to engage with technical evidence.
This is not to say that every person who holds a Grade 12 certificate lacks the capacity for complex thought. Some of our most brilliant citizens have never attended university. But constitutions are written not for exceptional individuals, they are written for the general case. The minimum qualification for the highest legislative office in the land should reflect the general standard of intellectual preparation we expect of those who occupy it. Currently, it does not.
The remedy is constitutional and political. Article 70(1)(d) of the Constitution must be amended to elevate the minimum academic qualification for a Member of Parliament from a Grade 12 certificate to, at the very minimum, a recognised undergraduate degree or its professional equivalent. This would bring Zambia into alignment with the growing global consensus that legislative competence is not incidental but essential to democratic governance.
Alongside this reform, Zambia must begin the longer and harder work of de-politicising the civil service. Permanent Secretaries and other senior public servants should be appointed through competitive, merit-based processes governed by an independent public service commission insulated from executive interference. The civil service must be permitted to be what it was designed to be; a professional corps of administrators whose tenure depends on performance and integrity, not political alignment.
Together, these reforms would signal a national commitment to what this country has never fully institutionalised: the principle that those tasked with making the biggest decisions for the Republic of Zambia must be the best thinkers among us, not merely the most politically connected, the most financially resourced, or the most locally popular. They must be, in the truest sense of the phrase, the crème de la crème.
Mehluli Malisa Batakathi is a constitutional lawyer and a Lecturer in Constitutional and Administrative Law at the Copperbelt University. He writes in his personal capacity.
