The Noose Tightens: Zambia’s Descent Into Authoritarianism

The Noose Tightens: Zambia’s Descent Into Authoritarianism

By Kangwa Siloka – Poet and SP member

Lusaka, Zambia – The police summons arrived like a late-night knock at the door ominous in its vagueness, terrifying in its implications. Dr. Fred M’membe, the Socialist Party president whose razor-sharp critiques have made him Public Enemy Number One in the eyes of Zambia’s ruling elite, was to present himself at Police Headquarters. No charges. No explanations. Just the unmistakable message: We can reach you whenever we choose. or another cold, bureaucratic language of state power flexing its muscle: “You won’t be kept longer than is absolutely necessary.”

Then, in a move as predictable as it was cynical, the state blinked. The interrogation was postponed indefinitely not canceled, not abandoned, but left hanging like a sword over M’membe’s neck. A psychological game perfected by regimes across the continent: the threat of arrest is often more paralyzing than the arrest itself.

A Well-Worn Playbook

This is not governance it is theater. Bad theater at that. The UPND administration under Hakainde Hichilema has mastered the art of democratic backsliding while maintaining plausible deniability. Summon. Intimidate. Release. Repeat. The goal is not to convict but to exhaust to drain opposition figures of resources, morale, and public sympathy through endless legal harassment.

The numbers tell a damning story. Since 2021, over 37 opposition members and activists have been arrested under dubious circumstances, according to the Zambian Human Rights Commission. Charges are rarely sustained in court, but the process itself becomes the punishment a tactic borrowed from the very PF regime Hichilema once condemned. The irony is as thick as the smoke over Lusaka’s shantytowns.

The Anatomy of a Crackdown

What makes M’membe’s case particularly revealing is its timing. The Socialist Party has been gaining ground in urban strongholds, its message of wealth redistribution resonating with a population crushed by austerity measures. When political opposition grows too loud, the state reaches for its favorite tools:

1. The Bureaucratic Noose – Endless rescheduling of court dates and interrogations to keep opponents in legal limbo
2. The Financial Stranglehold – Tying up resources in legal defenses while starving campaigns of funding
3. The Spectacle of Force – Public arrests designed to send a message to would-be dissenters

This is how democracies die, not with a bang, but with a thousand bureaucratic whimpers.

The Ghosts of Past Regimes

Hichilema’s greatest failure is that he has become what he once despised. The man who spent years in courtrooms fighting trumped-up treason charges now presides over a system that uses the same playbook against his critics. M’membe’s invocation of Bemba proverbs cuts deep because it exposes this hypocrisy: “Icikutilwe tacumfwa ndibu”—the idiot doesn’t hear the warning bell.

History shows that regimes which criminalize opposition inevitably collapse under the weight of their own paranoia. From Kaunda’s one-party state to Chiluba’s selective prosecutions, Zambia has seen this script before. The difference today? The tools of repression are more sophisticated, the international community more distracted, and the economic stakes higher.

In his statement, M’membe invoked a Bemba proverb: “Mweo wa muntu, waba mu kutwi”—the life of a person is in the ear. To listen is to survive; to ignore wisdom is to invite destruction. It was a pointed message to President Hichilema, a man who once stood where M’membe stands now hounded by the state, persecuted for his beliefs.

But power has a way of distorting memory. The same Hichilema who once decried the abuse of state machinery under Edgar Lungu now presides over a regime that employs the same tactics. The frog who refused to listen, as the proverb warns, bursts its eardrum.

The Coming Storm

Make no mistake this postponement is not mercy. It’s the calm before the storm. The Socialist Party’s call for supporters to stand down is prudent but precarious. Every day the sword remains unsheathed is another day of self-censorship, of activists looking over their shoulders, of journalists weighing each word.

Yet in this darkness, there are embers of resistance. The very fact that M’membe could publicly shame the regime speaks to cracks in the facade. The growing international scrutiny, the restless youth population, the economic discontent these are forces even the most sophisticated authoritarian playbook cannot contain forever.

As Zambia teeters on the edge, one truth becomes self-evident: when a government fears its people more than its people fear the government, the endgame has already begun. The question is not if the reckoning will come, but how much of Zambia’s soul will be left when it does.

In the grand theater of repression, every postponed interrogation is an admission of fear. And in that fear, the people may yet find their power.