By Angela Moonga
Reverend Walter Mwambazi has described yesterday’s spectacle at State House as a window dressing exercise carefully choreographed to project inclusivity while masking exclusion.
Reflecting on yesterday’s engagement at State House, where some ‘civil society organisations’ in support of President Hakainde Hichilema’s constitutional amendments presented their case, Rev Mwambazi stated that it was troubling that the nation was experiencing the same constitutional manipulation they had fought against previously .
“What troubles me most is the déjà vu. We fought hard against the manipulation of constitutional reform under the previous regime, only to witness the same playbook being dusted off and used again. The actors may have changed, but the script remains the same,” Rev Mwambazi stated. “Bill 7 is not just another piece of legislation. It is a test of whether Zambia can break free from cycles of elite-driven constitutional engineering, or whether we will remain trapped in a pattern where the people’s voice is drowned out by political expediency.”
He argued that he stood with the OASIS Forum, a consortium of credible civil society organisations and church mother bodies, which included the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops (ZCCB), Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ), Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (EFZ), Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) and the NGOCC, among others, not because they were perfect, but because they represented a principle: that citizens must be heard, not managed.
“That principle is worth defending, even when it is inconvenient to power,” Rev Mwambazi stated. “Parliament now holds the line. But let us be clear – whatever decision emerges will not only shape our laws, it will shape our history. And history, unlike propaganda, cannot be stage-managed.”
He stated that Parliament would now be the final gauntlet, as the country’s future was held hostage.
He stated: “Now, as with Bill 10 before it, the fate of our constitutional order rests in the hands of Parliament. This is the final gauntlet – the arena where the destiny of our nation will be decided, not by the voices of ordinary citizens, but by political maneuvering and numbers on the floor. That reality is tragic.”
”The debate around Bill 7 has once again exposed the deep fault lines in our nation’s constitutional journey. Yesterday’s spectacle at State House was presented as ‘national engagement,’ but to many of us watching closely, it felt less like genuine dialogue and more like window dressing – a carefully choreographed performance designed to project inclusivity while masking exclusion,” Rev Mwambazi stated. “I read a statement by my brother Wiseman Henry Zulu, which defended the process and dismissed the Oasis Forum as irrelevant. His words, though eloquent, carried the unmistakable weight of official duty. But history has a way of judging such moments, and I believe this one will not be remembered kindly.”
He stated that the simple truth was that trust was lost at the begining when the OASIS Forum and other civic voices were sidelined from the technical process, the foundation of legitimacy cracked.
“No amount of stage-managed consultations can repair that breach. Trust, once squandered, cannot be regained through theatrics,” stated Rev Mwambazi.
