DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in the following article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Daily Revelation
Zambia’s partisan divide between the United Party for National Development (UPND) and the Patriotic Front (PF) is neither influenced by political values such as economy, immigration nor any form of political system but rather hate among the major political players.
The hate is unfortunately driven by social regionalism rather than politics, economy or generally policy.
It is not strange that the majority if not all political contestants from the Patriotic Front vying for PF presidency hail from one or two regions. Sadly, this is reinforcing both hate and regionalism.
Whilst the phenomenon of regionalism has positive values such as encouraging municipalities to look beyond their boundaries, it has serious political consequences especially where citizens define each other on tribal lines, can spur intra-state hostilities, among others.
The nation continues to witness political partisanship and the gaps have grown even larger and widened. And the magnitude of these differences dwarfs other divisions in our society, along such lines like hate and regionalism.
Since the second term of the Patriotic Front government, hate speech towards certain individuals from some regions has grown in the name of politics. Using traditional leadership and social media, the practice sparingly got the encouragement from a few politicians especially from the Patriotic Front.
Whilst in the short term, no visible damage can be seen, it has a serious political and security implications in the long run.
Hate has the ability to erode democratic values such as freedom of speech and choice of both national and local political leadership. Hate speech has the ability too to influence political ideologies that may manifest in different forms, mostly negative.
Zambia quickly needs to sanitise politically by encouraging political integration on one hand and divergence on the other based on political values such as economic, immigration, political philosophies etcetera.
To think that this will go away on itself is a serious political suicide and therefore, the nation especially the current government should be deliberate by way of national indabas, convene to chat the way out as a way of promoting our fragile peace.
We must as a matter of policy, exploit measures to promote oneness and bring out patriotism among the general citizenries.
To continue using the dead creche’ that Zambia is a beacon of peace is ‘burying our heads in the sand’
Francisco Mumba
The author is a Peace and Conflict Expert
Specialized in Human Rights Governance
