Mushimba Calls For National Healing and Reconciliation Indaba

Organised People's Party presidential candidate Dr Brian Mushimba has congratulated President Hakainde Hichilema on his re-election while calling on him to use his second term to launch a formal national dialogue and reconciliation process, arguing that Zambia's political and ethnic divisions have reached a point that demands deliberate, structured healing rather than being left to resolve themselves.

"I would be remiss if I did not speak to the elephant in the room while congratulating the president-elect, and that elephant in the room is the polarisation and the divisions that we find ourselves besieged with in the country," Mushimba said. Addressing Hichilema directly, he was careful to frame the division as a national inheritance rather than a personal failing. "This country is more divided today than it has ever been. And this is not your doing. It is not your fault, or a reflection on leadership. This is historic and comes from deep-seated complexities of a nation that is so diverse along tribal, regional, and economic and ethnic lines. It just so happens that you are our leader when it has come to a head."

Mushimba framed that moment as an opportunity rather than only a burden. "Sir, it gives you a tremendous opportunity to leave a legacy," he said. "The legacy will be that under your watch and your leadership, Zambia confronted this divisive past, finally uniting behind the motto of One Zambia, One Nation."

WHAT HE IS ACTUALLY PROPOSING

Mushimba's call was specific rather than symbolic. He said a national dialogue, healing and reconciliation process needed to be urgently convened, bringing together "the church, traditional leaders, civil society, students, workers, workers unions, and everyone who has a stake in this project we call Zambia" to sit at the table and engage honestly.

He said the process, however long it takes, should surface and work through "all long-standing simmering issues that feed our divisions," with the eventual outcome being a new constitutional settlement. "A new way of living for us, a new constitution be created out of it that addresses all the issues that divide us," he said, suggesting the resulting reforms could span political, economic, social, cultural and legal dimensions, "all manner of reforms that will have agreed upon to permanently address our divisions and finally give us one people under One Zambia, One Nation."

A CAMPAIGN CUT SHORT, BUT A PARTY THAT INTENDS TO STAY

Mushimba's reconciliation appeal came at the close of a wider address reflecting on OPP's own campaign, which he said was effectively ended before it could get going. The party launched its campaign only three months before the election, built around what he described as a message of "servant leadership," economic revival, good governance and citizen economic ownership.

Two weeks in, running mate Andyford Banda withdrew from the ticket, triggering legal uncertainty and court petitions over whether OPP's candidacy could continue. "That development affected our campaign substantially and pretty much ended it before it started," Mushimba said. "It affected our financing, it affected the confidence in the viability of our ticket, and it undoubtedly affected the votes we could have received."

He was insistent that the setback did not discredit OPP's platform. "It did not defeat our ideas. It did not make our message less relevant. It did not make the problems we identified disappear," he said, listing unfinished business he said Zambia still faces regardless of the election result, unity, institutional reform, economic recovery, the four million jobs OPP had campaigned on creating over five years, affordability, reliable electricity, industrialisation and greater citizen ownership of the economy. "The OPP project is here to stay," he said. "We will not disappear after an election. We will not fold our structures."

Mushimba described the party's posture going forward as constructively independent, neither reflexively hostile to government nor uncritical of it. "We will applaud the success of the government without becoming blind supporters," he said. "And we will criticise failure without becoming enemies of the state. Our loyalty is not to a political party. Our ultimate loyalty is to you, the Zambians, and the country." He confirmed OPP intends to contest the next presidential election in five years' time, once Hichilema completes what he called "the constitutionally permitted two terms," positioning the party, in his words, "not merely as an opposition party but as a government in waiting."

He closed by returning to the president directly. "We wish the president wisdom, good health, courage, and strength as he resumes the responsibility of leading our nation," he said. "We fervently pray that this government succeeds, not for the benefit of one party or one group of people, but for the benefit of all of us Zambians."