What Still Holds Zambia Together?

Zambians have spent much of the past few months being told what divides them.

The election map appears to offer evidence of it. Different provinces voted differently. Political arguments have become intensely personal. Social media has hardened into competing camps. The election and its aftermath have produced accusations, arrests, disputed accounts of events and questions about institutions that Zambians once largely took for granted.

It would be easy, looking only at politics, to conclude that Zambia is coming apart. But there is another Zambia. It is found every morning in markets where Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga, Lozi and English disappear into the same conversation. It is in marriages that cross provincial and ethnic lines, workplaces where nobody asks how a colleague voted before sharing lunch, churches filled with families whose surnames come from opposite ends of the country, and buses travelling hundreds of kilometres through communities that may have voted completely differently but remain part of the same national life.

Zambia did not inherit national unity at independence. It had to construct it. The country brought together dozens of ethnic communities, languages, kingdoms and histories within the borders of a new republic. “One Zambia, One Nation” was therefore never merely ceremonial. Historical scholarship describes the motto as part of a deliberate attempt to create a national identity capable of transcending ethnic and linguistic loyalties.

But government policy alone does not fully explain why Zambia held together. Some of the mechanisms are much older. Researchers studying Zambia’s tradition of ethnic cousinship — ichimbuya argue that joking relationships between communities such as the Bemba and Ngoni developed into mechanisms for reconciliation, tolerance and social integration. Communities that once fought each other developed traditions in which differences could instead become material for humour and familiarity.

That may sound small beside constitutions and elections. But, it isn’t. A nation survives partly because people develop ways of disagreeing without treating one another as enemies.

Then there is the Zambia we actually live in. Spend enough time in Lusaka or North Western province and Zambia’s neat political map begins to fall apart.

People migrate. They marry. They work together. Their children grow up speaking languages their grandparents did not. Someone born in Eastern Province may build a life on the Copperbelt. A Tonga family may have Bemba in-laws. A Lozi child may grow up speaking Nyanja in Lusaka.

The boundaries that look so solid on an election-results map are considerably messier in real life. Perhaps that is one of Zambia’s greatest protections.

Political parties can tell people that one province belongs to them and another belongs to their opponents. Life keeps producing relationships that refuse to fit those categories.

We also remember something together

There is another powerful bond: Zambia has a shared national story. Independence belongs to everyone. So does the flag. So does the national football team. So does the grief when a national tragedy occurs and the celebration when a Zambian succeeds internationally. And, remarkably, so does the expectation that political power should eventually change hands.

Zambia has experienced bitter elections before. Governments have changed. Presidents have left State House. Opposition parties have become governing parties, and governing parties have found themselves in opposition.

The churches still occupy common ground

Faith is another institution that crosses the electoral map.A Catholic in Southern Province and a Catholic in Northern Province may have voted for completely different candidates, but on Sunday they return to the same institution. The same is true across Zambia’s Protestant and evangelical communities.

That gives churches a role few political organisations can replicate: they can speak simultaneously to people on opposing sides. It helps explain why religious institutions have repeatedly intervened when Zambia’s politics becomes dangerously heated. Following this election, the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops said it was speaking not for a political candidate but in defence of constitutional principles and the rights of Zambians.

Their importance lies partly in the fact that their congregations contain both winners and losers.

Perhaps Zambia’s greatest strength is less dramatic

There has been political violence in Zambia. There has been tribal rhetoric. There have been moments when institutions have failed and moments when political leaders have deliberately exploited people’s differences.

Independent scholarship still describes Zambia as comparatively open and tolerant, while research on ethnic relations points to longstanding social mechanisms that have helped communities reconcile differences rather than turn them into permanent conflict.

That inheritance should not be mistaken for something indestructible.

One Zambia, One Nation is a choice

Perhaps that is the lesson of 2026. “One Zambia, One Nation” was never a description of a country without differences. It was an instruction for what to do with them.

It did not mean Eastern Province had to think like Southern Province. It did not require Northern Province to vote like Western Province. It did not mean Zambians had to agree about Hakainde Hichilema, Brian Mundubile, the Electoral Commission, the police, the courts or anything else.

It meant that after all those disagreements, there still had to be a Zambia large enough for everyone. More than sixty years after independence, that may be the country’s most important political inheritance. Presidents will come and go. Political parties will rise and disappear. Electoral maps will change colour.

But the woman selling tomatoes in Soweto Market does not first need to know the tribe of the person buying them. The nurse treating a patient does not need to know how that patient voted. Children sharing a classroom inherit friendships before they inherit political allegiances.

Those ordinary relationships rarely make headlines. Perhaps they should. Because in a moment when Zambia is asking how it became so divided, they offer part of the answer to a different—and perhaps more urgent—question: What keeps us together?

Each other.