Why Independents May Be UPND’s Biggest Election Problem

Kalabo. Chingola. Mwinilunga. Solwezi. Lundazi. Mwandi. Mazabuka. Namwala.

In the run-up to the August 13 general election, President Hakainde Hichilema has delivered a version of the same warning at rally after rally, in province after province: reject independent candidates, and vote UPND, only UPND.

The message has hardened over the campaign. In Kalabo in May, the President cautioned UPND members who miss out on adoption against standing as independents, warning that "rebels" who did so would forfeit any future government appointment. By July, in Chingola, he was framing the stakes in existential terms, telling supporters that a single stray vote for an independent could cost him the presidency outright. In North-Western Province, he accused unnamed independents of trying to "steal" his votes. And in Western Province, his warning acquired a face: Iris Kaingu, who quit the UPND in June after failing to win the party's nomination for Mwandi, and is now standing against the party's adopted candidate, Sibeso Sefulo Kakoma.

Why does the leader of a governing party with a comfortable head start feel the need to say this so often, and so pointedly? The answer sits at the intersection of arithmetic, history and internal party discipline.

THE MATH OF A CROWDED BALLOT

Start with the numbers. The Electoral Commission of Zambia has registered a record 26 presidential candidates for this election, 14 of whom cleared nomination, reflecting an unusually fragmented field. That fragmentation runs all the way down the ballot. Constitutional changes passed in 2025 restructured the National Assembly, expanding it to 280 seats, with 226 now contested directly in single-member constituencies on a first-past-the-post basis, up from 156 previously. A parallel delimitation exercise added 70 new constituencies, the largest redrawing of Zambia's electoral map in the democratic era.

Under first-past-the-post, a seat can be won with a plurality rather than a majority, which means a well-known local independent, often a popular former party official who was passed over for adoption, can peel off enough of the governing party's own supporters to hand the seat to a weaker rival, or simply deny it to the party that would otherwise have won comfortably. For a party defending an incumbency, that mathematics turns every unauthorised local candidacy into a live threat, not a curiosity.

A SEAT-BY-SEAT DISCIPLINE PROBLEM

The Kaingu case illustrates the second half of the story: adoption is a zero-sum contest, and it produces losers. Mazabuka Central alone drew eight aspiring candidates for a single parliamentary nomination this year, three of them ultimately filing as independents once the party settled on someone else. Multiply that pattern across 226 constituencies, and the UPND is managing hundreds of disappointed aspirants at once, some of whom, like Kaingu, are prominent enough in their home constituencies to mount a credible challenge on their own.

Hichilema's answer has been carrot and stick delivered in the same breath. The stick: no ambassadorial posting, no government appointment, for anyone who "rebels" into an independent run. The carrot: those who stay loyal and rally behind the adopted candidate, he has suggested, remain in line for future consideration. In Kaingu's case specifically, he has said he telephoned her directly and asked her to step down in favour of Kakoma, a request she declined, a rebuff he has now retold to crowds as evidence of the indiscipline he says voters should punish at the ballot box.

Kaingu has since given her own, considerably more detailed account of that exchange. Responding publicly a day after Hichilema's Mwandi rally, she alleged that the President, in a call she had understood to be private, offered her a government appointment and a place on UPND's national mobilisation team if she withdrew, and that he approached her father before speaking to her directly, asking him to help change her mind. MUVI has not independently verified these specific claims, which describe a private conversation only Kaingu has spoken about publicly, and the UPND has not responded to them directly. But if accurate, they turn the general "carrot and stick" pattern described above into a concrete, named offer, exactly the kind of individualised incentive a party might use to keep a large field of disappointed aspirants from bolting.

He has also had to manage a subtler problem: independents in several provinces have reportedly told voters they retain his personal backing despite running outside the party. Hichilema has repeatedly and explicitly denied this, insisting that only candidates carrying the UPND ticket speak for him.

THE SOUTHERN FRONT

Nowhere has the fight been sharper than in Southern Province, historically the UPND's most reliable base. Gary Nkombo, who represented Mazabuka Central for the party since 2006 and served as Local Government Minister until his removal from Cabinet in March 2025, lost out on adoption this year and resigned to run as an independent, saying he had been left feeling "thrown to the dumpsite."

Hichilema has confronted him by name at rallies across the province, in Chirundu, Chikankata, Mazabuka, Namwala and Gweembe, accusing him of secretly working with an opposition alliance. The exchanges escalated further after the President drew Nkombo's elderly mother into his campaign remarks, prompting the Non-Governmental Gender Organisations' Coordinating Council to publicly demand an apology.

In neighbouring Namwala East, independent candidate Silent Hapompwe has said Hichilema personally phoned him too, asking him to stand down for the UPND's candidate. Hapompwe says he refused, citing his constitutional right to contest, and has separately alleged that unmarked vehicles have been disrupting his campaign meetings, a claim that has not been independently verified.

THE INDEPENDENTS ARE ORGANISING

Part of what may be unsettling Hichilema's campaign is that this year's independents are not acting alone. Kaingu, Nkombo and several others contesting under the same "Candle" ballot symbol jointly challenged the Electoral Commission in court after it attempted to withdraw the symbol from independent candidates, and won. In her Mwandi remarks, Kaingu framed the episode as evidence of a loose but real solidarity among this year's independent candidates, thanking those who "continued with the mantle of serving their people" despite pressure to withdraw, and pointedly noting that some others had "stood down" and "couldn't take the pressure."

A coordinated legal fight over a shared symbol is a small thing on its own, but it suggests this year's wave of independents is behaving less like a scattering of disgruntled individuals and more like an informal bloc, which raises the stakes of the seat-splitting math described above.

WHAT CRITICS SAY

Not everyone reads the pattern as simple party management. Analysts at the Institute for Security Studies have pointed to the scale of this year's delimitation exercise and questioned whether the reforms, including the pressure being placed on independents, could weaken the space for smaller parties and independent voices in the next Parliament, even as they note that any finding of deliberate gerrymandering would require a seat-by-seat case, not just a count of new constituencies.

The Electoral Commission itself has been at pains to affirm the opposite principle in writing: standing as an independent, it has said, is a constitutional right available to any qualifying citizen who formally leaves their party in time.

That tension, a party leader campaigning hard against a right the law protects, is likely to keep defining this election's closing days, in Mwandi and in dozens of constituencies like it.