🇿🇲 ANALYSIS: Kasama’s Flip is not an Accident But ArithmeticKasama has now produced the headline many thought would take longer: the ruling United Party for National Development has taken the mayoral seat for the first time. Predictably, the loss has triggered rigging claims from sections of the opposition, including online messaging from figures such as Emmanuel Mwamba. Those claims are only logical when matched with evidence, not emotion.
A competitive election, supervised and declared by the Electoral Commission of Zambia, does not become theft simply because a stronghold has been breached. The numbers tell a cleaner story than the noise. Facts first, in 2021, the PF candidate Theresa Kolala won with 57,613 votes, 66.45 percent, while Bywell Simposya got 25,011 votes, 28.85 percent, out of 86,680 total votes cast.
Fast forward, in 2026 by-election, the same Bywell Simposya has won with 17,647 votes, while the Forum for Democracy and Development candidate has polled 14,303, with a total of 42,929 votes cast out of 138,286 registered voters. Turnout fell hard, and low turnout always re-writes old maps. A party can “lose votes” in raw numbers yet still gain in political share and positioning.
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UPND’s real gain is not just the win. It is the share. Using the official totals in public domain, UPND’s vote is about 41 percent of ballots cast.
In 2021, it sat around 29 percent. This is growth in a place often described as locked. Even critics who do not like the ruling party have to concede the direction of travel.
Rural and peri-urban penetration is now translating into a win, not just “acceptability” talk. The opposition, meanwhile, is trapped in a pattern it keeps refusing to treat as a problem. Fragmentation.
Add up the non-UPND vote in this by-election and the scale becomes obvious: FDD 14,303 plus Citizens First 4,405 plus United Progressive People’s Party 2,988 plus Socialist Party 2,211 plus NFP 472. This combined opposition pool is 24,379, well above UPND’s 17,647. This is the blunt lesson.
A united front would likely have carried the day. Six banners competing in the same lane is how ruling parties survive even when the ground is angry. Kasama also tested a second opposition habit: grievance mobilisation as a campaign substitute.
Chishimba Kambwili tried to turn funeral attendance into a voting instruction, building regional grievance around who showed up and who did not, with President Hakainde Hichilema and Vice President Mutale Nalumango as the targets. Voters heard it. Voters still voted.
That does not mean people did not feel the sting of the moment. It means they did not accept grievance as a ballot paper. Claims of a stolen vote also run into an uncomfortable fact: the same government has publicly accepted losses.
President Hichilema congratulated opponents after Chawama, and the by-elections have largely been peaceful and procedurally concluded. This does not prove perfection, but it weakens the lazy habit of calling every defeat “rigging” before the ink dries. If the opposition wants the rigging argument to land nationally in August, it has to stop burning the credibility of the claim on every by-election.
Bottom line: Kasama flipped because the opposition vote split, turnout collapsed, and UPND’s ground game has matured since 2021. If the opposition wants to stop the red advance, it needs one candidate, one message, and one structure. If it wants to keep producing excuses, it will keep producing defeats.© The People’s Brief | Editors
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