'Speaking out is citizenship, not rebellion': Brian Matambo's 31-minute reckoning with five years of looking away

It is one thing for an opposition alliance to issue a statement. It is another for it to sit a man down in front of a camera for half an hour and ask him to explain how a country got here. That is what the Tonse Alliance did on Sunday, releasing a 31-minute address by its figure Brian "Coach" Matambo — titled "The Cost of Silence: How Zambia Reached the Crisis of 2026" — together with a documentary, "Silence Brought Us Here". The argument is in the title: August did not begin anything. August, Matambo says, was the consequence.

"We did not just wake up after the 2026 election and suddenly discover that something had gone terribly wrong with our democracy," he says. "This has been coming." His chronology starts with what he calls Zambia's strongest moment — Edgar Lungu's peaceful concession and handover in 2021 — and then tracks what he describes as a steady erosion: the loss of parliamentary seats by Bowman Lusambo and Joseph Malanji, criminal cases against Ronald Chitotela that he calls concocted, police blocking opposition rallies, cyber laws passed over the objections of lawyers and journalists, and Bill 7, which proceeded through Parliament after the Constitutional Court itself found the process inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution. "Again, Zambia moved on," he says — the refrain of the address.

His sharpest institutional criticism is reserved for the Electoral Commission of Zambia and its chairperson, Mwangala Zaloumis, who previously acted as President Hichilema's lawyer. "You cannot have a referee who supports one of the teams," Matambo says, comparing the appointment to a World Cup qualifier officiated by a coach's former employee. Opposition MPs raised the same objection at the time of her appointment; the government has consistently defended the commission's independence.

The address then turns to the treatment of the former president — police involvement in Edgar Lungu's jogging, disputes over his travel and medical care, the arrest of former First Lady Esther Lungu, and the government's year-long legal battle with the family in South Africa over his remains. "You don't defend somebody's rights because you like them," Matambo says. "You defend their rights because they are rights. Otherwise they are not rights. They are favours." He names Brian Mundubile, Makebi Zulu, Munir Zulu, Celestine Mukandila, Jay Jay Banda and Raphael Nakacinda as figures who, in his account, spoke out and ended up behind bars — among, he claims, hundreds detained "for merely speaking out".

It is in the election passages that the address makes its gravest claims, and where this newspaper's caution lights come on. Matambo says he personally witnessed blocked roads, police surveillance and disrupted rallies during the campaign; describes a suspension of the count of more than two hours, soldiers at polling stations, and raids on Mr Mundubile's home and the alliance's Ibex Hill offices; and calls 14 August "the night democracy died". Most seriously, he alleges that former minister Mutotwe Kafwaya was shot dead by soldiers who found him unarmed in a wardrobe during a security operation at Mr Mundubile's home — an allegation that has circulated in opposition circles since August but which no authority has confirmed and no evidence has been publicly tested. "I choose my words very, very carefully," he says, calling the events "a coup against the democratic process itself".

The closing passages are quieter, and are likely to be quoted by people who share little else with the Tonse Alliance. Speaking out, Matambo says, does not mean insulting, lying or threatening: "It means telling those in power: I disagree. That is not rebellion. That is citizenship." He urges opposition leaders to subordinate party interest to institutional repair, and sets his own test for a recovered Zambia: "I want a Zambia where my candidate can lose and I can believe that he genuinely lost. I want a Zambia where UPND can lose and peacefully hand over power." After a weekend in which the ruling party condemned one veteran's insults and the Church prayed for an archbishop, it is a sentence pointed at everyone at once.

Sources: Lusaka Times, "Speaking Out Is Citizenship, Not Rebellion, Matambo Tells Zambians" (27 Sep 2026); Brian Matambo, "The Cost of Silence: How Zambia Reached the Crisis of 2026" (video address, 27 Sep 2026); Lusaka Brief archive reporting on Bill 7, the ECZ and the post-election detentions.