Vintu sivi balansa! Pama nyumba pali pressure, pali tension! – Fred M’membe
Comrade delegates,
Comrades of the Provincial Committees,
Comrades of the National Council Management Committee,
Comrades of the Central Committee,
Comrades of the Politburo,
Dear Brother and Comrade General Treasurer and Second Vice-President, Dr Chris Ngenda Mwikisa,
Dear Brother and Comrade General Secretary and First Vice-President, Dr Cosmas Musumali,
Dear Comrades, I don’t know whether to thank you or frown at you for your decision to deploy me as party president. “Thank you” because it is an honour, a demonstration of trust and confidence in me. “Frown at you” because you have placed a very heavy yoke on my neck.
We are not taking up these deployments because of ambition or pleasure. We are only fulfilling a duty, with a single purpose, which is to serve our cause.
Probably, Comrades, permit me to throw both a “Thank you” and a “frown” at you.
I believe this deployment has been made in the belief that in 2026, it will be FM8!
You think with this deployment, we can win. But this is not enough. We are not going to win despite our beliefs. We will win only because of them. We want to win, not because Mr Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND have failed, have brought misery, shame, and despair to the nation, but because we are understood, supported, and trusted.
We must win and we can win. For us, there’s no choice between being principled and unelectable; and electable and unprincipled. And we shouldn’t torture ourselves with this foolishness of opportunists. We should win because of what we believe.
Comrades, these are unusual, difficult times and require unusual, new approaches. It is time to break out of the ways, approaches, and practices of the last six decades and break through with a clear revolutionary vision for Zambia.
Today’s politics should be about giving our people a better and happier life both in the material and spiritual sense. We must construct the leadership and build governance structures that can make this possible. That is our programme, that is our work for Zambia.
But ifwe fweka teti tukwanishe. Umulimo uyu ukulu. We have to do it together. We have to struggle for it together – with all our people and their authentic leaders, traditional, religious, and otherwise, participating.
Batila imfumu shitungululafye, abateka bantu. Leaders lead, but in the end, the people govern.
And socialism is about increased participation of our people in the governance of their communities and their nation; it is about people deciding together, building together to transform their communities, districts, provinces, and their country and thus transform themselves. It’s a growth in fraternal love.
This requires us to forge strategic, permanent alliances with the authentic leaders of our people – traditional, religious, trade unionists, professionals, and so on and so forth.
These are not, however, alliances conceived of only on the plane of a tactic of struggle. They are not just happenstance or political alliances. They are, of course, by definition, but the tie that is established here on the ethical or moral plane concerning a human being’s role – whether he be a traditional, religious, political leader or otherwise – in defense of the poor has the nature of a lasting, permanent, strategic alliance. It is a proposition with a solid moral, political, and social basis.
These strategic alliances are very different from happenstance alliances being pursued to primarily remove Mr Hichilema and the UPND in the 2026 elections. And I am not saying these happenstance alliances shouldn’t be considered at all. They have to be engaged with a lot of care and prudence. Often, they are characterised by evasions, illusions, and opportunism. And no true alliance can be built on the shifting sands of evasions, illusions, and opportunism.
In whatever we do, we should never lose sight of the fact that the strength of our nascent party is neither imingalato nor money: but moral. It’s not even in the correctness of our decisions and actions. Not everything we have done can be said to have been wise; not all our decisions have been correct. In no revolutionary process have all actions and decisions been the right ones. Yet, here we stand, five years after our First National Congress in September 2019! We have not renounced a single one of our ideas or revolutionary principles. This honest, firm, staunch, irreproachable political attitude should remain a key characteristic of our party. We should never hesitate to recognise our errors and mistakes, and sometimes, this may require more courage than risking our lives.
The stock of experience and revolutionary ideas that we have inherited from our own history and that of humankind is our most precious treasure. This is shared duty for all revolutionaries that demand the most rigorous criticism and self-criticism and the most complete honesty.
Ever since the time of the Paris Commune, real socialists have been noted for their honesty and heroism. In all of history, no one has surpassed them in their capacity for honesty, self-sacrifice, spirit of solidarity, dedication, self-denial, and readiness to give their lives for their cause. No other political idea in the course of the development of human society has been taken up so strongly or elicited such selfless devotion as socialism. The best and purest feelings of human beings have been expressed throughout the battles to do away with the age-old exploitation of man by man. Only the first Christians, in the time of imperial and pagan Rome, are comparable to socialists.
Comrades, it is infuriating to note that, in our time, the word “revolutionary” is still being used sometimes to describe people who are not at all upset by either the exploitation of some people by others or the cruel inequality which this exploitation implies and who in fact, promote it. Sometimes, these reactionaries are called “revolutionaries.” We cannot deny that anyone who struggles to obtain his homeland’s independence from a colonial or neocolonial power or for freedom from tyranny is a revolutionary, but there is only one higher way of being revolutionary in today’s world: that of being a socialist because socialists embody the idea of independence, freedom, true justice, equality among human beings and, what is more internationalism – that is brotherhood, solidarity and cooperation among all the peoples and nations in the world.
When the ideas of independence, freedom, equality, justice, and fraternity among peoples and nations are combined, they are invincible.
This is what we want to be: Socialists.This is what we want to keep on being: Socialists.
Comrades, socialists struggle for tomorrow as they live for today.
I think that the idea of the future generations, nation, and world is the most important and noble idea that a revolutionary can harbour.
Revolutionaries have always fought for the future. The first Mpezeni, Jere, and his son Nsingu fought for the future. When Nsingu died on the 5th of February 1898, he knew he was dying for the future. It can be said that he died in the prime of youth when his talent was at its best. They were fighting for the future. To fight for the future does not mean not to avoid doing every day what must be done for the present. These two ideas must not be confused.
Comrades, our country is in a crisis. But a crisis is not only supposed to mean a situation in which things get worse and worse. It means a crossroads, a time for decisions – in this case, about which way we want our society, our politics, and our economy to go. There has been too little serious discussion in our country about such options or alternatives. This is where progressives, revolutionaries, and true democrats, in all their diversities and complexities, could have a role to play in constructing a future.
We need to seek new ideas and formulas and admit that we are able to organise our lives and destinies in a more rational and humane manner.
New ideas to prepare the people for the future are needed. We must start building awareness. A new and complex era as this one requires principles more than ever. It requires a lot more awareness, and that awareness will be built by adding together the awareness of what is happening and the awareness of what is going to happen. It has to be built by adding together more than just one revolutionary thought and the best ethical and humane ideas of more than one religion, of all authentic religions, the sum total of the preaching of many political thinkers, of many schools and of many religions.
Comrades, I seem to be taking longer than I am permitted. You had three very long days of very hard work, and I shouldn’t push you to the limit by pulling the string a little bit longer.
Let me end with where I started: The individual does best in a strong and decent family, society, and nation with principles and standards and common aims and values.
We socialists have a duty to bring quality, integrity, and intellect to the daily struggles of our people and to political life in our country. We have a duty to bring a strong and caring direction in our politics to the needs of our people, especially the poor and needy.
But nothing, nothing can be achieved without discipline.
Discipline is the most powerful weapon to get ahead. Political leadership can only carry out its mandate if there’s discipline, and where there’s no discipline, there can be no real progress.
And time is not with us. We have no time to lose. Unless we face this fact, we shall pay the price that must be paid by those who waste time, who wait too long. The challenges facing our people leave us with no option but to accelerate our political struggles. This is a moment in which (to use Lenin’s words) untimely inaction is worse than untimely action.
Armed with the resolutions and the spirit of this National Congress that is coming to a close, let’s go back to our areas of deployment and intensify the struggle without respite.
And lastly, but very importantly, Comrades, today and every day, let us stand in solidarity with the aspirations of the Palestinian people to achieve their inalienable rights and build a future of peace, justice, security, and dignity for all.
We also call for the decolonization, liberation, and independence of Western Sahara, Africa’s last remaining colony. Africa will not be free until the last of its colonies, Western Sahara, was liberated, free, and independent.
We join our voices with Cuba, demanding an immediate and unconditional end to the United States embargo. We unequivocally condemn the current suffocating embargo and the interventionist manoeuvres of the USA since the very beginning of the Cuban socialist revolution. We support the right of the Cuban people to decide for themselves, freely and democratically, about their present and future without the intervention of the imperialists.
The July 28, 2024, Venezuelan presidential election delivered a clear majority for President Nicolás Maduro, and the people of Venezuela clearly voted for the continuation and the strengthening of the Bolivarian revolution. Of course, as soon as the result came out, the Secretary of State of the United States government, a certain Mr Anthony Blinken, declared that he had doubts about the result. But of course, if you have followed the work of the US imperialists over the last several decades, you’ll know that the only real doubt they could possibly have about that election is that their chosen candidate didn’t win it.
We, as socialists in Zambia, stand with the Bolivarian Revolution. We stand in solidarity with the great masses of the people of Venezuela who have supported the Bolivarian Revolution since it began over 25 years ago with the first election of Comandante Hugo Chávez.
And we recognise this plot for what it is, which is another scheme by US imperialism to try and destroy a revolutionary process that has aided the development of the working class in Venezuela and made great strides against illiteracy and poverty there, and is part of an ongoing process of establishing real sovereignty and independence for that country.
And for this reason, it is vitally important at this moment to stand with the government led by President Nicolás Maduro, to stand with the heroic Venezuelan people, who have shown their determination to fight for their sovereignty and independence over many years now, and to resist the attempts by the US imperialists and their agents and collaborators inside Venezuela to incite violence and to overthrow the legitimate government.
So we say: Solidarity to President Maduro, to the great Venezuelan masses, and may they find victory against the US imperialist plots.
The Ukraine-Russian conflict is a devastating war that has caused immense loss of life among both Ukrainians and Russians. It is a war that has been in the making since 2007. The major cause of this war was the aggressive NATO expansion towards Eastern Europe and refusal to deal with legitimate security quarantees demanded by Russia. This was followed by the American-CIA instigated Maidan Revolution of 2014, rapid expansion of Ukrainian military through NATO and anti-Russian and quasi-fascist policies that ensued.
We are sympathetic to the legitimate Russian security demands. We are in support of peace initiatives that will bring an end to this war whilst safeguarding long-term Russian security and the Russain speaking people in the affected areas.
It is impossible not to be moved by the outrageousness of warfare, the ugliness of aerial bombardment, and the gruesome fears of civilians who are trapped between choices that are not their own. War is an open sore on humanity’s soul. It draws precious social wealth into destruction. It disrupts social unity and damages the possibility of international solidarity.
War is never good for the poor. War is never good for workers.
War itself is a crime. War produces crimes. Peace is a priority.
Every war must end at some point, and diplomacy must restart.
Rather than allow this war to escalate and for positions to continually harden, it is important for the guns to go silent and the discussions to recommence.
If substantive negotiations and agreements do not materialise, it is likely that dangerous weapons will face each other across tenuous divides, and additional countries will get drawn into a conflict with the potential to spiral out of control.
A more just, fair, and humane world is possible; but we have to struggle for it.
It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t lose hope. Don’t give up.
Today, we are down with many challenges – continually rising cost of living, problems with rentals, problems with food, problems with transport, problems with medicines, endless and crippling loadshedding! Vintu sivi balansa! Pama nyumba pali pressure, pali tension!
But still, don’t give up. Keep your faith. Keep on struggling! Keep on mobilising! With God’s grace, we will rise up again; we will get there.
With love, courage, and compassion, we will win.
II love you all!