Let love lead: Zambia’s digital conscience after the ballot

For generations, Zambia has worn the identity of a peaceful nation, a country where people of different tribes, faiths and political loyalties have lived side by side, recognising one another first as fellow citizens. It is worth asking, honestly, whether that identity is…

For generations, Zambia has worn the identity of a peaceful nation, a country where people of different tribes, faiths and political loyalties have lived side by side, recognising one another first as fellow citizens. It is worth asking, honestly, whether that identity is beginning to slip.

It has become disturbingly common to see a person’s death met not with condolence but with mockery, insult or a political score being settled in real time on social media. Behind every death sits a family in mourning. Death is not a contest, and it is certainly not licence to humiliate the departed or gloat over their pain.

Before posting anything online, a simple test still applies: is it true, is it necessary, is it kind? Words now move faster than judgment. A careless post can circle the country within minutes; a cruel meme can land in front of a grieving child and remain there indefinitely.

Freedom of expression carries a corresponding duty. The right to hold an opinion does not confer the right to strip a grieving family of dignity, or to desecrate the memory of the dead. Zambia’s stated values of human dignity, unity and non-discrimination cannot live only in the Constitution or in ceremonial speeches. They must show up in how citizens actually speak to one another, especially when political feeling is running hottest.

The greater danger is not today’s cruelty but its normalisation. Children are watching, absorbing the words their elders choose and the behaviour their communities reward online. No nation builds lasting peace while quietly teaching its youngest citizens that laughter is an acceptable response to another person’s death, simply because that person voted differently.

The Zambia worth protecting is one where political opponents can still greet each other, where neighbours mourn together regardless of ballot choices, and where death is answered with dignity rather than derision. Before sharing an unkind word about someone’s passing, one question is usually enough to give pause: what if this were my own father, my mother, my sister, my child?

Before political affiliation, Zambians are Zambians. Before tribe, they are human beings. It is time to disagree with dignity, contest ideas rather than insults, and mourn with compassion instead of celebrating with hatred. Politics must never be allowed to strip that humanity away.

By Osmond Kalaba
Source: Zambia Daily Mail (“Call for Zambia to embrace love, humanity”)