By Celestine Mukandila If HH were to greet me with a simple “Good Morning” before I responded, I would still rush outside first, just to confirm it was actually morning. That is not disrespect. That is five years of due diligence, earned the hard way. Five years ago, Zambians…

By Celestine Mukandila

If HH were to greet me with a simple “Good Morning” before I responded, I would still rush outside first, just to confirm it was actually morning. That is not disrespect. That is five years of due diligence, earned the hard way.

Five years ago, Zambians placed an order. It came with a slogan attached, “Bally will fix it,” and a receipt full of specific figures. Fuel at K12 a litre. Mealie meal at K50 a bag. A dollar rate that would fall, not merely stop falling apart. Jobs for the volunteers who had carried the health system on their backs for years without pay.

On 13th August, the country finally collects the parcel and checks it against the invoice. A nation does not need a calculator to know when it has been shortchanged, which is rather ironic, because the man who sold us the receipt built his entire brand on being the one Zambian who could always be trusted with a calculator.

What was ordered on fuel

Zambians were promised fuel at K12 a litre in 2021. That single line has aged worse than milk left in the Lusaka sun. Five years on, the price at the pump is nowhere near it, and government’s defenders now reach for global shocks, war and drought to explain the gap, a fascinating theory in which the price of oil in Rotterdam apparently consults the UPND manifesto before it moves, but only when the news is bad.

Nobody campaigned on “fuel at K12, terms and conditions apply.” That footnote was never read out at the rallies. Ordered: K12. Got: an economics lecture and a side of blame for Vladimir Putin, a man who, to be fair, has never once attended a UPND rally to apologise in person.

What was ordered on mealie meal

The order was K50 a bag. What arrived, after years of the staple climbing as high as K350 in some towns, is a harvest-driven price of around K230 to K250, achieved not through the mechanism promised but through a good rainy season, a coalition partner nobody remembers registering with the Electoral Commission.

There has been genuine relief, nsima is easier to find than it was two years ago. But UPND’s own legal affairs chairperson has since told the public the manifesto never named a specific figure at all, the kind of small print that only appears once the discount has expired. Ordered: K50. Got: K230, and a rewritten receipt.

What was ordered on the dollar

Here government has a stronger hand. The kwacha has, at points, ranked among the best-performing currencies in the world, and reserves now sit at $6.5 billion. That is real. But stability at K18 to K19 is not the same order as a currency that actually falls, which is the version of the promise that won votes in 2021, back when “the calculator boy” nickname was supposed to mean the sums added up in our favour, not merely stopped getting worse.

And who can forget the famous line from the morning of 24th August 2021, sworn in at 10 hours, and the dollar would drop by 14 hours, the kwacha gliding from K21 to K10 the same afternoon the oath was taken. Five years later, Zambians are still checking their watches. It never arrived that day, and it has not arrived in the roughly 43,800 hours since, which is either the longest settlement delay in the history of foreign exchange or a fairly strong hint the theory was never about economics at all.

If it was ever true, does it only work once, or does the clock reset with every new swearing-in? Come August, if Mundubile is the one taking the oath, Zambians may finally get to test the formula on someone else’s watch.

Now to the jobs

Rewind to 2024. A hospital in Lusaka is being commissioned, cameras rolling, and the President tells the volunteers gathered there that they should all be deployed. Months later, at the National Cholera Centre, he repeats the trick almost word for word. Two nurses were even handed on-the-spot job offers at Heroes Stadium, a made-for-television moment if there ever was one.

Government cannot legally place someone over 45 into a permanent post without a special exemption, so a promise made for the evening news left the technocrats to clean up the paperwork afterwards. A phased recruitment of a few hundred did eventually follow, months later. Everyone else who was clapping that day is still waiting for their letter.

Fast forward to this week. At a rally in Isoka, volunteer nurses were promised jobs. The very next day, in Kaputa, the President repeated the offer to health workers there too, warning that those unwilling to stay in the district would not be considered, terms never advertised on the recruitment poster. A respected academic has already called the pattern what it is, employment tied to rally attendance is not merit-based recruitment, it is patronage dressed up as generosity.

That is the real order Zambians placed in 2021: get employed because you did the work, not because you were clapping when the motorcade rolled in. Government’s own line at a rally in Chongwe last week, that anyone not yet employed should not lose hope because they were “next in line,” is as close to an admission as it gets. Jumping the queue has depended less on your certificate than on your attendance record at rallies.

Salt, and the crowd

Which brings us to salt. UPND has spent this campaign chanting “Salt Sana” at every rally, a Kopala phrase meaning something is solid, legit, the real deal. Fair enough. But every mother in Zambia knows the rule no campaign strategist seems to have learned: salt makes the dish, but too much and nobody at the table can swallow another spoonful, however confidently the chef insists the seasoning is perfect.

Look at Kafue, where the crowd arrived organised and ferried in by the busload, against a comparatively organic turnout Mundubile has been pulling on the same trail. Look at Matero, closer to a mouth drier than a mega rally. Smell the coffee. A full stadium is not automatically evidence of a mandate, sometimes it is simply evidence of a very well-funded transport line item.

On 13th August, Zambians will be matching the receipt against the parcel, fuel, mealie meal, the dollar, and the volunteers still waiting for the deployment promised in a hospital and a cholera centre years before anyone thought to promise it to a rally crowd instead. Salt Sana scans well on a t-shirt. It does not put fuel in the tank, mealie meal on the table, or write anybody’s appointment letter.