“Punka farmer” jibe as Tonse-Pamodzi Alliance accuses HH of political theatre on maize floor Price.

“If he can say one thing about maize and FRA says another, what confidence should people have in the rest of the promises? He lied his way into power and now wants to lie his way into remaining in power. But the Zambian people have already made up their minds, Celestine Mukandila…

“If he can say one thing about maize and FRA says another, what confidence should people have in the rest of the promises? He lied his way into power and now wants to lie his way into remaining in power. But the Zambian people have already made up their minds,

Celestine Mukandila of Tonse-Pamodzi alliance has accused President Hakainde Hichilema of manufacturing a public promise on maize purchases purely for political effect, saying the President’s own agency contradicted him within days and exposed what he called a pattern of pronouncements designed to win votes rather than reflect reality.

Mukandila’s attack centres less on the mechanics of grain storage and more on what he frames as a deliberate political tactic: making a bold, farmer-friendly promise on a public platform, then leaving the responsible agency to quietly walk it back once the cameras have moved on. He said the sequence fit a pattern he believes defines the President’s approach to the campaign season.

The trigger was President Hichilema’s declaration last Sunday that the Food Reserve Agency would immediately announce a “good” maize floor price and begin buying without delay, a promise made directly to farmers at a rally. Days later, the FRA said it could not act on that instruction because the maize had not yet met storage requirements, a technical detail Mukandila says the President either did not know or chose to ignore when he made his pledge.

For Mukandila, that gap between promise and reality is the story, not the moisture reading itself.

“I’m close to being a farmer. The maize still has high moisture content, yet he is ordering FRA to start buying and announce a floor price. That simply means this person doesn’t even know what he’s doing. He’s a ‘punka’ farmer,” Mukandila said, using a term that in local parlance describes someone who talks farming without understanding it.

He argued that the episode was not an isolated slip but the latest example of a leader making commitments calibrated for applause rather than delivery, particularly with polling day less than a month away. Mukandila said the pattern raises a far more serious question than any single agricultural policy: whether the President’s word can be trusted at all in the closing weeks of the campaign.

“If he can say one thing about maize and FRA says another, what confidence should people have in the rest of the promises? He lied his way into power and now wants to lie his way into remaining in power. But the Zambian people have already made up their minds,” Mukandila said.

He said the maize pledge illustrated a wider habit within the administration of announcing outcomes before the institutions responsible for delivering them had been consulted or were technically ready, leaving agencies like FRA to absorb the fallout when the promise collides with reality on the ground. Mukandila argued that this was precisely the kind of governance style Zambians should scrutinise closely as they weigh their choice at the ballot box.

He also used the moment to draw a contrast with Tonse Alliance presidential candidate Brian Mundubile, who raised the idea of investing in commercial grain drying infrastructure as one of his agenda items should he come to power, a pledge he made recently after the campaign period was officially announced. Mukandila said that at the time, few people grasped what Mundubile actually meant or why the issue mattered, with the proposal largely passing without much public attention or debate.

“When he said this a few weeks ago, many people didn’t fully understand what he meant. It sounded like a minor technical point buried among bigger campaign promises. Now look at what has happened. The very problem he was talking about is playing out in front of the whole country,” Mukandila said, arguing that the unfolding maize saga had now given clarity and weight to a policy position his principal had raised before it became politically convenient to do so.

He said the episode illustrated the difference between a leader who reacts to headlines and one who anticipates problems before they occur. According to Mukandila, that distinction, foresight built on technological and infrastructural planning rather than promises made for applause, is precisely what separates a visionary leader from one simply chasing the next news cycle.

“This is what vision looks like. Brian raised this before the crisis hit, when nobody was talking about maize moisture. He wasn’t reacting to a problem, he was warning about one before it happened. That is the difference between leadership grounded in foresight and technology, and leadership grounded in rhetoric,” Mukandila said, arguing that had the dryer investment already been in place, the President would never have found himself contradicted by his own agency within days of making a public promise.

Mukandila stopped short of detailing the FRA’s technical position at length, saying the underlying moisture figures were, in his view, secondary to the larger issue: a President who, weeks before an election, told farmers what they wanted to hear regardless of whether his own agency could deliver it.

The episode has added fresh fuel to opposition arguments that campaign-season promises from the ruling party deserve closer scrutiny, with Mukandila positioning the maize contradiction as a small but telling example of a broader credibility problem he says will factor into how Zambians vote on August 13.