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The New Heritage Party (NHP) leader Chishala Kateka has accused the UPND-led government of driving the country into an existential threat of becoming a failed state, due to alleged incompetence and divisive practices along sectarian lines.
Kateka said the party had determined that what was necessary or incumbent upon all patriotic citizens and political leaders and their parties, was to reset away from sectarian politics which emphasized internal competition.
In a statement issued in Lusaka on Wednesday, Kateka said the party made a deliberate decision not to participate in the 2026 general election after assessing the current political landscape.
She stated that the election was meant to bring a complete change away from a single party and the personality politics that had been the norm in Zambia.
“The NHP spent the last three years not in campaigning and growing the party, but in trying to bring opposition players together,” Kateka said
She claimed that the party played a pivotal role in bringing together the United Kwacha Alliance, the United Front, the We’re One Zambia Alliance, and the effort to get one unified candidate for the opposition ticket.
“We have been playing this role quietly behind the scenes away from the public eye, because to us, what was important was to achieve opposition unity,” Kateka said.
She said this opposition unity was meant for the them to unite around a patriotic program of national restoration.
Kateka alleged that since the UPND had demonstrated they were implementing a sectarian agenda, removing them so that the opposition, through a Government of National Unity, could begin to implement the program of national restoration became a national imperative.
She argued that it did not believe the current sectarian model of politics would lead Zambia to its promised land.
Kateka noted that the model was divisive and tended to exclude those not belonging to the party in power, or those not from their region, regardless of how well suited they were for the job.
“At NHP we do not believe that the current sectarian model of politics that we are undertaking as a nation will lead us to our promised land,” Kateka said.
She argued that Zambia needed its best possible brains to help put the country back on track, regardless of ethnicity, party or religious affiliation.
Kateka said no single political party, including the UPND, had all the requisite skills to undertake the mammoth task of transformation that Zambia needed.
She called for a transformative path to halt what it described as a self-destructive trajectory and redirect efforts to a development agenda with Zambians as the major beneficiaries.
“The UPND in Government has so far demonstrated that they are not open to following a transformative agenda for the country but are in fact set in leading Zambia to a de-facto One-Party State, likely to remove the Term limit and Running Mate clauses,” Kateka said.
She outlined a minimum program for the next government, including a people-driven constitutional reform process and national referendum to usher in the 4th Republic, restoring good governance, and working towards national unity through a truth and reconciliation process.
Kateka also called for restoring meritocracy in public service, ensuring economic ownership for Zambians, and achieving devolution of power out of the centralized and personalized office of the president.
She said the coming five years required a Government of National Unity with the best brains from each political party.
“For this reason, the New Heritage Party will not be supporting the UPND,” Kateka said.
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