Who should rule — the wisest, the best or the majority?
It’s frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what is going on.
— Amos Tversky
This Thursday, 13 August 2026, Zambia will hold another general election. More than 8.7 million registered voters will decide who occupies State House, Parliament and local-government offices.
Beneath the campaign songs, party colours and competing promises lies one of the oldest questions in political philosophy:
Who should rule — the wisest, the best or the majority?
I could be wrong, but I strongly believe this is a wrong question to ask.
The question assumes that Zambia’s central political problem is identifying the right people and placing them in power. One party presents itself as the home of competent economic managers. Another claims to represent ordinary citizens who have been neglected. While another group can claim to be more religious than others. Others appeal to patriotism, experience, morality or revolutionary change.
Every political movement eventually tells us that the country will succeed if only the right people are allowed to rule.
But human beings are fallible. Both you and me are not immune to error.
The wisest can miscalculate. The best-intentioned can cause harm. The majority can confidently support an error, as the Philosopher Karl Popper once said, “while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.
From this understanding I would therefore like to propose a more practical question which should sit in the heart of hearts of every Zambian given that we cannot know in advance whether a political leader will transform the country for the better or prove incompetent:
How should political institutions be organised both to prevent unfit candidates from contesting for or attaining office and, when those safeguards fail, to remove leaders who prove unfit before they cause too much damage?
I think this should be a more useful question for anyone who is voting this week.
The wisest can still be wrong
The argument for government by the wisest is attractive.
Zambia’s debt, energy crisis, agricultural markets and unemployment appear to demand technical competence. We need economists who understand public finance, engineers who understand electricity systems and agricultural specialists who understand why grain can be abundant but the country seems to be failing to export to potential buyers in the region.
Expertise matters. But expertise is not omniscience. I have seen experts prescribing reforms that’s have blocked the development of a well structured grains market in Zambia.
No president, minister lawyer or economist possesses all the knowledge dispersed among Zambia’s farmers, traders, miners, entrepreneurs, workers and consumers. A policy that appears elegant in Lusaka may fail when it encounters the realities of a village, border post, warehouse or a startup like myself.
The present economic debate illustrates this problem.
The UPND Government can point to genuine improvements. Zambia has moved substantially forward with its debt restructuring. Agreements now cover approximately 94 percent of the restructuring perimeter, while gross international reserves have increased to about US$6.4 billion. The IMF has described this as substantial progress in restoring macroeconomic stability. These are measurable achievements.
Annual inflation stood at 6.5 percent in July 2026. ZamStats confirms that figure.
But many households can also truthfully say that food, transport, electricity and other necessities remain expensive.
These accounts are not necessarily contradictory.
A reduction in inflation means that prices are increasing more slowly. It does not mean that prices have returned to their previous levels.
A slower increase in pain is not the same as the disappearance of pain.
The Government would therefore be wrong to use improving statistics to dismiss lived hardship. The opposition would be equally wrong to use hardship to deny every measurable improvement.
Any serious voter should accept neither propaganda nor cynicism. The right questions are: What has improved? What has not? Through what mechanism? For whom? What evidence would prove a policy unsuccessful?
Numbers should discipline political arguments, not terminate them.
The “best people” eventually discover that they are indispensable
The second answer is that the best people should rule.
Every ruling party is tempted by this belief.
UNIP once saw itself as the natural custodian of Zambia. MMD arrived as the democratic correction to UNIP. PF presented itself as the correction to MMD. UPND was elected as the correction to PF.
The parties changed.
Human fallibility did not and it will never change.
People who enter government as reformers can gradually become defensive. Because their intentions are good, they may assume their policies must also be good. Because they consider themselves democrats, they may struggle to recognise their own intolerance of criticism. Such grounding is perfectly fine and I personally encourage people to have strong opinions but hold them loosely. It is important for people who are defensive to consider changing their mind when subjected to better explanations or evidence.
This is why constitutional rules should never be designed around the presumed goodness of whoever is in State House.
They should be designed with the possibility that the politician we distrust most may one day inherit the same powers.
Never give your preferred leader a power you would fear in the hands of his opponent.
This test is relevant to concerns surrounding Zambia’s recent constitutional amendments, restrictions on public activity and laws governing online expression. Supporters argue that some of the changes improve representation and service delivery. Critics contend that reforms introduced close to an election can strengthen the incumbent and weaken political competition. Both the achievements and the governance concerns have become important parts of the 2026 election debate.
We do not need to claim knowledge of everyone’s hidden motives. Motives are difficult to test. Institutional consequences are easier to examine. Perhaps you have come across the Latin phrase “Nullius in Verba” which simply means take nobody’s word for it. You need to verify for yourself or perhaps asking the following questions:
1. Would UPND defend the same rules if an opposition party controlled the presidency?
2. Would today’s opposition repeal the powers it criticizes or merely use them against different people?
3. Do the rules make government more accountable?
4. Can citizens challenge them without fear?
A government demonstrates its democratic character not by tolerating praise, but by protecting criticism.
Criticism is not sabotage. It is democracy’s error-detection system.
The majority chooses the government, not the truth
If neither the wisest nor the best possesses an unquestionable right to rule, perhaps the majority should rule.
The majority must determine who forms government. But majority rule is not a method for discovering truth.
Fifty percent plus one can decide who occupies State House. It cannot make a destructive policy productive, transform injustice into justice or make a false statement true.
The majority is the referee of tenure, not the owner of truth.
Democracy therefore cannot mean unlimited majority power. It requires constitutional limits, individual rights, credible elections, independent courts, open media and the freedom to organise against the government.
The majority should obtain the government.
The minority must retain its citizenship.
The opposition must remain free to oppose. Journalists must remain free to investigate. Courts must remain capable of ruling against the Executive. Citizens must be able to criticise the president without being classified as enemies of national progress.
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Zambia has already demonstrated the value of this arrangement. Power moved from UNIP to MMD in 1991, from MMD to PF in 2011 and from PF to UPND in 2021.
Those victories did not prove that the incoming parties were infallible. They proved something more important: Zambians could dismiss governments without dismissing peace. It also proved Zambians ability to detect and correct mistakes committed by politicians.
The ballot is not a certificate of wisdom. It is a peaceful instrument of correction.
How should UPND be judged?
UPND should be judged neither as Zambia’s saviour nor as the source of every national difficulty.
The administration inherited a country that had defaulted on its external debt, weakened public finances and reduced confidence among creditors and investors. Moving from default towards a largely completed restructuring process is not a minor achievement.
The substantial expansion of the Constituency Development Fund is also significant. The allocation has risen from K1.6 million per constituency in 2021 to K40 million in the 2026 Budget. The National Assembly’s budget record confirms the increase.
CDF is imperfect. Some councils have struggled with procurement, project selection and utilisation. Local political interests can distort priorities. Yet the principle of moving resources closer to communities deserves serious consideration.
A classroom in Chinsali, a market in Mongu or a water project in Petauke should not always wait for an official in Lusaka to discover the problem.
This kind of decentralisation can support experimentation: communities attempt solutions, successful approaches are copied and failures are corrected without forcing the entire country into one grand national experiment.
These gains matter. They provide a reasonable argument for UPND continuity.
But continuity cannot become an excuse.
I don’t think the energy crisis has been completely solved. Employment and household incomes have not improved quickly enough. The benefits of macroeconomic stability have not yet reached many families. Agricultural policy remains burdened by expensive interventions.
The IMF has warned of pre-election spending pressures, agricultural-subsidy overruns and significant fiscal risks associated with the Food Reserve Agency inefficient operations. Its May 2026 assessment specifically calls for corrective measures. I am someone who has been advocating for reforms in the grains market and thankfully, a few months ago parliament enacted three legislations that attempt to cure some structural and operational issues at FRA, agricultural credit and warehouse receipt system implementation as well as the issue around grain marketing.
A serious UPND supporter should therefore demand reform of FRA, greater fiscal discipline, stronger protection of civic freedoms and a clearer transmission of economic stability into household prosperity.
A party is not strengthened when its supporters conceal its mistakes. It is strengthened when it can correct them.
How should the opposition be judged?
The opposition is right to draw attention to the cost of living, unemployment, load-shedding and dissatisfaction with aspects of UPND’s governance. Such checks and balances are necessary in any progressive society.
Pain is evidence that something remains wrong. But identifying pain is not the same as explaining how to remove it. The ability to describe a problem is not proof of the ability to solve it.
A candidate promising cheaper mealie meal must explain the mechanism. Will prices fall through increased production, lower transport costs, subsidies, price controls or forced FRA sales?
A candidate promising jobs must identify the sectors, investments and productivity improvements that will sustain those jobs.
A candidate promising to end load-shedding must explain the generation capacity, transmission infrastructure, financing and implementation period required.
A candidate promising to protect farmers must explain who will buy their crops, at what price, using whose money — and what happens when the domestic price exceeds export parity.
The opposition may possess better answers. But it must present them in a form that can be tested.
Nostalgia is not a development plan.
Anger is not an economic mechanism.
A change of government is valuable when it corrects serious errors or introduces a better explanation. Change for its own sake can simply replace known weaknesses with unknown ones.
An imperfect government should not be removed merely because it is imperfect. Every government will be. It should be removed when its failures are intolerable or when a more credible alternative has been demonstrated.
That is where the burden presently falls most heavily on the opposition.
Continuity can also be a form of correction
Democracy does not require citizens to change governments at every election. One of my good friends once said, “we will keep on changing until we get it right.” There is some truth in what she said because one way of getting something right is through trial and error.
Sometimes correction means dismissal. At other times, it means retaining what is working, abandoning what is failing and imposing stricter conditions on those already in office.
The relevant question is not simply, “Has UPND made mistakes?”
It has. Just like any other fallible governments.
The better question is whether those mistakes justify abandoning the progress already made and whether another political formation has provided a sufficiently credible alternative.
On the available evidence, the case for cautious continuity appears somewhat stronger than the case for an untested reset. Zambia has made meaningful progress on debt restructuring, reserves, inflation and decentralised public funding. These gains remain fragile, incomplete and unevenly felt, but they should not be treated as insignificant.
That is not an argument for unconditional loyalty.
It is a tentative judgement that the repair may deserve more time — provided the next phase is judged by harder standards.
UPND should be required to translate macroeconomic stability into household prosperity, confront the energy crisis, discipline FRA expenditure, improve CDF implementation and protect the democratic freedoms that enabled it to win power in 2021.
If it cannot, Zambians must remain willing to correct it.
Continuity should preserve progress, not preserve excuses.
Rules wiser than rulers
So, who should rule — the wisest, the best or the majority?
None of them should rule as an unlimited master.
The majority should select temporary custodians who operate under constitutional limits, remain exposed to criticism and can be removed peacefully.
A UPND victory would not prove that every government policy is correct. An opposition victory would not automatically prove that every criticism was justified. Whoever wins will receive authority but he will still be error prone.
The winner must be allowed to govern.
The loser must remain free.
The critic must remain safe.
The institutions must outlive them all.
As Zambians vote, we should resist the temptation to search for a political messiah. We are hiring fallible people to manage common institutions for a limited period.
My own assessment may be wrong. That admission is not a weakness in the argument; it is the point of the argument. Zambia must preserve the institutions through which every political judgement including mine, can be challenged and corrected.
Vote with hope, but preserve doubt as Voltaire once said, “doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
Recognise progress, but keep testing it.
Demand change, but demand an explanation of how that change will work.
An election is not a coronation. It is a performance review followed by a revocable employment contract.
Zambia does not need a ruler who claims to be wiser or better than everyone else.
It needs rules wiser than every ruler.
