16/10/2025
An Open Response to the ZESCO Board Chairperson: We Don’t Need Lectures, We Need Solutions.
By Musamba Barbrah Chama
Your invitation, sir, delivered via a Facebook comment, has been received. You wish to have a one-on-one meeting to lecture me on the issues surrounding loadshedding, dismissing my very real and widely shared concerns as “mere speculation.”
Let me be equally direct: I decline the offer of a lecture.
The Zambian people are not in need of tutorials. We are living the lecture. We receive it daily in the darkness that disrupts our businesses, in the spoiled food in our fridges, in the children struggling to study by candlelight, and in the silent factories running on losses. That is the only “lecture” we are interested in, and it is one you, unfortunately, are failing to grade.
The UPND was elected into power for one primary, overwhelming reason: TO FIX what was broken.
The Zambian people looked at the mismanagement of the past and made a decisive choice for competence, for solutions, and for an end to the excuses. We handed you the keys to the workshop with a clear mandate: repair the nation.
Four years is enough to fix.
It is enough time to have moved from diagnosis to treatment. It is enough time to have moved from promises to tangible progress. Instead, what we are receiving is a familiar, tired script: excuses, lectures, and the audacity to tell the patient that their pain is “mere speculation.”
Let us be clear: A ruling party, after four years in power, has no luxury to lecture, give excuses, or promise. That is the language of an opposition. The language of a government, of a board chairperson appointed to execute a mandate, is the language of ACTION, ACCOUNTABILITY, and RESULTS.
You are no longer the critics on the sidelines; you are the managers on the pitch. The goal is not to explain why the ball is flat, but to inflate it and get the game going.
So, we respectfully redirect your invitation.
Instead of a private meeting to be schooled on the complexities you were hired to solve, we demand a public account. Where is the fix?
· Where are the new power generation projects that were promised?
· Where is the aggressive investment in solar, wind, and hydro that we were told would diversify our grid?
· Where is the transparent plan that moves us from a crisis management mode to a sustainable energy security model?
The Zambian people are not speculators; we are stakeholders. We are the employers who hired you in 2021 to do a job. Our concerns are not speculation; they are the direct, measurable consequences of a problem that remains unfixed.
We do not need a lecture on the problem. We need you to present the solution you were elected and appointed to deliver. The clock is ticking, and our patience, like our power supply, has run out.
The Fix is Now Non-Negotiable.
