This is going to be the first time I contest an election in my life. And it will be against key opponents who have stood for elections several times – some of them very experienced losers.

But the Zambian people and I have stood together many times on many issues, challenging this or that together, campaigning against or for this and that together. In this year’s elections we have to stand together. And no time has been more important than this – the August 12 elections.

The election campaigns that are before us, that we are about to embark on are for the heart, the soul and the future of our country.

It’s a lot of work and responsibility for the Nsingu Elections Campaign Brigade leading our campaign. We are more than our nascent political party – the Socialist Party, more than its manifesto and programmes, more than all our election strategies and prospects put together.

We are the trustees of the struggle and dreams that began in the Cipeta area of our homeland by our Ngoni ancestors, those brave and selfless young warriors and their leaders. They lost the war on February 4, 1898 against a much more better equipped and resourced capitalist, imperialist army of Cecil John Rhodes and his companies. Nsingu, the commander-in-chief of the Ngoni warriors was executed on February 5, 1898 at dawn. But they left their vision, their values and the hopes they awakened.

In the thousands or millions of Zambians whose hearts, whose consciences they touched and aroused, we remember them now to remind ourselves that the struggle they started is unfinished, that we stand for real change, revolutionary change – not any other change – in order to march again towards enduring ideals, that we do not have to settle for things as they are.

We are today a struggling people with no time to lose. Our tomorrow has become our today. And as they say, we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now, in the unfolding life and history – and there’s no such a thing as being too late. We can’t wait for 2026; now is the time.

We must struggle without respite, we must work ceaselessly to lift the downtrodden masses of our people to the higher destiny – a more just, fair and humane society – full of honest, equity, humility and solidarity; a new plateau of compassion.

We are socialists. We care all the time. And for us, care is the essence of power, of strength – strength without care is savage, brutal and selfish. That is what socialism is about. Strength with care is compassion – the strength needed to help our poor people lift themselves out of poverty and to their full stature.

But where do we get that strength to provide that care? From some Macgyver, some 21st century Moses? No.

We cooperate, we collect, we coordinate so that everyone has responsibility, everyone has rights. That is how we make the weak strong, that is how we lift the poor out of poverty, that is how we cure the sick, that is how we give talent a chance to flourish. We do it together.

This is what socialism is about. This is socialism. This is the true meaning of revolutionary democracy – people deciding together, building together to transform their country and thus transform themselves; it’s a growth in fraternal love.

Fred M’membe

President of the Socialist Party