"Friday, April 7 [1775], I dined with him at a Tavern, with a numerous company... Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest."
—The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. by James Boswell

The name of the party should have given us a clue I suppose: Patriotic Front.

Take the illuminating example of another political word, "Democractic". Consider the countries that have proclaimed their democratic nature in their names: The German Democratic Republic (East Germany), The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire). These nations could truthfully be called many things, but democratic? (In fairness, it should be pointed out that the DRC is now moving along the path to becoming a functioning democracy.)

But back to the "Patriotic" in PF. PF has run a xenophobic, tribalistic, populist election campaign carefully designed to exploit the divisions, real or apparent, that exist in Zambia. This strategy may be called many things, but I don't think patriotic is one of them.

The leader of the pack, one Michael Chilufya Sata, has made tremendous political capital out of the fact he is not so much an ordinary Joe as an ordinary Chilufya. Indeed all the Lusaka kabovas, a word for which there is unfortunately no adequate English translation (rough youths perhaps?), call him just that. He's consistently portrayed himself as a practical man of action who knows how to implement the ideas of the armchair intellectuals. His opponents have labelled him a comedian, which is a good few notches above a clown I would have thought (the old laughing-with versus laughing-at chestnut). The Zambian public, with its highly sophisticated sense of humour, has always provided an audience for Mr. Sata.

They (the Zambian public) know what the Zambian politicians themselves and others are only just beginning to find out: that Zambian politics is theatre and a particular kind of theatre at that: the theatre of the absurd. Beckett and Pinter, the pre-eminent absurdist masters, and Nobel literature laureates both, would have been proud to write such masterful absurdist dramas. The key is not to take any of it seriously and I guess that is what the great Zambian public appreciate about Mr. Sata—he's one of the few Zambian politicians who doesn't take himself or his chosen profession seriously.

These dramas would not be complete without their villains, of course. Interestingly enough, the dramatis personae indicates that the character M. C. Sata is one of the jesters, not one of the villains. No, the villains of this particular piece are the intellectuals, the main ones being Guy Scott and Sakwiba Sikota. It is the intellectuals that have brought an air of respectability to an utterly absurd absurdist drama. It is the intellectuals who have sacrificed their moral and intellectual integrity for the purpose of gaining political glory. But at what cost?

It is embarrassing to hear these intellectuals trying to defend the indefensible.

Which brings us to the "Front" in PF. PF is indeed a front for something other than patriotism. PF is a front for the unbridled lust for power. Power at any cost, including the one thing that defines an intellectual, the ability to use his intellect to think independently and impartially.

The intellectuals behind PF have become morally bankrupt. And in so doing, they have also become intellectually bankrupt and reduced to the role of merely supporting the protagonist of the piece, the jester.

Patriotism has indeed become the last refuge of the scoundrel.