20/08/2026
PEACE IS NOT SURRENDER
Fellow Barotse Nationals,
"For a man to be truly peaceful, he must first know violence. If not, then his peace belongs to whoever threatens it."
"Be good to people, and also let them know that you are capable of evil when they misbehave. No one have monopoly of madness."
Peace is precious. It should be pursued, protected and preserved wherever possible because no responsible nation should desire unnecessary conflict or the suffering that accompanies it. Yet peace must never be confused with surrender, cowardice, indifference or an obligation to accept injustice indefinitely. There is a profound difference between choosing peace and being powerless. A person, a community or a nation may deliberately choose restraint because it understands the terrible consequences of violence. To refuse provocation does not mean lacking strength; to seek dialogue does not mean abandoning dignity; and to pursue diplomacy does not mean surrendering identity, legitimate interests or territorial integrity.
There is an old saying that for a man to be truly peaceful, he must first know violence; otherwise, his peace belongs to whoever threatens him. Properly understood, this is not an argument in favour of violence. It is an argument for understanding the nature and consequences of conflict sufficiently well to appreciate the value of preventing it. Those who understand what violence does to families, communities and nations should ordinarily be among the strongest advocates of peace. But durable peace requires more than good intentions. It requires wisdom, courage, discipline, preparedness and clearly understood boundaries, because peace becomes fragile when one side begins to interpret the other's restraint as an inability to respond.
This is why kindness must never be confused with helplessness, patience with surrender, or restraint with incapacity. There is another provocative saying that one should be good to people while also letting them know that one is capable of responding when they misbehave, because no one has a monopoly on madness. The language is deliberately blunt, but its responsible lesson is not that anyone should commit evil or seek revenge. The lesson is that goodness must not become an invitation to exploitation. We should be good without being naïve, peaceful without being defenceless, patient without surrendering our boundaries, and willing to extend friendship without abandoning our legitimate interests.
This principle is particularly relevant to Barotseland because our history has too often been reduced to simplistic narratives that obscure the character of the arrangements through which our relationship with Zambia was established. The Barotseland Agreement 1964 was not an ordinary domestic statute of Zambia, nor was it a private understanding between Zambia and one individual. It arose from the constitutional arrangements surrounding the end of British rule and the establishment of the new political order in the territory. It was a tripartite settlement involving three governments representing three countries: the Government of the United Kingdom, the Government of Northern Rhodesia and the Government of Barotseland. Its terms were consequently of profound constitutional and political significance to the parties concerned.
The participation of three governments matters. It means that the historical character of the Agreement cannot properly be reconstructed as though it were simply a matter between the future Republic of Zambia and the person of the Litunga. The Barotseland side was not acting merely to protect the personal dignity or interests of one individual. The Agreement concerned the political position of Barotseland and was concluded in circumstances in which the future relationship between Barotseland and the emerging independent state was being expressly addressed. The Barotseland side represented the interests of the Barotse polity, its institutions, its chiefs and its people. To reduce that arrangement to the supposed ego of one traditional ruler is therefore to misunderstand both the document and the political circumstances in which it was concluded.
Nor can the historical question be answered simply by saying that Zambia now owns Barotseland because Zambia subsequently enacted legislation concerning the territory. Barotseland was not created by an Act of the Zambian Parliament, and there was no original Zambian statute that first annexed Barotseland and then made the Agreement a subordinate product of Zambian law. The Agreement preceded the independence of Zambia and formed part of the arrangements through which the relationship between the parties was defined at independence. It therefore cannot reasonably be treated retrospectively as though Barotseland had first been incorporated into Zambia by an ordinary act of a legislature and had thereafter existed merely at the pleasure of that legislature.
The question of ratification must consequently be understood in its proper context. The Agreement was not itself an Act of the Zambian Parliament. Its origin was a negotiated settlement involving the governments and political entities concerned in the transition to independence. Whether and to what extent it was subsequently incorporated into Zambia's domestic legal order is a separate question from its original character and from the obligations arising out of the settlement itself. Non-ratification, insofar as it bears upon the question of domestic incorporation, cannot simply be ignored; nor can subsequent Zambian legislation automatically erase the distinction between a negotiated settlement and an ordinary statute. Even if one were to accept the proposition that Zambia subsequently incorporated the Agreement into its domestic legal framework, that would still not answer the more fundamental question of whether Zambia could thereby extinguish the participation and interests of the other parties through unilateral legislative action.
The principle is simple enough to understand. It would be like signing a marriage certificate without the consent or participation of the bride and then later claiming that the marriage was entirely the property of the groom and could therefore be dissolved according to his unilateral decision. The analogy is not intended to reduce constitutional or international questions to matrimonial law. It illustrates the principle of consent: where an undertaking is entered into by identifiable parties, one party cannot simply remove the others from the historical equation and then declare that the undertaking has ceased to have significance because its own legislature has decided that it should cease to exist.
This is why the action taken by the Kaunda Government and the Zambian Parliament in 1969 cannot be treated as though the mere enactment of legislation automatically settles every question concerning the Agreement. A legislature may possess extensive domestic legislative powers, but the existence of that power does not itself answer whether one party to a solemn tripartite settlement could unilaterally extinguish the obligations and interests arising from that settlement without the participation of the other parties. The proper questions are therefore not merely whether Zambia passed legislation, but what authority it relied upon, what legal character the Agreement possessed, what parties were bound by it, and what consequences followed from Zambia's unilateral action.
The Agreement itself also cannot be understood as a political document whose substance disappeared the moment independence was achieved. Its provisions were designed to regulate the relationship between the parties in the new political dispensation. The constitutional arrangements surrounding independence expressly recognised the special position of Barotseland, while the Agreement contained provisions concerning the administration of Barotseland and the relationship between its institutions and the Government of the newly independent state. Those provisions demonstrate why it is historically and legally inadequate to treat the Agreement as though it were simply another ordinary law made by a legislature exercising power over an undifferentiated territory.
But there is an important distinction that Barotseland must make very clearly. The historical dispute concerning the Agreement is not the destination of the Barotseland national project today. The Barotse National Council decided in 2012 upon the political course that Barotseland would pursue. That decision transformed the nature of the national question. Barotseland is no longer waiting for Zambia to determine whether it will restore, honour, reinterpret or renegotiate an arrangement that Barotseland regards as having been unlawfully extinguished. The political question has moved beyond that chapter. That issue is dead and forgotten.
What remains before us is the consummation of our liberty. We are not pursuing liberty as an act of hatred towards Zambia or towards the Zambian people. We are not seeking freedom because we regard our neighbours as enemies. We are pursuing liberty because a people has a right to determine its political destiny, preserve its national identity, maintain its institutions and assume responsibility for its own future. The decision made in 2012 therefore carries a responsibility upon subsequent generations to transform the aspiration for liberty into the disciplined construction of a national state capable of governing itself, protecting its people, preserving its heritage and engaging the international community with maturity.
That task is made more difficult because the obstacles to Barotseland's liberty are not found only outside our borders. We must contend with opposition from without and, at times, with confusion, division, opportunism and misplaced interests within. Some oppose the restoration of Barotseland because they fear the consequences of political change; others have become accustomed to arrangements that have existed for generations; and still others may place personal, political or material interests above the long-term interests of the nation. We must recognise these realities without allowing them to consume our national character. The existence of an opponent does not give us permission to abandon our principles, and disagreement does not require hatred.
Our struggle must therefore be distinguished from the politics of vengeance. We must never make ordinary Zambians responsible for every decision taken by governments before their birth, just as we must never make ordinary people elsewhere responsible for the historical decisions of governments and colonial administrations. Governments, political positions and historical disputes are not the same thing as the ordinary human beings who live within the territories concerned. A mature national movement understands this distinction. It can defend a political position firmly while continuing to respect human dignity, and it can pursue national liberty without teaching its people to despise another nation.
The same maturity must govern our approach to territorial questions. Questions concerning historical territory, boundaries and territorial integrity are never trivial matters. They involve history, identity, communities, administration, documentary evidence, treaties, agreements, maps and the legitimate interests of generations. The accompanying map is therefore presented as a representation of the territorial position advanced by the Royal Barotseland Government and its National Mapping Agency concerning the First, Second and Third Core Territorial Frontiers of the Kingdom of Barotseland. Such frontiers must be studied seriously through historical records, documentary evidence, cartographic research, colonial archives, boundary instruments and competent national institutions. They should never become an excuse for intimidation, reckless provocation or violence.
Our territorial consciousness must also extend to the wider historical geography of the region. The history of the Caprivi area, which occupies an important place in the historical consciousness of Barotseland and is sometimes referred to in Barotse discourse as German Barotseland, provides another reminder that territorial questions can survive political changes and administrative rearrangements. The historical circumstances of Caprivi and Barotseland are not identical, and they should not be artificially made so. Nevertheless, the broader lesson remains valuable: a modern administrative map does not by itself erase the historical questions that produced it. Such questions must be preserved, researched and understood rather than forgotten simply because subsequent governments have become accustomed to particular boundaries.
This is also why our commitment to peace must not be interpreted as an admission of helplessness. A peaceful society must possess the civic, institutional and moral capacity to protect its people, territory, heritage and fundamental interests. Responsible self-defence is not a licence for aggression, a call to violence or an excuse for revenge. It is a recognition that peace is most durable when those who value it possess the discipline and preparedness necessary to protect it responsibly. We should never seek conflict, but neither should we cultivate the illusion that the absence of provocation requires the absence of preparedness.
The objective, therefore, is neither aggression nor submission. It is peace with dignity, restraint with resolve, diplomacy backed by preparedness, friendship accompanied by boundaries, and national strength exercised with responsibility. We can pursue dialogue without abandoning our position. We can engage in diplomacy without surrendering our historical consciousness. We can reject violence without surrendering our capacity to protect our people. We can extend friendship without consenting to contempt. We can seek reconciliation without allowing reconciliation to become another name for capitulation.
Fellow Barotse Nationals, our responsibility is now greater than merely remembering what happened to us. We must become capable of determining what happens to us next. That requires serious institutions, educated citizens, disciplined leadership, historical scholarship, reliable cartography, national unity, economic capacity, effective diplomacy and an unwavering commitment to responsible statecraft. The liberty decided upon in 2012 must not remain merely an aspiration remembered in speeches; it must be progressively embodied in the institutions and conduct of the nation.
Let us therefore remain peaceful without becoming passive, patient without becoming submissive, courteous without becoming naïve, and determined without becoming reckless. Let us preserve our history without allowing it to imprison our future. Let us defend what we believe to be legitimate without teaching ourselves to hate those who disagree with us. Let us prepare responsibly for every eventuality while continuing to place diplomacy, dialogue, law and peaceful resolution above unnecessary confrontation.
Peace is not weakness. Peace is a choice. But the strongest peace is not the peace maintained because one side believes the other will never resist. It is the peace maintained by people who possess the wisdom to avoid unnecessary conflict, the discipline to control their passions, the courage to defend what matters and the maturity to understand that strength is most valuable when exercised responsibly.
We therefore choose peace because we understand its value, not because we have abandoned our resolve. We choose diplomacy because we understand that nations must ultimately coexist, not because we have forgotten our history. We choose restraint because we value human life, not because we are incapable of defending our legitimate interests. And we choose liberty because the decision of our nation to pursue its own political destiny is not a temporary emotion but a responsibility that our generation must carry to its lawful and peaceful consummation.
Let our conduct therefore demonstrate that Barotseland can be firm without being hateful, peaceful without being weak, historically conscious without being imprisoned by the past, and determined without becoming reckless. Let our enemies, whether within or without, understand that our commitment to peace should never be mistaken for an absence of resolve. Let our friends understand that our pursuit of liberty is not directed against them. And let future generations inherit not a culture of bitterness, but a nation that knew how to defend its dignity while remaining committed to peace.
Peace must remain our preference, but liberty must remain our purpose.
We shall pursue that liberty with dignity, discipline, wisdom and resolve because,
'Ku hatelelwa ki banna ba bañwi ki bukuba;
ku fanisa Barotseland, Naha Ya Lewanika ki ku ka potoloha ka namulomo.'
