Much of the scholarly work on politics in Zambia during the early 2000s stresses the role of populist mobilisations and the exploitation of ethnic language identities when explaining one of the main political developments of this period – the growing popularity of Michael Sata and his opposition party, the Patriotic Front. A common limitation of these studies is their narrow focus on the immediate context as the source of political populism and ethnic strategy. Drawing on interviews and archival and newspaper sources, this article interprets the later actions of Sata within the context of the past and demonstrates that the nature and style of the political strategies that he employed in the early 2000s were rooted in his experiences in late colonial Zambia, when he learnt the benefits of identifying oneself in ethnic language terms and engaging in worker mobilisations that were populist in character. The reappearance of ethnic and populist strategies in the early 2000s reflects a deeper connection to the past and demonstrates the long shadow of late colonial influences on contemporary Zambian politics. It also challenges the dominant periodisation in Zambian political history by drawing significant connections between different historical eras and showing how lessons learnt in one period were replicated in recognisable form in later periods.

2000 年代初期，赞比亚的许多政治学术著作在解释这一时期的主要政治发展之一——迈克尔·萨塔 (Michael Sata) 和他的反对党爱国阵线。这些研究的一个共同局限是它们狭隘地关注作为政治民粹主义和种族战略来源的直接背景。本文利用采访、档案和报纸资源，在过去的背景下解释了萨塔后来的行动，并表明他在 2000 年代初期采用的政治策略的性质和风格植根于他在赞比亚殖民后期的经历, 当他了解到用民族语言来识别自己和参与具有民粹主义特征的工人动员的好处时。2000 年代初种族和民粹主义战略的再现反映了与过去更深层次的联系，并展示了晚期殖民影响对当代赞比亚政治的长期影响。它还通过在不同历史时期之间建立重要联系并展示一个时期的经验教训如何在后期以可识别的形式复制来挑战赞比亚政治历史中占主导地位的分期。