Zambia has done it again. On August 17, President Edgar Lungu conceded defeat and congratulated longtime opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema on a remarkable victory.
Hichilema defeated Lungu — and 14 other candidates — winning 2.8-million votes against the incumbent’s 1.8-million.
For the third time in the country’s history, power changed hands via the ballot box. And for the third time this happened not only democratically but also peacefully. Along with Malawi, Zambia is now leading the way as one of a very small number of countries to change administrations during the coronavirus pandemic.
In addition to the fact that it happened during a global democratic recession, Hichilema’s achievement is striking for two reasons.
First, it came after a period of growing repression in Zambia that had weakened key democratic institutions and led to fears that the country could become the “new Zimbabwe”.
Second, despite former president Lungu enjoying so many advantages of incumbency that the opposition was effectively competing with one hand tied behind its back, Hichilema won in a landslide.
The gap between the candidates — almost 1-million votes in a country where there are only 7-million people on the electoral register — was four times the winning margin achieved by Michael Sata in 2011, the last time an opposition party won power.
After every opposition victory in Africa, there is a wave of optimistic media coverage wondering whether a wave of transfers of power is about to be unleashed.
With the Zambian elections of 2021, this has been heightened by the emphatic nature of Lungu’s defeat. But even though there have been moments when events in one country have inspired those in another — such as the impact of the freeing of Nelson Mandela on pro-democracy movements across Africa in 1990 — there is also a tendency to exaggerate the spillover effects on the rest of the continent.
Nothing that happened in Zambia shifts the political reality in Cameroon, Uganda or Zimbabwe. Hichilema’s success can only be repeated if the conditions that gave rise to it are also replicated.
ECONOMIC FACTORS
That will be extremely difficult in more authoritarian states — and in some countries it will be all but impossible in the near future. This caveat notwithstanding, the lessons of the Zambian election about how entrenched authoritarians can be removed from power are worth learning — for opposition parties, civil society groups and all who care about democracy.
The most obvious lesson from Zambia is that an economic crisis can undermine the hold on power of genuinely repressive regimes. This might seem obvious, but the focus on ethnic, regional, or racial voting in Africa has often obscured the extent to which people vote on the economy.
Swing voters are more likely to line up behind the opposition, and ruling party supporters are most likely to stay at home when they blame the government for economic pain.
The most obvious lesson from Zambia is that an economic crisis can undermine the hold on power of genuinely repressive regimes
Ahead of the election, nearly all of Zambia’s key economic indicators were extremely poor. Unemployment was high and particularly acute among the youth, one of the groups that helped swing the outcome in Hichilema’s favour.
Corruption was pervasive, inflation was in double digits and the high cost of living left about 40% of Zambians unable to eat as normal. The staggering external debt — $12bn (R179bn), up from $1.9 in 2011 — took money away from social services, and service delivery was so poor that sporadic protests flared up in urban centres. Hichilema positioned himself as the business-savvy leader Zambia needed.
OPPOSITION LEARNING AND UNITY
It was also important that Hichilema learnt from past election defeats. This led to three key developments. First, the opposition was more coherent. Hichilema persuaded eight opposition parties to back his United Party for National Development (UPND) ahead of the election.
Though the parties were small and lacked clear power bases, they were led by well-known figures, including some who had served as ministers under Lungu. Importantly, these individuals were united in their opposition to the governing Patriotic Front (PF) and seen as credible by many. This elite pact legitimised Hichilema as an inclusive national leader and presented the UPND as a reliable vehicle for removing the PF from power.
The UPND protected the vote. Unlike in 2016 when UPND election monitors had a limited presence in key areas, in 2021 the opposition appears to have deployed monitors in almost all the 12,152 polling stations. It became very difficult for the government to manipulate the vote.
Once the votes were tallied at constituency level, party agents faxed the signed results forms to their representatives at the national totalling centre in Lusaka to make sure the figures announced by the electoral commission matched their tally.
CIVIL SOCIETY MATTERS
The role of civil society in Africa has often been called into question, but Zambia demonstrates just how importunate civil society groups can be. In 2021, civil society played a number of critical roles.
First, civic organisations campaigned throughout the country to raise awareness on the importance of voting and vote protection. Institutions like Governance, Elections, Advocacy, Research Services held a series of meetings on voter education, sensitising the population.
Zambia demonstrates just how importunate civil society groups can be
Civil society organisations also sent out thousands of monitors, to all 156 constituencies. Civil society initiated court cases against the abuse of state power.
The persistent attack on the erosion of the rule of law and human rights raised awareness among voters and helped delegitimise the PF.
Though they did not always win, the cases drew attention to the erosion of democracy.
THE DIFFUSION OF DEMOCRACY
These lessons can be learnt by opposition parties and democracy activists across Africa. But they will not always be easy to reproduce. Hichilema’s win was celebrated by other opposition leaders, such as Zimbabwe’s Nelson Chamisa and Uganda’s Bobi Wine, but the conditions that made it possible are not present in Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Though Lungu’s regime was repressive, and there were fears that the army would be used to repress opposition protests, the military remained politically neutral. And even though many Ugandans and Zimbabweans demand change, there is no popular memory of replacing the government via the ballot box to give voters confidence that their ballot matters, and to empower the electoral commission to believe that it is safe to announce an opposition victory.
The lessons of Zambia are still pertinent in these countries, but it will take many years of struggle to put them into practice.
• Sishuwa is a lecturer in modern history at the University of Zambia and postdoctoral research fellow in the Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa at the University of Cape Town.
Cheeseman is professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham and author of “How To Rig an Election”.
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