Zambia eroding: Four ongoing trends to be worried about
Many of Zambia’s structures and norms are being gradually undermined.
President Edgar Lungu at the UN in September 2017. Credit: UN Photo/Ariana Lindquist.
The release of Zambia’s main opposition leader in August was greeted by some observers as a sign that the country’s democratic spirit lives on. Zambia has long been considered a model of stability in a tumultuous region, and Hakainde Hichilema’s four-month detention could be seen as an anomaly that has now been dealt with.
[The real reasons Zambia’s opposition leader was released from jail]
But the reality is that it is too early to draw a sigh of relief.
Long before Hichilema’s arrest on charges of treason (and since), Zambia has seen many of the structures, mechanisms, and norms that serve to uphold peace gradually undermined. Politics has become more polarised and exclusionary, frustrations have grown, and violence has increased.
Here are four particularly worrying trends witnessed over the past three years.
1) Intolerance of opposition and criticism
Since 2014, the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) has demonstrated a growing intolerance of opposition and criticism, and has increasingly turned to the security apparatus to suppress it. With loyalists appointed to key positions, there has an uptick of police brutality, including the killing of an unarmed protester this April. The government has used the Public Order Act to limit protests and rallies, or at least give it an excuse to use force if its restrictions are not obeyed.
At the same time, the government has clamped down on the free and critical media. This has included the closure of the main independent newspaper, The Post, last year and the harassment of other media outlets such as The Mast, which replaced The Post.
Hichilema’s arrest in April was another example of this reduced tolerance. Charged for high treason for not giving way to the president’s motorcade, the leader of the opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) was facing 15 years in prison or even the death penalty before he was released.
2) The tribalisation of politics
Over the past few years, political rhetoric has also begun to change. Following independence in 1964, Zambia’s motto quickly became “One Zambia, One Nation”. This was part of a strategy to bridge divides across the country’s 73 ethnic groups and foster national unity.
Recently, however, the main political parties have been using more divisive language, including a new emphasis on tribal-regional divisions. This is partly demonstrated by the strong ties today between the Tonga and UPND, and Bemba and PF respectively, as well as the appointment of tribal representatives to key positions.
This shift challenges the long-standing tradition of cross-ethnic parties and could transform Zambia into a more divided society in which political elites increasingly depend on tribal distinctions to harness support.
3) Breakdown of inter-party deliberation
Over the past few years, Zambia has seen very limited inter-party deliberation behind closed doors compared to previous eras. This mechanism is aimed at promoting inclusion of opposition parties, fostering compromise, and ensuring a degree of unity.
Such a meeting – between Hichilema and President Edgar Lungu – was part of the process that led to the former’s release, but it is worrying that it took almost a year from the August 2016 election before the two met for a formal discussion. This was in fact Lungu’s first official meeting with the opposition since he gained power at the start of 2015. This marks him out as unique in the history of Zambia since the re-introduction of multi-party politics in 1991.
Given that Hichilema and the UPND won nearly 48% of the vote in 2016, the lack of talks has contributed to the exclusion of large parts of Zambian society and threatened further polarisation of politics.
Added to this is the fact that the ability of civil society to serve as a broker in times of crises has also been reduced. The process of registering NGOs has been made more complex, and leaders of civil society organisations have been arrested and harassed. The churches in Zambia have long served as the backbone of civil society engagement, but the government has tried to discredit some, while recent reports suggest that others, predominantly Pentecostal ones, are being coopted and rewarded for speaking out in support of the ruling party.
4) Militarisation of politics
Since 2011, the main political parties have – to a larger extent than in previous elections – begun to recruit cadres. These young people are often paid in food or alcohol to rally support or intimidate supporters of rival parties. This trend has coincided with an increase in youth unemployment.
The use of party cadres, particularly during the elections in 2015 and 2016, contributed to tensions and violence. These groups are officially tasked with promoting the major parties, but evidence indicates that they also engage in violence, looting, voter intimidation, and other illegal acts.
Sanctioned by the government, the political mobs supporting the ruling party are untouchable by law, and therefore not confronted by the police when committing crimes. According to reports by the Carter Centre, this has reduced the support for opposition parties as well as political participation in general.
Political cadres have also affected the political economy by being granted control over community institutions such as markets or gas stations. This awarding of control based on connections rather than merit is not only eroding democracy, but affecting the efficiency of basic societal functions.
Not sure about the points on tribalisation…
The Kaunda/UNIP period obviously did a lot of good on promoting the One Zambia, One Nation ethos but there was still tribal competition and appointments made with such sensitivities in mind. Many rightly decry it’s apparent reemergence and the nature of it but that’s really a consequence of moving back to multi-party politics, I think an inevitable one… on what other basis could one expect to build substantial political support?
Granted, much of the current language is ugly and violence does erupt at election time. However, was Kaunda’s political repression preferable, or even a solution? The difference is that where Lungu put HH in prison on baseless charges, KK would have banned UPND, as he did to Kapwepwe’s Bemba-supported UPP and Nkumbula’s Tonga-supported ANC (the current tribal/political map is tellingly unchanged from the dynamics that existed in 1965 – a case well made in Giacomo Macola’s book on Nkumbula).
On the claim there’s a tradition of cross-tribal parties, if UNIP is the example then it should be remembered there was literally no other choice! MMD’s national popularity in 1991 was genuine but eroded by 2011; the 2011 electoral result showed a similar east-west split to that which exists now. It’s hard to support the idea there’s really much a tradition when every genuinely contested election shows the same cleavages.
In terms of the current political alignments, I think the moment to make the narrow point about tribal-regional divisions is weakening. Back in 2011, UPND were indeed almost exclusively winning in Southern province having retrenched from it’s strong performance in 2001. But in 2015 and then 2016 they broke through in Central, West, North West, rural Copperbelt and much of Lusaka provinces.
Only in Central could Tonga tribal support really work as an explanation. The party has historically had leadership from the West and North West and retained some support in both… but then again the current PF Vice-President is from Western province yet PF’s support there collapsed. UPND’s progress in the Copperbelt goes very much against the grain of a tribal argument – it is closer to being Bemba territory than any other of the major language groupings. PF’s attack that UPND are just a Tonga party appears to have failed, at least for the western half of the country and now looks outdated.
Similarly, PF do continue to rely on rock-solid support from Bemba-speaking provinces Luapula, Muchinga and Northern but are now equally strong in Eastern, where they had almost no support in 2011 (the province held out for MMD). No doubt this was due to Rupiah Banda’s switch to them but this is not Bemba country and they would have lost without making that progress.
It is also notable that when the leadership was acrimoniously contested after Sata died, the Bemba candidate (Miles Sampa) did not win. This has not affected levels of support for PF in Bemba areas.
UPND are reaching beyond it’s tribal base into other tribal-regional pockets and PF are remaining competitive by co-opting new support on the same basis. This is, in essence, a dynamic (dare one also say normal and healthy?) democratic environment where political parties must both protect their base and go beyond it. The main way to appeal to most Zambian voters remains on the basis of tribe/region/language. It was ever thus but allegiances are not quite as entrenched as might be imagined.
The use of tribal appeals in Zambian politics may be worsening in tone and nature as well as causing rising levels of violence but should not be presented as a new phenomena.