Zambian voters have 14 candidates to choose from in today’s presidential election. But it’s a two-horse race with a clear favourite.
A democratic test in Zambia
When Hakainde Hichilema won Zambia’s presidency on his fifth attempt in 2021, he promised to restore economic stability and to put an end to the violent repression and intimidation of the opposition seen under his predecessor Edgar Lungu. Five years on, the macroeconomic picture has improved but Zambians are not feeling better off and Hichilema himself is accused of a drift towards authoritarianism.
Although Hichilema faces 13 challengers for the presidency, only one represents a real threat: former lawyer Brian Mundubile, who has the backing of the main opposition parties including the remnants of Lungu’s Patriotic Front. But Mundubile claims the president’s party has imposed administrative hurdles on the opposition and targeted them with police action.
“We’ve not been able to campaign freely, we were stopped permits, landing rights and permits to fly. When our opponent, president Hakainde Hichilema, had three helicopters, he could fly and have six rallies a day, we were only allowed to do our campaigns by road. I have had no passport for the past four months. I have had no phones; my phones were confiscated,” he told reporters this week.
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A landlocked country in southern Africa more than 10 times the size of Ireland with a population of more than 22 million, Zambia was known as Northern Rhodesia from 1911 until it gained independence from Britain in 1964. The second biggest copper producer in Africa, Zambia also produces about 20 per cent of the world’s emeralds and it mines gold, silver, lead, zinc, coal, uranium, manganese and nickel as well as rare earth minerals.
Kenneth Kaunda governed Zambia from 1964, first as a multiparty democracy and from 1972 as a one-party state until 1991, when he called a multiparty election and lost. Kaunda handed power peacefully to the opposition candidate Frederick Chiluba and there have been two further peaceful transfers of power between parties, making Zambia one of the strongest democracies in the region.
Lungu’s presidency saw Zambia’s economy stagnate and during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 it defaulted on its debt to China and other lenders. Lungu became increasingly autocratic, jailing Hichilema for treason in 2017 after he alleged that Hichilema’s motorcade didn’t give way to his on the road.
A businessman and former chief executive in Zambia of accountancy firms Coopers and Lybrand and Grant Thornton, Hichilema negotiated a restructuring of the sovereign debt. He has restored Zambia’s standing in international financial circles and the Zambian kwacha was one of the world’s best performing currencies last year.
Hichilema has ambitious plans to increase the output from mining and he has managed relations with China and the United States with skill. Zambia has enjoyed a close relationship with Beijing since the 1960s and China is an important creditor with extensive investments in mining, roads, airports, power plants and other infrastructure.
Despite the improvement in some headline economic figures under Hichilema, unemployment is at 10 per cent, poverty is rising and millions of Zambians are struggling with the rising cost of living. Hichilema remains the favourite to win today’s election and monitors from the African Union, the European Union and others will be on the ground to observe whether Zambia upholds its high democratic standards.
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