Summary
In the article for the Journal of Democracy titled “How Zambia’s Opposition Won,” Danielle Resnick explores the path that the population of the country had completed before the opposition finally won, symbolizing the drastic turn in the direction of democratization. Hakainde Hichilema was elected Zambia’s seventh president on August 12, 2021. As a representative of the opposition United Party for National Development (UPND), Hichilema hoped to improve the economic management of the country, increase the Zambian civil society’s resilience, restore the rule of law, as well as address the massive national debt.
The political landscape of Zambia in the past two decades had commenced in October 1991 after one party had ruled for seventeen years despite the ethnolinguistic diversity of the country. In the 2000s, the country experienced some significant economic growth but became stagnant after 2010, falling to 1.4% GDP in 2019 (Resnick, 2022). The lack of financial stability in the country has been attributed to the leadership of the Patriotic Front (PF) party under the leadership of Edgar Lungu. The long-term ruling of the same party led to increased levels of corruption and the country’s fiscal mismanagement. In light of the falling prices of copper, which is a natural resource on which the economy relied, the most prominent exporters were forced into external debt and unemployment. Thus, the running of Lungu for a third presidential term in 2021 was somewhat controversial, with the opposition emphasizing his inadequate and repressive leadership that should not continue.
The shift in political power toward a more democratic one occurred not without hurdles. Even though the election of 2021 took place during the coronavirus pandemic, the turnout of the population exceeded 70%, which was an indication that Zambia’s population was adamant about giving their vote to the political party they supported (Resnick, 2022). However, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, the ruling president had deployed the military and blocked messaging services and the Internet, which raised concerns that PF would engage in election outcome manipulation through misinformation. Despite the attempts of PF to prevent the victory of its opposition, Hichilema won by 59% of the vote, which eliminated the need for a runoff and led to UPND obtaining a majority in the unicameral National Assembly.
The winning of UPND by landslide meant that the country was ready for a change and wanted to break free from the crackdowns on the media and civil society that the PF had imposed for several terms. Specifically, under Lungu’s rule, the large majority of independent media print and TV outlets were shut down while the Public Order Act was put into place to ensure no opposition rallies and protests. As a result, Zambia fell down in the democracy ratings and government assessments, with the Bertelsmann Transformation Index naming Zambia a “highly defective democracy” in its 2020 rating (Resnick, 2022, p. 71). Therefore, if Lungu had been successful at influencing the elections and become victorious despite the massive popularity of Hichilema, the country would no longer be considered an electoral democracy at all.
The victory of the opposition party and the decline of the PF marked a resurgence of democracy-based institutions after twenty years of volatility in the country. UPND was initially founded by Anderson Mazoka in 1998, hoping to gain more political representation within the government as well as contribute to the improved management of the economy, the restoration of free healthcare and education, as well as the promotion of ethnolinguistic diversity awareness in the country. However, even though UPND worked on developing a strong coalition with the ruling party, it was weakened by Mazoka’s unexpected death before the 2006 elections (Resnick, 2022). Hichilema became Mazoka’s successor and won 25% of the votes in the elections, which was not enough to have significant political influence in the country. For the rest of the 2000s, PF outperformed its opposition in every election. The PF was engaged in the campaign against UPND, calling Hichilema the “calculator boy” and emphasizing his privileged background to push lower-income voters away from him (Resnick, 2022, p. 74). Besides, PF emphasized their primary opponent’s background to undermine his appeal to ethnic groups.
Despite being targeted by the ruling party, Hichilema managed to stay relevant and stand out among other African leaders of the opposition. Being Zambia’s wealthiest man with a US $300 million net worth, he had multiple business connections and thus had the resources to fund his campaigns, which was not feasible for other party leaders (Resnick, 2022). Hichilema financially benefited from investing in mining and tourism, real estate, finance, and ranching, which has given him the resources to be highly flexible when traveling during his 2021 election campaign. The abundant business background was instrumental in persuading different population segments that Hichilema could get the economy back to being stable, create more jobs for the youth, and lead the country to prosperity. In light of PF’s oppressive politics and attacks on fundamental freedoms, Hichilema was presented as a more appealing candidate who could change things around. Thus, his victory in the elections was a result of many factors combined, both dependent and independent of UPND’s efforts.
Analysis
The success of opposition in Zambia’s 2021 elections shows that a country’s population cannot tolerate oppressive politics for a long time, especially if there is no financial stability on which people can rely and ‘close eyes’ on attacks on freedom of the press and other indiscretions. Because PF had significant political leverage after building its electorate for over a decade, it soon became concerned with having to preserve its power for as long as possible. With the desire to suppress any signs of opposition, PF got more oppressive, hiring intrusive cadres to provide surveillance of local citizens and control underground operations such as collecting bribes (Resnick, 2022). While such tactics effectively squashed any opposition and ensured the population was kept under control, the reality was that the outcome was the opposite, such as fueling increased resentment among voters. Thus, the more oppressive the government gets, the more resistance from the public it can encounter when there is a mismatch between society’s expectations for the ruling party and the results that the latter shows in political, economic, and cultural spheres.
It appears that the success of Zambia’s opposition also happened because of the ruling’s party ineffectiveness in addressing the economic concerns of the population. Personally, I agree with Resnick (2022) that the PF’s failure at the 2021 election was significantly tainted by the fact that Lungu did not show enough accountability, nor did he exhibit transparency on how the public finances had been managed. This is indicative of the need for the government to evaluate the economic concerns from the perspective of citizens if they desire to win a future election. Because Lungu was blindsided by his political power and did not understand the prevailing climate before the election, it opened more opportunities for the opposition to hone in on the regime’s limitations and the need to change it. Even though Zambia has had an extensive network of civil society organizations that demanded good governance in the country, the government disregarded their lobbies for change, continuously undermining their influence.
Thus, the opposition in Zambia won the 2021 election because it was more effective at finding the areas of public dissatisfaction with the previous regime and showing citizens that change is possible. This is illustrated in Hichilema’s appeal to the public that he would enable a policy of zero tolerance toward corruption, which was something that the PF had never accomplished but rather perpetuated bribery. Besides, there were high expectations for UPND to take away the power from bureaucratic institutions and “avoid politicizing the transfer of central-government resources to district councils and avoid interfering in areas of their legal autonomy” (Resnick, 2022, p. 81). The faith in democratic institutions prevailed because of the expectations that they could lead to Zambia’s economic revival by giving more opportunities to the unemployed while also allowing large businesses to thrive and contribute to the economy. Through the resilience of the public that had resisted the excessive control of the former ruling party and chose the path of democratization, it was possible to make a change in the pollical makeup of the country despite a decade of one-party dominance.
Reference
Resnick, D. (2022). How Zambia’s opposition won.Journal of Democracy, 33(1), 70-84. Web.