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Zambia - Politics

The major figure in Zambian politics from 1964 to 1991 was Kenneth Kaunda, who led the campaign for independence and successfully bridged the rivalries among the country's various regions and ethnic groups. Kaunda tried to base government on his philosophy of "humanism," which condemned human exploitation and stressed cooperation among people, but not at the expense of the individual.

Kaunda's political party--the United National Independence Party (UNIP)--was founded in 1959 and was in power under Kaunda's leadership from 1964 to 1991. Before 1972, Zambia had three significant political parties, but only UNIP had a nationwide following.

In December 1972, Zambian law established a one-party state, and all other political parties were banned; this was later enshrined in the 1973 constitution. Kaunda, the sole candidate, was elected President in the 1973 elections. Elections also were held for the National Assembly. Only UNIP members were permitted to run, but these seats were sharply contested. President Kaunda's mandate was renewed in December 1978, October 1983, and October 1988 in a "yes" or "no" vote on his candidacy.

Growing opposition to UNIP's monopoly on power led to the rise in 1990 of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). The MMD assembled an increasingly impressive group of important Zambians, including prominent UNIP defectors and labor leaders. Zambia's first multi-party elections for parliament and the presidency were held on October 31, 1991. MMD candidate Frederick Chiluba resoundingly carried the presidential election over Kenneth Kaunda with 81% of the vote. To add to the MMD landslide, in the parliamentary elections, the MMD won 125 of the 150 elected seats, and UNIP won the remaining 25.

Zambia is an emerging democracy and has a candidate-centered electoral system. The main political parties leave it to local party members to identify aspirants, i.e. those who want to become candidates, and to come up with recommendations to the national leadership who then select and decide on candidates. These procedures result in a selection process which suffers from a lack of transparency and represents a high financial risk for aspiring candidates. They must provide payments, bribes, food, and transportation to show off their resources and popularity, even though their successful efforts at the local level might have no bearing on the central party leader’s final nomination decision.

Observers of the Zambian political scene appear virtually unanimous in asserting the importance of continued pressure for reform from civil society both to advance the reform agenda and to prevent backsliding. Civil society has matured and deepened during the past decade and, in the course of the Third Term Debate, demonstrated an impressive capacity for cooperative action.

The prevailing absence of political accountability has deep historical roots in Zambian political history and is embedded both in the structure of institutions and in the informal norms that govern the behavior of political actors and citizens throughout the political system. It has contributed to the development of a culture of impunity among the powerful, and a culture of avoidance that governs the behavior of those who are not. The stalling of political liberalization after the 1991 transition resulted in large part from the failure to alter institutional arrangements designed to entrench executive (in practice, presidential) domination of both state and ruling party structures during the period of one-party rule.

Systematic anti-corruption efforts are critical in a number of regards, not least because a failure to address root causes will leave Zambia vulnerable to a recurrence of the systematic looting of public resources that characterized previous residential regimes. Issues of corruption will likely be among the most critical factors stimulating sustained citizen pressure for reform. The success of anti-corruption efforts appears to depend to an extent on continued pressure from civil society, the sequencing of efforts, and the development of credibility as reforms gain momentum. Credibility in turn appears to depend both on demonstrating success in prosecuting key individuals from the previous regime and, at the same time, on demonstrating that anti-corruption initiatives are both impartially applied and not merely instrumentally useful in eliminating political opponents.

The dilemma of Zambian politics is how to break the Gordian knot that confronts efforts to reduce, channel and redistribute the power of the executive, since such efforts are ultimately subject to executive approval. In the present political context, the prospects for such reform appear closely linked to what is perhaps the second most pressing issue for the Zambian polity—reducing the prevalence of official corruption, which drains scarce developmental resources and seriously undercuts state legitimacy.