It’s delusional to hope Zambia’s triumph will spill into Zimbabwe
To conclude that Zimbabwe’s opposition is next in line and that it’s likely to win the 2023 elections borders on blind optimism and a skewed interpretation of Zimbabwean politics.
To win an election in Zimbabwe is something that cannot be hoped for without an acknowledgment of the brutal and militaristic nature of the country’s electoral system.
The decisive defeat of Zambia’s incumbent President Edgar Lungu by the leader of the opposition UPND Hakainde Hichilema, who raked in nearly three million votes compared with Lungu’s 1.8 million, is a clear indication of Zambia’s credible steps to a civilian-driven democracy.
But swirling hopes that the transparent politics witnessed in Zambia recently will spill over into neighbouring Zimbabwe in 2023 are delusional. First, the people of Zambia deserve to be congratulated for participating and remaining vigilant to ensure that their electoral systems pronounced an honest outcome. An electoral turnout of 83% of registered voters in Zambia is a thrilling display of citizens’ healthy interest in civic governance, compared with Zimbabwe and
South Africa, where voter apathy is worryingly growing.
Second, the swift decision by Lungu to concede defeat is a silver lining for a president whose turn to autocracy was well under way.
As Professor Stephen Chan, a former British diplomat and professor of politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, says of Lungu: “To his credit, he conceded with dignity and did not ‘do a Trump’. Style and democracy remain in Zambia’s politics.”
But when it comes to Zimbabwe, that’s where the similarities with Zambia’s democratic echo ends. “I can’t imagine this happening anytime soon in Zimbabwe or Uganda,” lamented Chan.
Notwithstanding the recent political trend of opposition parties ousting ruling regimes in Africa, Zimbabwe’s political terrain, in both shape and form, is systemically different.
Zimbabwe is a brutal, military-led regime that does not shy away from using crude violence and spilling blood to overturn the will of its voters. In 2008, Zimbabwe’s security regime went to great lengths to commit horrific crimes against the UN Convention on Human Rights, keeping the late Robert Mugabe in office.
Zambia’s army, in contrast, doesn’t draw its weapons on voters.
Nelson Chamisa, the leader of the main opposition party in Zimbabwe, was one of the first to joyously congratulate Hichilema.
He exclaimed that Zambia inspired Zimbabweans said: “We are next. Our turn as Zimbabwe is coming. We won’t disappoint!” Chamisa is rather too wishful here.
The Zanu-PF party that morphed into a military dictatorship, arguably from the onset of the post-colonial dispensation in 1980, has an intense desire to safeguard its elitist interests by any means possible, including the rigging of elections and outright state-organised violence.
The military elites in Zimbabwe, who openly call themselves “stockholders of the constitution and security guarantors”, are at the centre of the facilitation of electoral processes that are crudely exclusive and are at all times meant to keep the opposition, no matter how popular it is, out of power.
Zimbabwe is a securitised regime in the same league as Iran or Eritrea. Zambia is blessed to have an army that doesn’t take lives to defend a losing election candidate. That’s the key difference.
And that is why, in 2023, in Zimbabwe, a Zambia-style outcome won’t occur.