‘A Tonga Will Never Be President of ’: Politicized ethnicity, electoral competition and politics of exclusion in Zambia

[Draft: Not to be cited without permission of the author]

1

Introduction

‘Zambia will never be led by a Tonga president’.1 This statement was made by a cabinet minister in the (PF) government at an election rally in 2013. The manipulation of ethnicity to discredit political opponents is not new in Zambia, it is part of the fault lines of the incomplete colonial project of nation-state building or the so-called national integration imperative. , effectively used it against his political opponents, such as Harry Nkumbula, Nalumino Mundia and Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe to discredit and de-legitimise their bids for political power, as representing narrow ethnic interests as opposed to national interests (i.e. multi-ethnic national interest). At the dawn of independence African leaders opted to create Western-style nation-states and political institutions as a mark of modernization, and considered ethnicity (the idea of belonging to an autonomous cultural, language or regional community) as primitive and necessarily divisive. The nation or nation-state was considered multi-ethnic in character and as such inclusive of all social and ethnic groups. Leaders who represented regional or ethnic grievances were labelled sectional and therefore not worthy for national leadership. However, following on the influential work by Horowitz (1985) who characterised electoral competition in Africa in terms of ‘ethnic census’, most recent studies suggest that the use of ethnicity is an important elite resource to access power, patronage and material resources (Berman, 2007; Mozaffar, 2007 and Becker, 2015). However the ‘puzzle’ of African party systems is not only that ruling parties accuse political opponents of mobilizing support exclusively from one particular ethnic group (often the cultural community from which the leader hails), but that ethnic mobilization is the raison d’etre of electoral competition (Mozaffar and Scarritt, 2005; Posner, 2005; Cheeseman, 2007 and Ajulu, 2002).

The literature identifies three strands in the debate on ethnicity. The first, is state-centric, which denies ethnic groups any recognized political role or collective rights. This position prohibits political organization along ethnic lines2. The second strand emphasizes ethnicity’s negative contribution to Africa’s political development. This paradigm treats ethnicity as a source of division, conflict, war, genocide and underdevelopment. The last strand is the instrumentalist approach, which considers ethnicity as an instrument of political manipulation enhanced by elite competition for power, status and material resources with the consequence of social and political exclusion of entire social groups from power and access to state resources (Salih, 2001: 30).

It is not our intention in this paper to explore the meaning of ethnicity in terms of its utility in describing cultural identities. Suffice to say that, there is consensus in the literature on the fact that ethnic identities are social constructions or imagined communities (Vail, 1973: 1-20; Ranger

1 Sylvia Masebo, then Tourism and Arts Minister at an election rally in Livingstone. Zambia Newsnetwork. Available at: https://zambianewsnetwork.com//zambia-will-never-be-led-by-a-Tonga-president. 2 Samora Machel famously declared that ‘for the nation to live, the tribe must die.’

2 1985). Berman (2010), in particular makes the point that African ethnicities are a ‘social construction’ characterised by ‘fluidity, heterogeneity and hybridity’ (p.2). He argues that African ethnicities can be ‘understood as open-ended and dynamic processes of social and political creation rather than static categories before, during and after colonial rule’ (p.3). Berman introduces the concept of ‘moral economy’ which he defines as: that part of culture that legitimates the inequalities in the distribution of values that mark almost all human communities primarily through principles of redistribution and reciprocity of obligations between rulers and ruled; rich and poor in specific social contexts.’ In other words, he contends that the moral economy of a society establishes the framework of social trust. Which is the stability of mutual expectations between actors that permit social and political cohesion. I find the concept of ‘moral economy’ especially important in understanding the process of construction of social or group hegemony, which is itself the basis of ethnic mobilization and contestation for power.

The argument of this paper is that politicized ethnicity is an important resource in elite competition for power and has the consequence of building ethnic political hegemony and exclusion of opposition groups and their constituents from access to power and state resources. It is most overt in periods of intense electoral competition, especially when incumbents are vulnerable to electoral defeat. While agreeing with scholars, such as Cheeseman and Ford (2007) who argue that opposition parties tend to mainly mobilize ethnic constituencies as opposed to ruling parties that mobilize multi-ethnic support bases, we present empirical evidence from Zambia that suggests that ethnic mobilization can result in multi-ethnic coalitions that may not necessarily be bad for democracy, as the 2015 and 2016 presidential elections demonstrate. We agree with the scholarship that suggests that voting in Africa does not always follow on ethnic lines as suggested by Horowitz, but that voters take rational decisions in voting for particular parties as a way of maximizing their expected material benefits (Bratton and Kimenyi, 2010; Berman, 2010). Following the introduction, the second section discusses politicized ethnicity and electoral competition in historical perspective. The third section considers politicized ethnicity and electoral competition in Zambia since 2015. The fourth section discuses the consequences of politicized ethnicity on governance, especially on common citizenship and social inclusion. The last section is the conclusion.

Politicized ethnicity and electoral competition: brief conceptual and historical background

The concept of ethnicity has occupied scholars since the advent of independence in the early 1960s. The literature on ethnicity can be divided into four categories. The first relates to ethnicity as a form of identity, sometimes referred to as primordialism. Vail (1989) and Berman (1998) trace the historical evolution of the concept of ethnicity in Africa and show that it was an invention by colonial authorities who were obsessed with classifying the native populations into neat categories. As already pointed out above, ethnicity or the idea of belonging to a particular ethnic group is in fact an illusion given the complex multiple

3 Identities that individuals experience in their everyday existence (Berman 2010). As a concept, ethnicity defined as an identity group is of little significance. However, it is when ethnic identities are exploited and even manipulated that ethnicity acquires its utility as a ‘political resource’ in political or electoral mobilization (Büschges, 2015: 109).

Secondly, ethnicity has been defined as a social cleavage with potential to provoke ethnic conflict in society. This second characterization of ethnicity is the most dominant in the literature. Mozaffar, Scarritt and Galaich (2003) and Lemarchand (1972) define ethnicity as the manipulation of ethnic differences in society and show that this is done to achieve political and economic gain. Lemarchand in particular argues that elites use ethnicity to access state patronage and reward supporters on the bases of ethnic affiliation, in what he refers to as political ‘clientelism.’ Other scholars within this category include those who have tried to link ethnicity with electoral mobilization or party affiliation (Erdmann, 2007). Erdmann and Stroh (2008), Cheeseman and Ford (2007) and Posner (2005) have tried to establish a link between ethnicity and voter behaviour in Africa. They all conclude that voter behaviour in Africa is largely influenced more by ethnic affiliation than the efficacy of political party manifestos.

Third, ethnicity has also been described as potentially divisive and going against the logic of building national unity. Several authors, such as Berman (1998), Lonsdale (1998) and Lemarchand (1972) have argued that ethnicity is potentially divisive and a major cause of ethnic conflict in Africa. In characterizing ethnicity, especially in Africa, it is recognized that it means much more than just belonging to an ethnic group – it involves belonging to and often manipulation of broad ethno-regional or ethno-political groups (Mozaffar, et. al., 2003). It is argued that political competition in Africa is largely influenced by the manipulation of ethno-regional differences to further the political and economic interests of politicians. Thus ethnicity has acquired a negative connotation, both as a hindrance to national unity and development and as potentially corrupting as it tends to be used by politicians to win power and access to state resources.

The African experience is full of examples of the negative effects of ethnic conflict. Horowitz’s (1985) influential study of ethnic conflict in Africa clearly demonstrates how ethnic divisions have led to internecine conflicts in many parts of Africa, including Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. In Kenya, first president Jomo Kenyatta is believed to have advanced the interests of his Kikuyu ethnic group, while his successor, Daniel Arap Moi exploited the differences between his Kalejin ethnic group and the Kikuyu in the Rift Valley to foment violent ethnic conflict. The Kalejin were a favoured ethnic group during Moi’s reign (Ajulu, 2002). This is an observed trend in many African countries, where public bureaucracies and military are dominated by ethnic groups from which the President and members of the ruling coalition come from (Lynch, 2018).

4 Fourth, ethnicity has been found to inhibit democratic development, by undermining democratic institutions. Osaghae (1994) and Mozaffar et. al., (2003) have argued that there is a relationship between ethnicity and the quality of democracy in Africa. They show, for example, that in a country where there is high ethnic polarization, ethnic conflict is played out in electoral contests. Elections in such countries will tend to be manipulated in favour of the ethnic group whose party is in power. This has led to disputed elections and even electoral violence between rival ethnic groups as was the case in Kenya (2007/2008) and Zimbabwe (2008). But the process by which political entrepreneurs politicize ethnicity and agency they use has received little attention in the literature. There dominant narrative is one of delegitimizing opposition groups modes of mobilization as narrowly based on the ethnicities of their leading opposition leaders and crediting the incumbent party as inclusive and drawing on a broad multi-ethnic coalition (Cheeseman and Ford, 2007). However, this is not to deny that opposition parties do not seek the vote of specific ethnic groups or campaign on ethnic lines. They do, just as incumbent parties use ethnic appeals to the dominant ethnic group in the ruling coalition. But the ‘ethnicization of politics’ is reflected in the manner in which ethnicity is used by ruling party and state to de-legitimize opposition’s bid for power by disqualifying a whole ethnic group as not fit to rule, by using cultural, and social and other particularistic reasons.

In the case of Zambia, we employ Mozaffar’s three-stage theoretical categorization of the process of politicization of ethnic politics. These involve: ethnicization (activation of objective ethnic markers to construct ethnic groups); politicization (activation of these ethnic groups in the political struggles for power and resources) and particization (the transformation of politicized ethnic cleavages into lines of partisan divisions) (Mozaffar, 2007: 1). The United National Independence Party’s (UNIP) government in the early years of independence, ethnicized politics by de-legitimating ethnic mobilization or expressions of regional or ethnic grievances. Former president Kaunda described ethnicity (tribalism) as a cancer which needed to be rooted from the Zambian society. He envisaged national unity and electoral competition based on unanimity on the project of ‘national unity’ understood as multi-ethnic unity or multiethnicities unifying into one nation (Molteno, 1974; Scott, 1974). But despite his political strategy of ‘tribal balancing’ and evoking the spirit of ‘One Zambia, One Nation, we had ethnic splits at the 1967 UNIP electoral conference, the ‘Umodzi Kum’mawa’ movement and complaints from the Bemba, Luapulans and secessionist demands from the Lozi-speaking people arising from feelings of marginalization and political exclusion (Gertzel, 1984). Thus UNIP’s national integration project only masked serious ethnic divisions in the country, as some ethno-regional groups felt either marginalized or excluded from the fruits of independence and a decent share of the national cake.

Kaunda and other African leaders, such as Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, were convinced of the divisive nature of ethnicity that they legislated for one-party states to contain opposition and

5 supposedly to promote national unity. For example, during his campaign to retain the one- party state in 1990, Kaunda warned Zambians that multiparty politics would lead to ethnic parties. On signing Article 4 into law in December 1990, Kaunda declared ‘let them go and form their small tribal parties.’ While the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) was a multi-ethnic and multi-class coalition, it was not long before there were complaints of exclusion. ’s government was accused of favouring the Bemba ethnic group, as key political appointments and those in the parastatal sector were dominated by Bemba- speaking people drawn from Luapula and Northern provinces. In less than a year in power, two cabinet ministers from non-Bemba regions resigned their positions citing corruption and a perception of Bemba hegemony.3 The dissatisfied politicians went on to form a party, the National Party, which was characterised as a Lozi party by leading members of the ruling MMD. As it turned out, the National Party had little purchase in Bemba areas winning parliamentary seats in Western and North-Western provinces. As its leadership was drawn from the Southern, Western and later North-Western provinces. It was characterised a ‘tribal’ party and stigmatized as drawing on very narrow ethnic base to qualify for national leadership. Significantly, in the Kasama by-election, a senior MMD leader in campaigning against Emmanuel Kasonde, a Bemba-speaking National Party candidate accused him of selling out to the Lozis.4

In the 1996 parliamentary and presidential elections, the National Party was the second largest party from the MMD, but only secured 5 seats. While a party led by a Northerner, Dean Mung’omba, Zambia Democratic Congress (ZADECO), won only two seats. But unlike, the National Party, ZADECO was not characterised tribal. There are two explanations for this. First, that only political parties that posed a serious threat to incumbents hold on power were characterised as tribal or ethnic parties. Second, characterising formidable political opponents or their parties as tribal was meant to appeal for the support of ethnic groups that formed the ruling coalition not to defect to the opposition, but to support the ruling party as a way of maintaining current material benefits.

During the one-party state era, only leaders who posed a formidable challenge to Kaunda and UNIP’s hold on power were characterised as tribal leaders. Nalumino Mundia’s United Party (UP) stole the imagination of Lozi-speakers both on the Copperbelt and in Western Province. So was Nkumbula’s African National Congress (ANC) in the Southern Province among the Tonga-speaking people. Following its ban in 1966, the UP merged with the ANC and inflicted a major electoral defeat on UNIP in the 1968 general elections winning all the parliamentary seats in Western province. The ANC dominated areas were also the areas that recorded highest ‘No’ votes in the 1969 national referendum. It could also be observed that during the one-

3 The two ministers were Baldwin Nkumbula and Akashambatwa Mbikusita-Lewanika. 4 The politician was , later to be elected MMD National Secretary and in 2011 elected .

6 party presidential elections, it was the areas that had previously been dominated by the opposition that recorded the highest number of ‘No’ votes. But Kaunda did not use his rejection by particular regions to victimize the people of those regions, instead he appointed more and more people from those regions into senior party and government positions. For example, the position of Prime Minister was occupied mainly by the people of Western and Southern Province.

The politicization of ethnicity in the Kasama by-election of 1993, was meant to appeal to the Bemba-speaking supporters of the MMD to consider their vote for Emmanuel Kasonde as a defection from a party which was not only representing their interests, but from which members of their ethnic group had benefited materially, by way of public appointments and access to state largesse. Indeed, Chiluba may not have come from the Bemba-speaking ethnic group,5 but presented himself as Bemba and as such was considered to promote the group interests. The complaints by non-Bembas of favouritism in the allocation of ministerial and parastatal positions only confirmed the fact that the state was working in the interest of the Bemba ethnic coalition and therefore there was need to defend the present gains. So as Erdmann (2007) has noted, being led by someone from the Bemba-speaking group (broadly defined) the MMD was considered a tribal or ethnic party.

The period 2002 and 2006 saw the politicization of ethnic cleavages into political struggles for power and resources and their transformation into lines partisan divisions, what Mozaffar has referred to as ‘particization.’ As noted by some scholars, while ethnic mobilization has been present in Zambia since the one-party era, it assumed a much more overt currency in the post- Chiluba era. Many scholars agree that Michael Sata employed ethnic and class mobilization in building an electoral base. Cheeseman and Hinfelaar (2009) and Larmer and Fraser (2007) and Cheeseman and Larmer (2015) all agree that though Sata presented himself as a populist, employed ethnic mobilization for the rural vote and class mobilization to appeal to poor urban voters. The process of ethnic mobilization involved appeal to feelings ethnic group victimization and marginalization. This was done in two ways. First, presenting as being against the Bemba-speaking people, by his promotion of nepotism famously described as ‘Kulibonesha taa’ against other ethnic groups, especially the Bemba ethnic coalition. Having had easy access to power for ten years under Chiluba, Mwanawasa was seen as marginalizing the Bembas. Second, the targeting of people from Luapula and Northern province for corruption prosecution was also viewed as a deliberate ploy to punish one ethnic group. Sata asked whether it was fair to target one ethnic group for prosecution. A statement attributed to Mwanawasa that ‘Bembas were stinking and dirty’ also irked Bemba- speaking politicians and was used to good effect by Sata as evidence that the President hated

5 Frederick Chiluba belonged to the Lunda ethnic group of Mwata Kazembe, but was more fluent in Bemba than his own language, which had undergone so much revision that it was indistiguishable from the Lunda of North-Western Zambia or that found in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

7 Bemba-speaking people. In his appeal to his fellow Bemba-speaking people to support the PF, Frederick Chiluba declared in Bemba: twachula kwafula (‘we have suffered enough,’).6 The formation of an informal association to promote Bemba interests, the Kola Foundation was also pivotal in PF’s fund-raising efforts from among Bemba-speaking businesspeople.7 The resultant election in 2006 saw Michael Sata and PF overtake the UPND as the second largest party, with 43 members of parliament and Sata obtaining almost 30 percent of the vote from only 3 percent in 2001. All Bemba-speaking areas (Copperbelt, Luapula and Northern provinces) voted for Michael Sata, with cosmopolitan following suit. Anecdotal evidence suggests that ethnic mobilization may also have been employed even in urban areas, as Lusaka has close to 45 percent of Bemba-speaking residents (CSO, 2010). It is noteworthy that Sata and PF’s meterioric rise from political obscurity was viewed as based on ethnic mobilization and the MMD and its media labelled PF a tribal party for Bembas. But other parties led by Bemba-speaking leaders, such as Ben Mwila’s Zambia Republican Party (ZRP), Dan Pule’s Christian Democratic Party (CDP), Nevers Mumba’s National Citizen Coalition (NCC) or Edith Nawakwi’s Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) were not considered tribal or ethnic parties. Significantly, all parties led by Bemba-speaking politicians did not contest the 2006 presidential election, leaving Michael Sata as the only candidate representing the Bemba-speaking regions of the country. This appears to suggest a well- orchestrated political strategy to maximize support from within the Bemba ethnic coalition.

The PF is not the only party to have been characterized as an ethnic party, the United Party for National Development (UPND), formed in 1998 has suffered a similar fate. Since its inception, there have been a widespread ‘perception’ that it was an ethnic or tribal party representing narrow regional and ethnic interests. For example, a former cabinet minister and now leader of the Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD), Edith Nawakwi said: “Tribalism is an enemy to UPND as a political party... (T) he ugly head of tribalism must never be allowed to run Zambia.” Another former minister and now leader of National Movement for Progress (NMP), Ng’andu Magande observed that ‘people have the perception that UPND is a tribal party and that is why I don’t want to join a tribal party.

Before and after the 2011 elections, The Post newspaper ran a series of editorials denouncing the UPND as a tribal or ‘Bantustan’ political party. The Post emphatically states thus: “No matter how much wagging of tongues is made by Hichilema and his friends to deny this fact, they will not succeed because this is what UPND is today – a Tonga party – for the Tongas by the Tongas.”i This negative characterization of the UPND as tribal by The Post newspaper and

6 ‘We’ here implied Bemba-speakers have suffered under Mwanawasa and it was time to change and vote for a Bemba leader. 7 Personal communication with a leader of the Kola Foundation, Alexander Chikwanda in November 2006. The Post newspaper in its editorial characterised the Kola Foundation as a Bemba organisation formed to promote Bemba political interests.

8 other media may have reinforced public perceptions of that party as having narrow ethnic appeal. Early resignations from the UPND in the late 1990s and early 200s often cited ethnic marginalization of members from other regions and ethnicities, especially the Bemba-speaking people. When resigning his position as Deputy President, John Mulwila and some Bemba- speaking colleagues cited the fact that they found the environment hostile to non-Tongas in the parties and that the UPND was tribal. On the other hand, there is credible evidence of the edging out of non-Tongas, non-Lozis and non-North-Westerners from the party. In 2000 ahead of the first UPND elective conference then party secretary general, the late Benny Tetamashimba told this author that, ‘Bembas cannot be trusted and we should find a way to get rid of them as they may take over in future.8 But since Tetamashimba was not Tonga, it can be argued that the characterisation of UPND as tribal only helped solidify an anti-Bemba ethnic coalition. While the calls for a Tonga to lead the UPND may have influenced the formation of the United Liberal Party (ULP) by non-Tonga speakers, the voting patterns that characterised the 2006 elections could also have been an anti-Bemba political strategy to block Michael Sata winning the 2006 election on behalf of the Bemba coalition.9

Partly because it posed a formidable challenge to the MMD in 2001, coming second with 28 percent of the national vote compared the MMD’s 29 percent. But because the party’s electoral support was predominantly from Southern Province and its leaders have been Tonga speakers. In terms of UPND’s electoral performance in the 2001-2011 period, the party only had an impressive performance in the 2001 elections, when it came close to winning the presidency, with 49 seats in the National Assembly. Thereafter, the party’s electoral performance faltered with the PF occupying the second largest position in parliament and Sata emerging as the main contender for power. The poor performance of the UPND in the 2006- 2011 period has been attributed by some scholars to its reliance of ethnic mobilization and having retained a leader from the Tonga ethnic group since its formation (Burnell, 2001). But why has the UPND been consistently labeled a tribal or ethnic party, when it did not pose any serious challenge to the MMD’s hold on power?

There are two explanations to the characterization of the UPND as a tribal party, despite its relatively weak position to unseat the MMD. First, its political dominance of the Southern Province since 2001 required de-legitimation. The fact that Tonga-speaking people have retained the same party in parliament since 2001 has demonstrated the ruling party’s lack of support in that region, but also suggests that the people of the region feel particularly discriminated against and marginalized in the distribution of power and state resources. Second, in order to mobilize support from outside the Southern Province, the UPND had to be characterized as working against the national project of national integration. UPND massive

8 Personal communication with the late Benny Tetamashimba, former UPND secretary general, June 2000. 9 But also the fact that Levy Mwanawasa came from the Bantu Botatwe grouping (Tonga and allied ethnic groups), there was a split the UPND support base as they had an alternative leader who came from the grouping.

9 Tonga votes have been used to demonstrate that the party is unable or unwilling to forge a national support base. This is notwithstanding the fact that the party won 49 seats from four regions (Central, Lusaka, North-Western, Southern and Western) of the country in 2001. But following the death of founding leader, Anderson Mazoka in May 2006, the calls for a Tonga to lead the UPND exarcebated fears that the party was focused on pursuing a narrow ‘ethnic nationalism.’10 Thus the UPND’s parliamentary seats in the 2006 presidential election collapsed from 49 to 23, despite being a member of a three-party alliance – United Democratic Alliance (UDA).11 In subsequent election in 2008 and 2011, the UPND came a distant third with under 20 per cent of the national vote. But the fact that the UPND maintained the political balance between MMD and PF, which each drawing support from four provinces and UPND only winning Southern province. Thus any alliance between the UPND and either MMD or PF would have tipped that balance and it was in the interest of the MMD to de- legitimize the UPND, as that was the only way it would hold unto former UPND strongholds (Central, North-Western and Western) which had defected to the MMD after the factional struggles between Sakwiba Sikota and in the wake of calls for a Tonga to lead the party.12

Politicized ethnicity in Zambia under the Lungu presidency, 2015-2019

Zambia has not gone through violent ethnic conflict since independence prompting some scholars to wonder what explains its ‘exceptionalism’ (Burnell, 2005). Despite the targeting on particular parties, such as UPND as tribal, there is evidence to suggest that voting patterns in Zambia since 2001 have been on regional lines. In particular, the 2006 elections revealed that the main political parties drew their support from particular regions (Cheeseman and Hinfelaar, 2009). In the 2011 elections, for example, the PF obtained most of its votes from predominantly Bemba-speaking areas of Copperbelt, Luapula and Northern provinces. This compares with the UPND which obtained 52% of all its votes from Southern Province (Simutanyi, 2013). Thus it can be observed that ‘despite the increased salience of regional and ethnic voting patterns…most Zambian political parties claim to represent all ethnic groups’ (Simutanyi, 2013:130). While ethnic mobilization has always been around, it has been took a much more pronounced since the PF came to power in 2011.

As pointed out above, the PF used a combination of ethnic and class mobilization in its electioneering to build an electoral support base during the 2001 to 2011 period. In 2011, it became the first opposition party to defeat a incumbent party since re-introduction of multiparty politics in 1991. Michael Sata of the PF obtained 42 percent of the vote against the

10 Personal communication with Sishuwa Sishuwa, 1 October 2009. 11 The UDA comprised the UPND, FDD and UNIP. The alliance only obtained 26 seats in the 2006 general elections with 23 of the seats won by the UPND (FDD 2 and UNIP 1). 12 In 2006 the MMD lost Copperbelt, Lusaka, Luapula and Northern Provinces to the PF. While the MMD won majority seats in Northern Province Sata won the presidential vote.

10 MMD’s who polled 35 percent of the national vote. These results masked the fact that the PF did not win overwhelming nation-wide electoral support. First, the PF won 60 parliamentary seats from four provinces, the majority coming from urban constituencies of Lusaka and the Copperbelt. While the MMD won 55 seats also from only four provinces. The third placed political party, the UPND won 28 seats from Southern, Central, Western and North-Western provinces (but with most seats coming from Southern Province). However, despite this performance, the perception that UPND was tribal persisted. Second, the PF’s electoral appeal hinged on its populist leader, Michael Sata and this may explains its huge appeal among Bemba-speaking people. While acclaimed as charismatic and a ‘man of action’ Sata presented a powerful narrative of shared marginalization and pauperization (Cheeseman and Larmer, 2015). Thus winning power exerted pressure on him to deliver to his constituents. It is therefore not surprising that despite blaming Levy Mwanawasa of erecting a ‘family tree’, being nepotism in the allocation of public positions and Rupiah Banda of favouring his Nyanja-speaking kindred, Sata was to do them in a much more overt fashion.

Habasonda (2018) writes that: the PF’s rule has been characterised by increased reliance on ethnic identity as a strategic form of control to increase the party’s hold on power.’ He further contends that, ‘(e)thnic identity has become and explicit qualification for control of state institutions’ to frightening and alarming levels’ (p.1). For example, key cabinet positions and senior civil service positions were allocated to members of his Bemba-speaking group. Defending his decision in appointing mainly Bemba-speakers to his cabinet Sata said he had to appoint from within those who voted for the PF. After all, the majority of seats (more than 70 percent) were Bemba-speakers as they came Bemba-speaking regions.

But Sata did not live long he was plagued by illness throughout his short presidency, which gave a ‘shadow cabinet’ led by former Finance Minister, Alexander Chikwanda, to dictate major decisions, especially those related to public appointments and distribution of government resources, mainly to people of Sata’s ethno-regional group.13 Sata died on 28 October 2014, leaving behind a fractious party which had no known successor and was unprepared for the presidential transition. It was against the backdrop of the absence of a clear succession plan that, a relatively unknown political quantity, Edgar Chagwa Lungu, was selected as party president and PF presidential candidate towards the end of 2014. Lungu was a product of ethnic ‘Big Men’ or party godfathers who reasoned that the PF needed a non- Bemba to counter the accusation of being a Bemba party.

In the election held on 20 January 2015, Lungu defeated his main rival obtaining 48 percent against Hakainde Hichilema’s 47 percent. The closeness of the result was surprising considering that the UPND had consistently come third since the 2006 election and was

13 Interview with a former aide to Michael Sata on 23 May 2019.

11 widely viewed to be a tribal party with support mainly from Southern Province. There are at least three explanations to the closeness of the vote. First, there was split within the former ruling party MMD into three factions (one supporting the PF, the other the UPND and the third backing its leader, Nevers Mumba). In particular, the decision by former president Rupiah Banda to back Edgar Lungu also assured the PF of Eastern province bloc vote. Second, the low voter turnout of 32 percent, the lowest in Zambia’s electoral history point to voters being uninterested in the candidates on offer. Third, the absence of the MMD as a major electoral competitor intensified ethnic mobilization, with Rupiah Banda explicitly calling on the people of Eastern Province to back the PF candidate as a way of ensuring the presidency came back to Nyanja-speakers. While in Southern Province, an MMD official and junior minister declared it was time for a Tonga to rule.14 The challenge posed by the UPND coming a close second and vulnerability of the PF to electoral defeat was apparent. But the narrative remained unchanged. The PF was still labelled tribal on account of receiving most of its votes from Southern Province and in particular the poor performance of the PF candidate in that region.

Initially, despite being captured by a small clique that had previously been marginalized by Michael Sata, Lungu was cautious in following Sata’s footsteps. He had earlier declare that he would prosecute Sata’s vision, as he did not have a vision of his own. But his association with Rupiah Banda and the Banda faction of the MMD meant that he had to reward them for made having made it possible for him to win the close race. In my view he over-rewarded the Rupiah Banda MMD faction considering that it can not be said for sure that the Eastern province wa responsible for Lungu’s electoral victory, especially considering the low voter turnout. The appointment of several MMD members and MPs as ministers and deputy ministers, including a special advisor at State House demonstrated willingness to deliver on his promises. But other than delivering on his promises to the Rupiah Banda faction, he also appointed non-Easterners, such as Michael Kaingu and Christabel Ngimbu from Western and North-Western provinces respectively to cabinet positions. Kaingu was an MMD MP and former cabinet minister in the MMD government, while Ngimbu was a newly elected PF MP from North-Western province. But there were concerns that public appointments were predominantly tilted in favour of Bemba and Nyanja-speaking people. But there were concerns that public appointments were dominatedby people from Bemba and Nyanja-speaking regions of the country. As Lungu was considered a transitional leader, as he had indicated so himself during the campaign that he did not intend to stay on. He would only serve off the remainder of Michael Sata’s term.

This was to change in the 2016, when he was persuaded by those who recruited him to contest the president to run for a full term of office. Apart from persuasion from the ‘Big Men’, there

14 At a campaign graced by prominent Tonga politicians, Daniel Munkombwe called on the people of Southern Province to vote for a Tonga as it was the turn for a Tonga to rule.

12 were a number of factors that may have led to Lungu recontesting the presidential election in 2016. These include, the enactment of a new constitution; political leverage he had over internal opposition on acclount of MMD support, especially Eastern Province’s voting bloc; expectation to ride on Sata’s popularity in Bemba-speaking areas and the certainty that he was capable of reconfiguring the power map away from reliance on Sata with the deployment of state resources. Thus he embarked on an early election campaign.

The Constitution Amendment Act signed in January 2016 delivered on almost all areas where his predecessors had failed. Its provisions, included 50 percent plus one for the winning presidential candidate, Vice President as running mate to avoid presidential by-election in the event of a vacancy in the office of President and the creation of a Constitutional Court, among others. These were popular provisions that previous leaders had been reluctant to endorse. He hoped to capitalize on popular goodwill on being able o deliver on his promises to get re- elected. However, it turned out that the 2016 election was perhaps more competitive than the previous one. In order, to keep electoral competition at bay, the PF waged one of the worst violent campaigns ever experienced in Zambia. As one observer has noted: ‘As political competition in Zambia becomes stiffer, corruption, ethnic politics and political violence become part and parcel of the political environment’ (Habasonda, 2018:1). The violence was so widespread and unprecedented especially in areas where the opposition had potential to win support, such as Lusaka and Copperbelt. Opposition parties experienced faced arrest, their rallies banned, while some opposition supporters were victims of police brutality. In Lusaka, Namwala and Kasempa there were inter-party clashes that prompted the Electoral Commission of Zambia to suspend campaigning for 10 days. The death of a UPND supporter in Lusaka demonstrated the difficult conditions in which the opposition had to operate.

The elections held on 13 August 2016 were inconclusive as the Constitutional Court voted not to hear the presidential petition brought by the losing presidential candidate Hakainde Hichilema and his running mate, Geoffrey Mwamba. The political atmosphere was tense following the election as it was not clear whether or not Lungu had won the election. It took 4 days to announce the results of Lusaka constituencies, while those from far flung areas were received within the first 24 hours. The results announced by the Electoral Commission on 20 August 2016 declared Edgar Lungu the winner with 50 percent of the national vote, while Hakainde Hichilema came second with almost 48 percent of the national vote. The remainder being shared by eight other candidates. Many independent observers reported massive irregularities in vote counting, tallying and transmission of results (EU, 2016). In Lusaka thousands of votes belonging to the UPND candidate were found discarded in a bin. While in Kalulushi, there are reports that votes belonging to the opposition candidate, Hakainde Hichilema were buried at the cemetery. However, the authenticity of these claims were not tested as the Constitutional Court on 5 September 2016 dismissed the presidential petition for having run out of time, without an opportunity to be heard. The decision was unprecedented in

13 Zambia’s electoral history, as it clearly demonstrates that in a highly competitive political environment where an incumbent is threatened with defeat they can go a long way in circumventing the rule of law.

Specifically, the executive (Edgar Lungu) declined to step down and hand over power to the Speaker in line with the constitution, following the filing in of a presidential petition. It can be argued that the reluctance or refusal by Lungu to hand over power to the Speaker made it difficult for the Constitutional Court to determine the matter independently. There s evidence that the executive and ruling party exerted undue pressure on Constitutional Court judges, including issuing of death threats. Other than the context of Lungu not abiding by the rule of law, he appointed the judges in a rather controversial fashion as none of them met the qualifications provided for in the constitution (Sishuwa, 2016).

Though President Lungu is believed to have won the 2016 presidential elections, there are lingering questions regarding the conduct and credibility of the pool. It is not our intention to discuss that here. Suffice to say that, in context 50 percent plus one requirement Lungu only obtained 13,007 votes above the threshold. This is extremely low when one considers the massive irregularities reported by monitoring and observer groups. There is reason to believe that exposure of the irregularities in an open court would not only have caused the President and his party great embarrassment, but may have persuaded the judges to invalidate the vote.15

The post-2016 rule by President Lungu is fundamentally different from the his first transitional role. The ethnicization of politics hass taken a much more visible role. There is increasing use of patronage and lack of respect for the rule of law. There is no pretense about rearding constituencies of support, Easterners and Bemba-speaking people. Key appointments in the defense and security services are now filled by appointees from either Bemba or Nyanja speaking regions. Regulatory and oversight agencies led by ethnic partisans making fighting against graft impossible. A recent observer notes that the: ‘Zambian cabinet under Lungu is a one-sided affair, which mainly represents the regions of Zambia associated with the ruling party’ (Habasonda, 2018, 17). For example, the heads of the Judiciary, Electoral Commission of Zambia, Zambia Intelligence Security Service, Anti-Corruption Commission, Drug Enforcement Commission, most parastatals and permanent secretaries are drawn from Lungu’s ethnic group or Bemba-speaking members of his ruling coalition. But despite the obvious dominance of the public bureaucracy by Bemba and Nyanja-speaking people, the dominant narrative is that Tongas are not fit to rule. Speaking in North-Western Province, Lungu said recently that ‘a Tonga will rule one day, but not Hichilema.’ This highly divisive

15 Interview with a former senior official at the Electoral Commission of Zambia. He notes that the ‘irregularities were so massive that even us at the Electoral Commission would not have been able to explain to the court. So the some friends of the PF advised that the best way was not to hear the petition.’ May 26, 2019.

14 statement uttered by a head of state could be unconstitutional and meant to forment ethnic hatred from non-Tonga supporters of the PF.

A narrow interpretation of the 2016 election results is that voting patterns were tribal or ethnic because of the manner in which the people of Southern Province voted. It was found unacceptable that an incumbent president would obtain so low votes in a particular region. This is compared with Hakainde Hichilema’s performance in the regions where he lost, such as Northern, Luapula and Eastern Provinces. It is argued that even if Hichilema lost he had a sizeable support from those regions where he lost. This a highly subjective argument that goes against democratic practice. Michael Sata consistently obtained low vote Southern, North- Western and Western Province, but did not question the wisdom of the voters. Instead, President Lungu decided to appoint, at public expense, a Commission of Inquiry to look into electoral violence and voting patterns in the 2016 elections. The report of the Commission’s findings has yet to be released, but may suffer the same fate as the Barotseland Commission of Inquiry whose report has been buried.

The second narrative is that the Tongas in particular hate non-Tongas to the extent that they resorted to ethnic cleansing following the 2016 election results, chasing non-Tongas from their land. This narrative which was propagated on public media, ZNBC radio and television and state-owned newspapers was meant to turn non-Tongas against the Tonga ethnic group and confirm the widely held view that Tongas are not fit to rule. It is most surprising that despite the 2016 election results showing clearly that the country’s electoral map has been neatly divided in half, the PF projects itself as more national, while the UPND as tribal. Irily at should be pointed out that ethnic mobilization emerges from inadequate access to power and resources or the desire to preserve political power and access to state resources, and is not necessarily from ethnic hatred. Politicians actively appeal to ethnic identities to position themselves as champions of a particular ethnic or regional cause. All the talk about a particular ethnic group not ruling Zambia, other that violating the constitution, is meant to persuade a particular group to defend the party in power and preserve their access to material resources.

Conclusion: Ethnicity and the politics of exclusion

This discussion has analyzed the concept of politicized ethnicity and shown it is a political resource in the hands of political entrepreneurs to discredit opponents and preserve the hold of power and access to state resources. But the politicization of ethnicity has serious implications for governance and political stability. I consider three implications of politicized ethnicity. The first, is that the politicization of ethnicity undermines the efficacy of electoral competition, as it drives voters to rally behind a co-ethnic leader either in defence of the hold on power and privileged access to state resources or as a reaction to ethnic hate speech and denigration from ethic groups forming the ruling coalition. If anything using ethnicity to try to

15 delegitimize or disqualify a particular ethnic group from power and acces to state resources, only intensifies its resolve to win power and leads to the building of ethnic coalitions. What we have witnessed in Zambia in the past four years under Lungu is a polarisation of electoral competition fought along neat ethnoregional axis, Eastern and Western Zambia.

Second, we have demonstrated in this discussion that the labelling of a political party as tribal, does not in any way affect its electoral appeal. If anything, it may even enhance it, as it uses it to mobilize and articulate group grievances. The groups that form the UPND electoral coalition (Southern, North-Western, parts of Central and Western) do have legitimate grievances and these are ignored by government in its politicization of ethnicity. The perception of lack of adequate access to state resources, lack of development and feelings of marginalization are not necessarily ethnic sentiments. They are material grievances that require to be addressed by a government. They are at the heart of the politics of inclusion or inclusive growth paradigm.

Third, instead of embracing the current polarization of the electoral landscape as good for democracy, the PF would propagates a narrow nationalism which is exclusive of certain ethno- regional groups. Its nationalism is one which contends that to govern ethnic groups have to belong to the ruling party. It follows on what UNIP and MMD before them propagated it pays to belong. That narrative is not only exclusive, but dangerous for democracy. There is growing evidence in developed democracies that a two-party system is better than a multiplicity of parties. But this has to be reached naturally through political mobilization and articulation of group grievances, they be ethnic or regional. To de-legitimize representation of whole ethno- regional groups on the basis of belonging to an ethnic group that is in competition with the ruling ethnoregional coalition defeats democracy and is retrogressive.

Lastly, the Zambian political landscape appears to have produced enduring political institutions capable of mobilizing mass publics and forging maximum coalition in pursuit of state power. That should be celebrated as a positive achievement in our political development. The use of ethnicity in abusing state power will surely be exposed as long as we have a competitive electoral environment. Efforts to revise the progressive constitution of 2016 have been met with societal resistance to the extent that even the ruling party has expressed reservations to some of the provisions.

The current configuration of power which reflects the hegemony of one or two ethnoregional groups is being highly contested and this is why the so-called dominant narratives are being challenged. It is surely particularistic that a cabinet minister can declare that a particular ethic group will never rule the country. On what basis is such as a declaration. It is such careless statements from politicians that formenting not only ethnic hatred but civil war. It should be recognized that the Zambian nation is an artificial construct, which purports to promote unity,

16 even when the society is deeply divided socially, economically and politically, between young rich and old and male and female. What politicians should strive for is the recognition of diversity and ensure its nurtured. Inclusive growth mantra is not only in terms of economic development but should be extended to resolving the intractable challenges of gowing poverty, inequality, lack of access to state resources and underdevelopment.

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