Zambia Elections ... The Day After

Today marks the effective end of Zambian elections; though Tuesday (20 September) was the official holiday, government offices effectively sit still until the winner is announced. Well, this morning at 00:34 (23:34 GMT), the Chief Justice of Zambia announced the opposition Patriotic Front (PF) candidate, Michael C. Sata, as the winner of the 2011 presidential elections.

Cheers broke out immediately across Senanga sufficient to wake its lone blogger. I switched on the office lights, turned on the state television channel (ZNBC), and called for our night guard to come in and see the news. We watched in silence for the few minutes they continued transmitting from Mulungushi House (Lusaka), repeating the news with a level of spontaneity that I'd never seen on that channel. They then switched back to the evening movie (it appeared to be Cocoon, ironic given the age of the candidates); I bid Mr. Malazhi goodnight, turned off the set, and drifted back off to sleep for a few hours to the sound of cheering coming from the market area.

I woke this morning (again) and checked ZNBC; unlike 2008, when the American media was gushing about Obama's victory, ZNBC is still showing movies. I was briefly taken aback by the lack of news coverage, but then I realized that most of the writers / news editors were MMD functionaries or under specific direction by the governments' ruling party. With the new regime, they are pretty much out of a job ... the past year has seen little coverage (other than negative) of PF or Sata himself, so I'm sure he won't keep them around.

What happens next? Well, the Zambian Constitution stipulates that the announced winner has to be inaugurated within the day following announcements; no lame ducks to speak of in Africa. As in nature, leaders abhor a [power] vacuum. Sata will be sworn in later, form a cabinet, and then the fun begins. Stories abound of him back during the Chiluba era, when Sata was the Minister of Health; stories abound of him  showing up at hospitals unescorted and unannounced to inspect conditions. Supposedly, anyone he found asleep, late to work, playing grabass to the detriment of the patients, etc., etc., was summarily fired. Hence,  the outright fear of him in recent elections on the part of government workers; even if they retain their jobs, they will be on a heightened sense of awareness of punitive consequences for poor performance.

Who knows? It's all speculation from here forward and I don't care to enter into that realm. My sole hope is that Sata does not engage in a witch hunt of the former ruling party. One of the reasons that a peaceful transition of power in Africa is such a rare occurrence is due to the fact that the sitting party is literally scared to death of losing power under real or perceived threats of persecution by a new government (note the Ivory Coast last year). Zambia has its own precedent for that; after stepping down peacefully in 1991, the first Republican President, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda was harried constantly, briefly imprisoned, and later disqualified from running for office in a constitutional amendment that forbid persons with non-Zambian parentage from contesting. (Brief aside ... I find that last one particularly puzzling, as all these old guys were born in the colonial era when technically, there was no Zambia (or Malawi or Zimbabwe)). On the Machiavellian level, it worked quite well; Kaunda's party, the United National Independence Party (UNIP) fell apart to the extent that in this election, they might have polled 5,000 votes. (Brief aside #2 ... They have the coolest chitenges, which feature a massive, multicolored torch).

So why did MMD lose? Were people tired of perceived corruption? The massive and well-publicized influence of Chinese interests on the ruling party? The progressively one-sided election coverage in the state media? The hard hitting opposition media? Tired of the same party for 20 years? Because they liked Sata and his quick wit, stances on issues, etc.? Hard to say, but likely a combination of all of them ... and the simple answer that they didn't get enough votes.

The long and short is that Zambia is standing tall on the highest hill on the Continent today; not because of President-elect Sata himself (who is in what I wouldn't consider an enviable position as President-elect of a very poor country), but because there has a peaceful, democratic transition of power from the ruling party to the opposition under a government institution. Aside from a few riots and a single death in the Copperbelt, there has been no clatter of AK-47's, no refugees, no inter-tribal or internecine violence ... Zambia retains its status as a peace-loving nation.

No matter; millions of rural Zambians (and the thousands here in Senanga) are soon to resume eking their living from the soil which cares little for man's elections. Back to work.