Zambia

Case notes

Patriotic Front

The Patriotic Front (PF) was created by veteran politician Michael Sata in 2001 after he fell out with the governing Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) party over presidential succession. Popularly known as “King Cobra” for his venomous attacks on rival politicians (Resnick 2013, 62), Sata succeeded in rallying voters in urban and Bemba-speaking regions who were frustrated with the effects of the MMD’s economic liberalisation (Larmer and Fraser 2007, 612). Sata and the PF stood in presidential and legislative elections in 2001 without success, but broke out in 2006 with 29.4% and 22.9% in the presidential and legislative elections respectively, placing second in both. Sata narrowly lost the election to succeed the Levy Mwanawasa in 2008 after the latter died in office, but then won in 2011 and assumed the presidency. Sata himself died in office in 2014, and the party chose Edgar Lungu to succeed him. Lungu won re-election in 2015.

Sata and the PF are frequently considered populist in the Zambia literature. While a lot of this relates to policy stances, there is enough analysis to suggest that Sata’s early elections (2001 and 2006) practiced a version of populist discourse that is compatible with our minimum definition. This revolved around linking the economic grievances experienced by his target audience with the corruption of the government (Paget 2014; Larmer and Fraser 2007, 613). In Sichuwa’s words, he “presented his political competitors, represented by the incumbents Mwanawasa and subsequently Banda, as colluding with mining companies to exploit ordinary workers” (Sishuwa 2021, 1064) (OTH_POLCLASS = 3). Sata also employed a “highly emotional” (Hamusokwe and Mambwe 2021, 5) and “confrontational” style (Cheeseman and Hinfelaar 2010, 64), that deployed “sheer rudeness” towards people in power to construct a radical and subversive counternarrative (Larmer and Fraser 2007, 613).

While this qualifies Sata and the PF for inclusion in 2006, subsequent elections are more difficult. After Mwanawasa died in 2008, Sata appeared to soften his rhetoric to the extent of selling himself as “a member of the political establishment well-placed to offer continuity and stability” (Cheeseman and Hinfelaar 2010, 67). His own deteriorating health also reduced his ability to play the antagonistic “strongman” figure of his earlier campaigns, and by 2011 “any idea that Sata represented a radical threat depended on memories of his performance in 2006 rather than any repeat of it” (Fraser 2017, 464–65). The literature also suggests that Lungu failed to emulate Sata’s populist narrative and performance (Hamusokwe and Mambwe 2021, 7; Fraser 2017, 457), and that by the time he took over the PF’s populism had been “watered down over time” (Hern 2020, 73). For these reasons we have not included Sata, Lungu, or the PF in the dataset after the 2006 election.

Despite his role in the privatisation processes within the MMD, Sata’s narrative in 2006 championed the cause of poor workers (Larmer 2005, 42), the enemy of whom were, in Larmer and Fraser’s words, a “corrupt alliance between domestic political and business networks and a set of international sponsors” (Larmer and Fraser 2007, 613). His hostility towards foreign-owned mines and businesses has been considered xenophobic and nationalistic by many scholars (see Simutanyi 2010, 11; Larmer and Fraser 2007, 628; Cheeseman and Hinfelaar 2010, 67; Hess and Aidoo 2014). He was particularly harsh against Chinese investors, whom he called “infestors” (Hamusokwe and Mambwe 2021, 4) and agents of “Chinese colonialism” (Uzar 2017, 297). Notably, this hostility related to smaller scale Chinese and Indian shop owners in Lusaka (Resnick 2013, 79), claiming at one point that “The markets are for Zambians” (Larmer and Fraser 2007, 628). We consider this enough to code Sata and the PF 3 on both OTH_ECONOMIC and OTH_ETHNIC. On the latter, there is also evidence that Sata’s rhetoric played into domestic ethnic divisions relating to his Bemba-speaking base, claiming, for example, that Mwanawasa’s anti-corruption in initiatives were an attack on Bemba speakers (Sishuwa 2023, 447). Given the centrality of international financial institutions and foreign governments in his rhetoric (Larmer and Fraser 2007, 613), we’ve also coded Sata and the PF 3 on OTH_FOREIGN. We’ve seen no evidence to code above 1 for OTH_IMMIGRANTS or OTH_MILITARY.

The literature frequently emphases the “charismatic” nature of Sata’s political appeal (Hamusokwe and Mambwe 2021, 1; Resnick 2013; Simutanyi 2010, 11), and that the PF was built around him and controlled by him (Larmer and Fraser 2007, 627; Cheeseman and Hinfelaar 2010, 75; Fraser 2017, 458) (CHARISMA = 3). While Sata’s tone was in many ways critical of liberalisation and its effects, the PFs policy was only marginally left leaning and its manifesto committed to “maintain an open, liberal macro-economic environment” alongside its more progressive policies around social services and the party’s “anti-neo-liberal rhetoric,” (Larmer and Fraser 2007, 626, 631). We’ve coded it CL on LRPPOSITION, but this could be revisited. Despite his harsh criticism of those in power, Sata was very much a member of the Zambian political establishment, having served in high profile offices in multiple governments since Independence (Burnell 2002, 1110; Larmer 2005, 42) (INSIDER = 2).

Long before forming the PF, Sata had an established association with vigilantes (Larmer and Fraser 2007, 624), and he threated to bring back the “militancy” of the colonial past against contemporary rivals in the 2005 (Uzar 2017, 297). According to Larmer and Fraser, during the 2006 campaign pro-Sata minibuses in urban areas

represented a threatening, lawless presence… When MMD cadres attempted to increase their visibility in cities they were soundly chased from the streets. Indeed, on one occasion the President was unable to travel through the capital as PF cadres blocked various routes with minibuses and threatened to stone his motorcade. (Larmer and Fraser 2007, 629)

Sata also rejected the results of elections (Sishuwa 2023, 432), and threated to set up a “parallel government” that would make governance impossible (Cheeseman and Hinfelaar 2010, 65). While more research could confirm how much this differs from the common practices in Zambian politics, but for now we have coded Sata and the PF as 3 on LIBDEMNORMS on the basis of this evidence.

Not included

The Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) was a broad movement that opposed the single party United National Independence Party (UNIP) government and long-term president Kenneth Kaunda in the 1991 elections. The MMD was initially led by the chairman of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions Frederick Chiluba, who defeated Kaunda in a landslide and went on to win the 1996 election too. Chiluba’s 1991 campaign has occasionally been classified as populist in the literature (See for example Makulilo 2013, 75; Vaughan 1999, 253; Larmer and Fraser 2007, 623). It is clear that the MMD campaigned heavily against the UNIP status quo (Chikulo 1993, 91), and that Chiluba had a history of broadly populist statements as a trade unionist (Bratton 1992, 85; Baylies and Szeftel 1992, 86). However, we’ve not seen sufficient evidence in the literature that this campaign or any other MMD campaign was centred on a narrative that would fit our minimum definition of populism. It seems instead that the MMD’s 1992 campaign was a general “change” campaign based on the slogan “the hour has come” (Ihonvbere 1995, 5; Helle and Rakner 2012, 9), driven by general discontent with the outgoing UNIP government without a truly populist narrative against it.

References

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Cheeseman, Nic, and Marja Hinfelaar. 2010. ‘Parties, Platforms, and Political Mobilization: The Zambian Presidential Election of 2008’. African Affairs 109 (434): 51.

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Hess, Steve, and Richard Aidoo. 2014. ‘Charting the Roots of Anti-Chinese Populism in Africa: A Comparison of Zambia and Ghana’. Journal of Asian and African Studies 49 (2): 129–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909613479769.

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Resnick, Danielle. 2013. ‘Urban Poverty and Party Populism in African Democracies / Danielle Resnick, United Nations University, Helsinki.’, January.

Simutanyi, Neo. 2010. ‘The 2008 Presidential Elections in Zambia: Incumbency, Political Contestation and Failure of Political Opposition’. In IESE/CMI Conference on Election Processes, Liberation Movements and Democratic Change in Africa, Maputo, 9–11. https://www.iese.ac.mz/lib/publication/proelit/Neo_Simutanyi.pdf.

Sishuwa, Sishuwa. 2020. ‘“Join Me to Get Rid of This President”: The Opposition, Civil Society and Zambia’s 2011 Election’. In Democracy and Electoral Politics in Zambia, edited by Tinenenji Banda, O’Brien Kaaba, Marja Hinfelaar, and Muna Ndulo, 11–33. Brill. https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004430440/BP000003.xml?body=contentSummary-38296.

———. 2021. ‘Roots of Contemporary Political Strategies: Ethno-Populism in Zambia during the Late Colonial Era and Early 2000s’. Journal of Southern African Studies 47 (6): 1061–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2021.1940602.

———. 2023. ‘Multi-Ethnic Vision or Ethnic Nationalism? The Contested Legacies of Anderson Mazoka and Zambia’s 2006 Election’. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 57 (2): 431–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2023.2196084.

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Vaughan, Femi. 1999. ‘Africa’s Second Democratic Transition’. *Journal