Is Democracy Taking Root?

Robert Litungu

28 June 2011

analysis

IN accordance with our constitutional provisions, the term of the current parliament will soon be coming to an end and incumbents at presidential, parliamentary and Local Government levels will again be battling it out for another mandate.

In this article, I examine in general terms some of the challenges confronting our nascent democracy.

Theoretically, democracy means the will of the people – it entails grassroots power- where the masses rule by freely expressing their choice without any intimidation whatsoever.

In an ideal democracy, a political party or leader who does not deliver on his electoral promises is history.

It is widely acknowledged that democracy is an imposed concept that has never really worked in African countries as evidenced by the post-election violence in Kenya, Ivory Coast and recently in Nigeria.

The upheavals in the Arab world have given further credence to this view. Political pundits allege that African leaders reluctantly try to practice it and are only forced to do so by international donors and lenders through strings attached.

Without external pressure, they would hold on to office forever until they are forced out by people’s power.

Clearly, African democracy is fraught with a number of challenges including issues of ethnicity, imposed leaders, high levels of electoral violence, and corruption, to mention but a few.

Fortunately, Zambia unlike most other African countries, has since attaining independence in 1964, successfully held democratic elections under different democratic systems on nine different occasions in the past, without experiencing any serious acrimony [in 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006] with only the first and last four being held under a multi-party system whilst the others were held under what was called the one party participatory system.

Going forward, what are the hurdles confronting our democracy? In my view, some of the major pitfalls are:

Ethnicity

Recent pronouncements by some politicians indicate that ethnicity is still ingrained in the minds of our politicians, especially the older generation.

The call for ethnic federalism through the resurrection of the Barotseland Agreement of 1964 – being propounded by Patriotic Front (PF) leader Mr Sata and The Post newspaper– is a clear indication that he wants to use the tribal card as a political strategy to ascend to power.

Rather than envision Zambia as a dynamic and single multi-ethnic country, Mr Sata wants a Zambia that is fragmented into tribal fiefdoms.

Politics based on tribes will sharpen the tribal cleavages in our young democracy and inevitably lead to the election of tribally-inclined mediocre leaders.

Urging voters to vote for a party in return for ethnic privileges may have short- term benefits but disastrous outcomes in the long term.

Persuading people to vote along tribal lines is not democratic because our people are not sufficiently politically-mature to know where their interests lie and vote for people who belong to their ethnic groups.

Imposed leaders

In a democracy, leaders are supposedly elected by the grassroots who invariably understand their concerns.

However, this is not the case in our society today. The will of the people is largely ignored and most of the candidates are imposed.

As a result, when these leaders fail to deliver to expectations, they apologise to the party president instead of the grassroots that elected them.

The grassroots have resigned themselves to the fact that political parties do not trust the lower organs to elect the ‘correct candidates’. Therefore, the leaders are often selected by the powers that be and candidates with money easily ‘buy’ their way unto the selection list.

In order to entrench democracy, the party bigwigs must devolve more powers to the grassroots.

Transparency and openness

A truly democratic system is one that all stakeholders have trust and confidence in. An example is the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa that successfully managed the recent local government elections in that country.

Where there is widespread mistrust of the electoral process– particularly regarding the voters roll– by the competitors, the democratic process is seriously compromised.

It is believed that some politicians in rural-based constituencies have allegedly bought electoral officers in their constituencies to manipulate the results of the elections in their favour whenever there are elections.

Poverty and ignorance

The poverty level in Zambia is estimated at 70 percent. In this regard, the electorate is easily swayed by gifts and not by the quality of the message. The politicians do not engage in issue-based campaigns as the voters demand to be given gifts such as food and clothes in exchange for their votes.

Invariably, a candidate who does not slaughter a bull stands little chance.

Further, the high levels of poverty have come to make politicians regard politics as a walk in the park. They ride on the people’s grievances and, after they are ushered into office, disappear into thin air.

They change parties like shirts without any remorse or shame and only wait for their gratuity before jumping to parties that they perceive to be more popular.

Whereas the vision of the politician should be to facilitate long-term development like the construction of infrastructure such as schools, roads, clinics whilst providing solutions to the peoples day-to-day needs such as nshima and kapenta, shelter, sanitation and water, access to education and health, employment opportunities, our politicians are more preoccupied with grandeur, hefty gratuity and self-preservation.

Electoral violence

Until the recent Mufumbwe by-election, and the infamous Chawama mayhem, elections in Zambia have largely been held in a peaceful environment.

Electoral violence occurs in both pre and post-election situations because parties lack political ideology. The parties are all middle-of-the-road entities espousing both capitalist and socialist messages.

They are organised as mass parties that champion a variety of petty interests such as religious fundamentalism, ethnic domination, gay rights, and do not practice intra or inter-party discourse.

Electoral violence leads to apathy and discourages voters from choosing leaders of their choice. Hence it should be discouraged at all costs.

Corruption and nepotism

Whilst corruption – defined as the use of public resources for private gain – is a worldwide phenomenon, the scourge is more prevalent in emerging economies such as Zambia.

In this regard, election officials manning polling booths or stations are often bribed by the competitors who regard political office as an investment.

Poor candidates stand little chance of being elected, resulting in the election of rich but less committed candidates.

In conclusion, my appeal is for all stakeholders to endeavour to eliminate the above cited ills that may hinder the effective development of democracy in our society.

The author is an economic and political analyst

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