IRIN Focus on run-up to 2001 elections

Zambia’s political landscape maybe undergoing a transformation with the emergence of new challenges to the nine-year dominance of President Frederick Chiluba and his ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), analysts told IRIN. Anderson Mazoka, the former boss of Anglo-American in Zambia, was dismissed as a political upstart when he formed the United Party for National Development (UPND) in 1998. But Mazoka’s young party has begun to claim some impressive scalps from the MMD and a government that has been unable to redress the steady impoverishment of Zambians under freemarket economic reforms introduced in 1991. New political coup From a shaky start the UPND has managed to loosen the MMD’s grip in the south, west and centre of the country, a feat that well-established opposition parties like the United National Independence Party (UNIP) of former president Kenneth Kaunda have been unable to achieve. Mazoka’s by-election win last month in Sesheke, a district in western Zambia bordering Namibia, was regarded by some analysts as a significant coup. UPND’s tally of five seats to MMD’s 130 in the 150-seat parliament have been hard won. Human rights groups have condemned the use of the repressive Public Order Act (POA) by the authorities - which demands a police permit for political meetings among other requirements - as an alleged attempt to limit political competition. “They were perpetually victims of police harassment and laws such as the Public Order Act were used to bar them from holding public meetings to sell their manifestos and yet they still won,” one analyst said of the UPND’s Sesheke victory. Regional divisions However, question marks remain over Mazoka and the UPND’s ability to perform at the national level in general elections in 2001. Some commentators allege that his appeal is elite-based, limited to the towns along the so-called “line of rail” from the central copperbelt region to the south. It is claimed that Mazoka, a southerner, lacks support in the MMD’s northern stronghold and UNIP’s historical eastern political base. Regional divisions, contained to a certain extent under the single party rule of Kaunda from 1964-1991, have been re-awakened in Zambia under multi-party politics and the fragmentation of the opposition. This week, for example, the leader of the Zambia Alliance Party Dean Mungo’mba, accused Mazoka of tribalism. Earlier merger talks between the two parties failed. The only other serious opposition contender to MMD is UNIP. But the party has performed badly in recent by-elections, and has been disorganised and weakened by faction fighting. The party has attempted to present a united front after Kaunda’s official resignation from politics and the takeover in May of new party leader Francis Nkhoma. George Lewis, a member of UNIP’s central committee said this week: “UNIP should not be underestimated, apart from the MMD, we are the only party that has representation throughout the country at grassroots level.” But there have also been suggestions that UNIP could consider an alliance with the UPND as the only viable challenge to MMD’s dominance. Chiluba’s uncle Zambia’s latest party has been born out of the succession struggle within MMD. This was recently highlighted by the expulsion from the MMD of Ben Mwila, the controversial environment minister. Reportedly one of the most powerful men in the party - and Chiluba’s uncle - he was expelled last month for campaigning for the party leadership. With him went six other MMD party members. Mwila, who boasts of being the richest man in the country, said last week that he would form a new party, but has also intimated that he could consider an alliance. Constitutionally, Chiluba is set to retire before the 2001 elections. He has, however, banned party heavyweights from running for the presidency, although several names of ambitious ministers have been floated by insiders. Chiluba could yet finesse the constitutional impediment and announce that he will stand for a third term, analysts said. Chiluba, a born-again Christian and former trade unionist, would have to campaign on the MMD’s record after a decade of governance. That has included a landslide election victory in 1991, a controversial election in 1996 boycotted by UNIP, and clashes with Zambia’s donors over human rights issues. Chronic unemployment has helped push 80 percent of Zambians below the poverty line, and child and maternal mortality figures are among the worst outside the war zones of sub-Saharan Africa.