IRIN Focus on political protest

President Frederick Chiluba’s announcement on Friday that he would not seek re-election ended two weeks of political turmoil which deeply divided his ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). It began with tension boiling over and disrupting the MMD’s convention in Kabwe, where the party’s constitution was changed allowing Chiluba to be re-elected president. Twenty-one of his detractors who stayed away from the convention amid threats and acts of violence were expelled from the party. All, including the former vice-president Christon Tembo, had voiced their objection to attempts to change the MMD and the national constitutions so Chiluba could seek re-election for a third time. It ended with Chiluba dissolving his entire cabinet, announcing that he would not go for a third term and then moving quickly to begin appointing a new team. As this happened, his dismissed MPs lodged an impeachment motion against him, which has to be debated in parliament in the next 15 days. They also lodged court papers claiming the MMD was in contempt of a court injunction they had been granted which prohibited their expulsions. That case was adjourned on Tuesday until 18 May. Until then the 21 expelled officials remain MPs. But, while Chiluba tries to placate his country’s concerned donors (whose funds make up about 53 percent of the country’s total budget) and to forge a semblance of unity in his new cabinet, some analysts and commentators believe his change of heart is a victory for democracy in Zambia and for the region. “I feel it is a great, clear signal that people are tired, that they want to see stable, good governance. To an extent Zambia sets a precedent for civil society elsewhere that the impossible can be accomplished,” Hussain Solomon, a researcher for the Durban-based African Centre for Construction Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), told IRIN. He said Chiluba was compelled to heed the messages he received because of the way in which international donors and a broad range of civic, professional and political organisations got together to campaign against changes to the constitution. “He got an unambiguous message.” Akashambatwa Mbikusita-lewanika, an MMD founder and former minister who is now president of Agenda for Zambia, a democracy lobby group, agreed with Solomon. “This is not the first time that Zambia’s civil society has banded together so powerfully. The Movement for Multiparty Democracy moved forward because of civil society. The lesson is that a popular uprising or resistance - or even the threat of it - can control these dictators,” he told IRIN. Muleya Mwananyanda, an analyst and researcher for Afronet, a Zambian-based human rights umbrella body, told IRIN that Chiluba’s back-down represented a victory for democracy, but had cost the country dearly because many development projects and electoral issues had been put on hold while the debate raged. Neighbours follow suite Zambia, however, is not the only southern African state immersed in debate over whether the national constitution should be changed to allow its leader to remain in power. Namibia’s President Sam Nujoma said he would seek a fourth presidential term if his supporters wanted him to. The country’s constitution allows only two five-year terms and has already been amended to allow Nujoma a third. Malawi’s Bakili Muluzi recently felt compelled to deny accusations that he intended going for a third term after the country’s two largest churches issued letters warning him to leave when his mandate expires in 2004. Solomon told IRIN that Muluzi was “testing the waters” in the same way Chiluba had done, but did not have the same national or regional leverage that allowed Chiluba to tax his detractors’ patience. While Chiluba could try to use his and Zambia’s influence in the region as a bargaining chip, Muluzi’s hand was weakened by the fact that his ruling United Democratic Front did not have a huge majority in parliament, that he did not play an influential role in the region and that Malawi was more susceptible to international pressure, Solomon said. However, he noted that years of authoritarian rule in Malawi had left “civil society underdeveloped” and possibly incapable of mounting a consolidated, effective civic campaign if necessary. Solomon said Nujoma was in a different position and that it seemed as though he was attempting to extend his presidency to keep his ruling party, SWAPO, in power. “Nujoma going for a fourth term may have less to do with him than with maintaining unity in the party,” he said, adding that Nujoma was nonetheless in a stronger position than Muluzi because of the support he enjoyed at home and the respect he commanded among the region’s leaders. Ultimately, said Solomon and Mbikusita-lewanika, developments in Namibia and Malawi would depend on the support Nujoma and Muluzi could muster for their plans, the resources they had at their disposal to buy patronage and the extent to which the civic, political and business sectors could find common ground. “It does depend on the extent to which all organisations can unite for an overarching principle,” Solomon said. Silence from regional leaders Both men agreed that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) should be more involved in resolving such issues. There had been talk of South African President Thabo Mbeki and other leaders putting pressure on Chiluba to move on after his presidency, but neither the OAU nor SADC officially intervened. While Solomon said developments in Zambia should once again raised questions over the SADC’s structure and mandate, Mbikusita-lewanika was more scathing. “One of the problems in Africa,” he told IRIN, “is that we have assumed that black people oppressing black people is more tolerable than white people oppressing black people. By doing this they (African leaders) have licensed themselves to little condemnation from their counterparts.” He said there was a need to equate black and white oppression and to react in the same way governments did against apartheid in South Africa. “At the same time we require civil society and organisations to beef up their resistance to what amounts to oppression and dictatorships,” he added. A coalition of civic movements, some the very groups that helped bring Chiluba and the MMD to power in 1991, seemed to take that message to heart. In February they consolidated their anti-third term campaign with the Oasis Declaration. The document was signed at one of the biggest public meetings in almost a decade and brought together the church, professional and civic groups in defence of what they argued was Zambia’s fragile democracy. Over the next two months, armed with green “no third term ribbons”, and co-opting motorists in lunchtime “hooting” protests, they ran an attention-grabbing series of events to persuade Chiluba to leave the constitution alone. Now, even though they have forced Chiluba to back down, they remain wary of his intentions. From being regarded as a champion of democracy in 1991 after winning a landslide election to end 27 years of single party rule, Chiluba has seen his credentials come under increasing scrutiny. The born-again Christian and trade union leader altered the constitution in 1996 to prevent his political rival, former president Kenneth Kaunda, from standing in that year’s presidential poll. The arrest of Kaunda in 1997, accused of involvement in a botched coup attempt, set off a storm of protest. With “serious abuses” un-addressed, Zambia’s human rights record remains “generally poor”, according to the US State Department. Chiluba had never publicly announced his intention to run for a third term, but was widely believed to have encouraged and directed his supporters to do the ground work. With a new cabinet of loyalists, critics are concerned that he is in an even more powerful position. According to Mbikusita-lewanika, the fact that Chiluba is likely to retain the MMD party presidency means that, like former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, he could use his position in the MMD to continue to control government affairs.