By Dr. Kaela Mulenga and Malama Katulwende
WILD celebrations of great jubilation have characterized the election of opposition leader, Michael Chilufya Sata as Zambia’s 5th republican president.
Mr. Sata has won Zambia’s presidential election after two days of vote counting following a highly contested race with incumbent Rupiah Banda.
Chief Justice Ernest Sakala declared Sata the winner at around 01.30 hours today after the opposition leader polled 43% of the vote with just seven constituencies left to be counted.
Prior to the final announcement of the winner this morning (23rd September 2011), the election had been marred by riots in several parts of Zambia. Notable was the capital, Lusaka, the mining towns of Solwezi, Kitwe and Ndola. The border town of Nakonde was also affected.
The irate protestors – who were mostly youths who vowed to die rather than be ruled under Mr. Rupiah Banda’s government – were angered by a ban on the media announcing results not verified by the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ).
According to the ECZ, however, the media black-out had been prompted by the hacking of its website by some people who posted false information to record a landslide win for Mr. Sata.
Michael Sata’s victory has been celebrated everywhere in Zambia by car honking, singing, dancing and partying. Huge crowds have assembled at the High Court grounds in anticipation of Sata’s inauguration.
Until this morning, Zambia had been ruled by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) for 20 years. Mr. Rupiah Banda, who was Zambia’s fourth president, presided over a government which was reputed for corruption, intolerance, election rigging and abuse of public resources.
Sata’s election victory had been spurred by social, political and economic discontent of the majority of Zambians whose fortunes have not benefitted from the boom in metal prices that the country had been enjoying for some time.
Sata, 74, exploited the urban poverty and promised Zambians “lower taxes, more money in your pockets”. Yet perhaps the most revolutionary slogan of the Patriotic Front was the “Don’t Kubeba” which meant, literary, “don’t tell them”. The slogan was intended to urge Zambians to accept all manner of bribes from Banda’s MMD but keep the secret of their vote in their heart.
Mr. Sata, who lost the last election in 2008 by just 35,000 votes has been the most consistent critic of the MMD government and battled them over high taxation, unemployment, corruption, poverty and inefficiency. He is perhaps the most charismatic politician Zambia has ever had.
President Michael Sata started politics as municipal councilor and served as governor of Lusaka under Zambia’s first President, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda. When he read the mood of change Sata resigned from Kaunda’s United National Independence Party in 1991 and joined Dr. Frederick Chiluba’s newly-formed MMD party.
Sata was MMD minister of local government, labor, and health, and later minister without portfolio. He created a reputation for being “a man of action”. In 2000, however, Sata fell out of favor with the late president Dr. Frederick Chiluba and formed the Patriotic Front in 2001.
That year the PF leader lost the election to late president Dr. Levy Mwanawasa. Mr. Sata again lost in 2006 and 2008, respectively, but on every occasion increasing the vote count and number of Members of Parliament (MPs) from one to forty seven. The PF has now won over seventy seven MPs out of a hundred and fifty.
During the reign of MMD’s Rupiah Banda, Michael Sata suffered daily insults, defamation and harassment from the state media and Zambia Police Service. Mr. Banda unleashed a wave of propaganda using public media such as the Times of Zambia, Daily Mail and Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC).
He was called an homosexual, evil, a mad man, and an anarchist who was not fit to run the affairs of the country. These public institutions never said anything positive about Sata. Chanda Chimba’s Stand UP for Zambia, which was secretly funded by the Banda’s MMD, was a tool which peddled lies against Michael Sata.
Despite the MMD’s abuse of state resources during its campaign and noted serious media bias on the part of the state broadcaster, ZNBC, Daily Mail and Times of Zambia, Sata’s promises of more jobs, better education, compelling mining companies to pay taxes, decentralization and dealing with corruption and the Barotseland Agreement has endeared him to the electorate.
Zambians have demonstrated their faith in Sata. They have cast their votes, slept at polling stations and fought running battles with the police or anyone who they suspected of trying to rig the elections.
Sata’s election is truly a popular uprising that equals the 1990 anti-UNIP protests and vote which ended Dr. Kaunda’s 27 year old reign. This election has cut across ethnicity, gender, religion and race.
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