Poverty on Minds of Zambian Voters

This once-thriving center of industrial activity used to be the envy of its neighbors.

“The place looked like a small city,” recalled Kafue resident Margaret Musole, 57, a trade union worker. “It was clean. Everything was nice. . . . Children were going to school in smart uniforms. Parents were going to work. But that has gone. Now, people are miserable.”

A textile factory and nitrogen plant that had boosted Kafue’s fortunes have ceased production, forcing many residents to search for work in the equally job-starved capital, Lusaka, about 20 miles away.

For many Zambians, the fallen fortunes of Kafue epitomize the path they feel their entire country has taken in recent years--one of regression.

The southern African nation is plagued with high unemployment, a huge foreign debt and a severe AIDS crisis. Floods and drought have devastated harvests and left as many as 2 million people in danger of going hungry. Although an intense economic liberalization program has put more products on store shelves than were available 10 years ago, few people can afford them. More than 80% of Zambia’s 9-million population lives below the poverty line of $1 a day, according to United Nations statistics.

Many citizens here say that when they head to the polls Thursday to choose a new president, their vote will go to the man with the most convincing pledge to put money in their pockets and food on their tables.

“What concerns Zambians most is poverty,” said Francis Kasoma, a political commentator who teaches journalism and mass communications at the University of Zambia in Lusaka. “Whoever has the answer for that will carry the day.”

Eleven candidates are vying for the nation’s top job, including front-runners Levy Mwanawasa of the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy, who was handpicked by President Frederick Chiluba to be his successor; Anderson Mazoka, a stylish business executive, leading the United Party for National Development; and Christon Tembo, a retired army general who was until May the country’s vice president and is now heading the Forum for Democracy and Development.

Parliamentary and local council elections are also scheduled for Thursday, and the ruling party is expected to lose its domination of the 150-seat National Assembly, which it has controlled for the last 10 years.

Only 2.6 million people, just over half of those eligible, are registered to vote, and turnout is expected to be low.

The government has been widely criticized for choosing Dec. 27 as polling day since many people are out of town for the Christmas holiday and schools are in recess. For rural voters, it is the height of planting season. And heavy rains are typical at this time of year, making many roads in remote areas impassable.

“There are whole sections of people who will find it difficult to vote,” said Michael Meadowcroft, chief observer with the European Union election unit in Lusaka.

Opposition parties claim the electoral process has been rigged to benefit the MMD, and local and foreign monitors acknowledge flaws.

Mwanawasa, a prominent lawyer who resigned his position as vice president in 1994 in protest against government corruption, now has Chiluba’s backing--and access to public resources for election campaigning. He has used state-owned helicopters and four-wheel-drive vehicles to attend campaign rallies.

Scores of provincial administrators, appointed by the president, are readily available to organize political meetings in their area for Mwanawasa, whose sometimes inarticulate rhetoric at such events has enforced a belief among many that a car crash in 1991 left him mentally impaired. The state media have blatantly endorsed Mwanawasa and disparaged the other candidates.

“It would be utopian to ever think that these elections will be free and fair,” said Ngande Mwanajiti, chair of Coalition 2001, an amalgamation of independent local election monitors.

Mwanawasa has promised to reintroduce state subsidies for agriculture and boost employment. But he rejects the need to deviate from his party’s economic policies, even though many Zambians believe those policies have made thousands jobless and much poorer.

Before Chiluba’s rise to power in 1991, Zambia’s economy was pummeled by almost three decades of state monopoly, in which a socialist-style system nurtured corporations that were overstaffed and undermanaged.

Backed by Western donors, the ruling party has instituted a privatization and liberalization drive, which encourages free enterprise but also makes closures of some state enterprises, such as Kafue’s fertilizer-producing nitrogen plant, unavoidable.

“MMD has been the bricklayer of this country for the last 10 years,” Mwanawasa said in a recent interview in Lusaka. “If we get a new bricklayer, he will say I don’t like this structure, and we will have to start all over again. They say better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. We are the devil Zambians know.”

And a fiend that needs to be exorcised, say opposition candidates who seek to trounce the ruling party.

“The country [has] serious problems,” said Mazoka, a wealthy businessman who leads the pack in one local preelection poll. “There is poverty [and] deprivation in the provision of food, acceptable medical care and quality education and in employment opportunities. We have been like this in this country before. It is a phenomenon that can only be sorted out by bringing new leadership.”

“We think we are new, we are different and we are not encumbered by the past,” said Robby Makayi, a special assistant to Mazoka. “That is the comparable advantage we have. [Mazoka] is not associated with the 10 years of misrule of the old guard.”

Tembo, of the Forum for Democracy and Development, is part of that old team, though he was sacked by Chiluba for opposing the president’s unconstitutional bid for a third term earlier this year.

Tembo has argued that “greed, corruption and plain arrogance” have undermined democracy in Zambia. His party has promised clean government with a system of checks on the president to guard against abuse of power.

The retired general, who was allegedly implicated in a coup plot against former Zambian President Kenneth D. Kaunda, said he wants to restore “dignity” to the country’s top office.

Chiluba has been accused of assassinating his rivals, repressing civil rights and stifling the media by jailing some independent journalists for criticizing his administration.

Under Chiluba, corruption is so widespread “that the community has begun to accept it as normal and their understanding becomes more and more distorted,” according to a recent report by Transparency International-Zambia.

Nichekeleko, meaning “cut a slice for me,” has become a common phrase among civil servants, said Kasoma, the university professor, adding, “We have reached a stage where public officers will not perform their duties unless you give them something.”

Critics believe that Chiluba’s eagerness to ensure an MMD victory has as much to do with a lust for power--he will remain the party’s president--as it does with his fear of prosecution on charges of graft and human rights violations.

Several of the presidential candidates are appealing to voters by promising to establish a truth commission to look into alleged abuses by political leaders over the last 10 years.

“We must start a culture [whereby] if you do wrong, you must be held accountable,” Mazoka said.

But Mwanawasa, the ruling party candidate, argues that Zambia has more pressing concerns and cannot afford to waste precious resources.

“If we engage in witch hunting, we are going to misdirect funds that can be used for national development,” Mwanawasa said. “If there is a case that Chiluba has been involved in a crime, let the police deal with it.”

Kaunda, who led his country to independence in 1964 and subsequently held power for 27 years before being defeated by Chiluba in 1991, said Mwanawasa is simply a puppet of Chiluba.

“Mr. Mwanawasa is handpicked to try and protect Mr. Chiluba, there is no doubt about that,” said Kaunda, whose son Tilyenji is running as the candidate of the United National Independence Party. “I suspect it’s a question of wanting to put somebody in power who can be manipulated.”