the campaign, its aim to cause disruption. According to the opposition, extra ballot papers were printed before the election. Registration of foreign voters on the electoral roll also became an issue, with a high number of these voting in key border towns. There was little the opposition could do, however, given that access to the voters’ roll was denied them until the 11th hour. On the actual day of the election, 11 August 2016, the voting process went smoothly in most areas. Afterwards the UPND claimed that ballots had been binned, and that there had been widespread intimidation, tampered results and systematic bias in counting. The opposition alleged that the ‘Gen 12’ forms – those that certified the outcome of the count at every polling station with agents and representatives from all parties present signing – were withheld from UPND agents, so that they were not able to verify the results. The delay, they say, enabled the Patriotic Front to fiddle with the numbers, notably in the capital, Lusaka, where nearly one in six of registered voters resided. Certainly, the vote counting and the issuing of results slowed over the weekend following the election, despite being expected much earlier, a tell-tale sign of a fix.
Despite – or because of all this – the Patriotic Front achieved its 50.1 per cent winning margin by only 5 000 votes out of nearly 3.8 million cast.38 Even if all the allegations of election malfeasance are discounted, the margin to avoid a run-off was suspiciously small, just 0.13 per cent.
These events demonstrate that holding elections is by itself insufficient to claim a democracy. Indeed, elections may even reinforce authoritarianism if they permit the subjugation of democratic process through electoral fraud.
Even before the results were made public, various international observer teams found the voting and counting process, in the words of the Commonwealth report, ‘credible and transparent’. The European Union Election Observation Mission said ‘voting was peaceful and generally well administered’ despite being ‘marred by systematic bias in the state media and restrictions on the [opposition] campaign’. There were other international missions from the Carter Centre, the AU, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, and the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa.39
With their eye on preventing violence, the international community encouraged the UPND to seek legal recourse rather than take to the streets. ‘Any challenges to the process at any level, from the president right down to district level, should be taken through legal means to the courts, with evidence, not to the streets,’ said Janet Rogan, head of the UN resident office in Zambia, shortly after the final results had been announced.40 Hichilema’s party petitioned the results to the courts within the prescribed seven-day period. They were then given 14 days to compile and present their case to the Constitutional Court, which ruled that the hearing would start on 2 September 2016. Thereupon the full bench (which had been nominated by President Lungu) decided that the hearing would continue on Monday 5 September. On the Monday, three of the five judges decided that the 14 days stipulated by the constitution for an election petition hearing had expired on 2 September and therefore threw the case out.41
It would be tempting for international observers and outside governments – and investors likewise – to believe that their interests are best served in such fractious circumstances by doing nothing, a cliché-ridden policy choice of ‘keeping your head down’, ‘not rocking the boat’, ‘letting them get on with things’, and ‘waiting and seeing’. The benchmark for a successful election is set very low by international observers: it is about preventing violence more than anything else, even if the books are obviously cooked. And their unwillingness to shake the system has a strategic competitive aspect, since other international actors are unlikely to do so, and may profit from any bilateral upset. There is a need to develop a ‘democracy playbook’ for elections.
To counter fraud and intimidation, opposition forces have to generate their own sophisticated processes of election monitoring, including parallel voter tabulation, and ensure their results are tallied and published before those of the government agency. This is something that the victorious campaign of Muhammadu Buhari managed to do in Nigeria in 2015 when up against the huge resources behind Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign. Here, the spread of digital technology in Africa presents a paradox. Technology offers the means to quickly mobilise mass movements, especially in cities. At the same time, it can be used, in the absence of institutional norms, and checks and balances, to spread outrageous propaganda and the government can turn off communications at the flick of a (cellular) switch.
Countering these trends requires vigilance, but also alternative media outlets, free from government interference, and an opposition capable of advertising on radio, television, print and the social media. It demands extensive – and expensive – polling to assess and target such messaging. It requires the free movement of party campaigners, canvassers and election monitors alike.
All this requires funding – lots of it. It is estimated, for example, that the Zambian presidential candidates had, before the 2016 contest, spent as much as $15 million each on their earlier 2011 and 2015 campaigns. Jonathan’s failed attempt to retain the election in Nigeria in 2015 is rumoured to have cost more than a billion US dollars. The eventual winner Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign was closer to $200 million. The Buhari victory shows that money is not everything, however, and can be countered by clever alliance politics and electoral tactics.
Hichilema says that international observers were ‘absolutely useless’ in supporting the democratic process in his country.42 However well meaning they may be, their role might instead be pernicious, since they are unlikely, by their mere presence, to accept that they have presided over a fraudulent event. For many of them, that would be an inconvenient truth. Of course, they could play a more useful role. For example, rather than allowing an incumbent to facilitate their supply from Dubai, why not provide ballot papers that can’t be tampered with; rather than paying for observers to live it up at the Intercontinental, why not finance private-security companies to secure polling stations? That’s how observers can be useful and taxpayers’ money can be used to good effect.
If they lack political teeth, or resources, or both, observers would do better in such cases by not pretending, and just staying away.
Even so, history shows that the keys to domestic political power, like peace, are held by local actors, not foreign, whether from Africa or farther afield. For example, African governments established the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) in 2003 as a voluntary self-assessment of countries’ governance. To date, there are 34 members, while 18 countries had, by November 2016, completed the assessment process.43 Although it started well, like other institutions, the APRM fell afoul of a ‘laundry list’ approach, setting a lengthy list of governance priorities without the necessary means or will to address them. This was compounded by a lack of political will ‘by African leaders, especially following the exit of presidents Mbeki and Obasanjo,’ explains one official, who worked in the secretariat, and following the demise of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia.44
This failure of African governments – and investors – to take the APRM seriously and the lack of tough engagement around elections are indicative of a difficulty in changing domestic political dynamics, of generating leverage over the elites and their ways of doing things. As a result, the record of outsiders improving governance and democracy in Africa is poor, not least because African leaders routinely resist such ‘conditionality’ on external assistance. Donors have consequently soft-pedalled on democracy and rule-of-law interventions, preferring less controversial initiatives, such as infrastructure assistance and the development of skills. But being firmer and more outspoken on democracy is the right thing to do, for reasons of long-term economic growth and because it means taking the side of the majority of Africans.
Conclusion: The need for institutions and urgency
Frustration with the pace of African economic reform can encourage populism and excuse authoritarianism in the interest of ‘getting things done’.
But
