Assassinating Democracy Before It Has Arrived

A voter visits polling stations on the last day of Zambia’s 2015 elections (Flickr)

Recent elections have found southern African states beset by authoritarian leaders, fraud, and legitimacy protests, following the global trend of democratic backsliding. Historically, nations in southern Africa have had strong, authoritarian monarchs and elites before switching to what resembles a democratic process. During that transition, however, leaders have attempted to invalidate the electoral process, create chaos for a peaceful transfer of power, or disrupt adjacent governing bodies, exemplified by recent elections in Lesotho, Angola, and Zambia.

On October 22, Lesotho’s national assembly election body admitted to incorrectly allocating parliamentary seats. This October’s elections were Lesotho’s first since the authoritarian ruling party, the All Basotho Convention (ABC), took over in 2017. In this most recent election, the populist Revolution for Prosperity (RFP) party won the most seats but fell short of a majority in Lesotho’s parliament. Despite an alleged miscounting of votes, the Independent Electoral Commission recognized that the RFP’s marginal majority would not be impacted. Even if the error does not account for a large difference in election results, it could lead to yet another violation of election trust.

Lesotho is slowly recovering from opposition riots and political instability that plagued the kingdom since 2017 under the ABC. Their ex-prime minister’s murder charges and constitutional reform initiatives, for instance, have resulted in immense turmoil for the transitioning democracy. The October 2022 election was heralded as Lesotho’s return from an authoritarian regime and shift towards a more sustainable governing model. According to political analysts, the democratic nature of Lesotho’s election brings to light election legitimacy which could lead to objections from rival parties about the election’s process and validity. Smears on the recent election could even delegitimize the RFP’s success in dethroning the ABC. Lesotho’s prominent party leaders did not believe this news warranted a recount or audit of the election results, further jeopardizing the trust that the people of Lesotho have in their elections. 

Lesotho is not the only southern African country that recently faced a tumultuous election cycle riddled with distrust and growing authoritarianism. In August 2022, Angola faced similar problems after the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) party rejected the presidential election results and accused the election committee of fraud. The Constitutional Court, led by a member of UNITA’s opposition party, repudiated their request for an election recount. Angolan elections are not exactly functional to begin with. The state reported only 1,300 election workers for a country twice the size of France, causing failures, such as accounting for 2.7 million deceased citizens during this cycle. The court’s rejection of the recount request ultimately caused outrage on social media, leading Angolan authorities to deploy armed forces in preparation for potential violence.

The subversion of democracy runs even deeper in southern Africa. In Zambia’s elections in 2021, the incumbent candidate of the Patriotic Front Party, Edgar Lungu, was ultimately defeated, but the election took an unprecedented turn of events. Lungu’s presidency was marked by use of youth militias, intelligence agency and police oversteps, and deployment of military loyalists to scare and intimidate political adversaries. Lungu’s abuse of power started during his concurrent tenure as both defense and justice minister under Zambia’s previous president, Michael Sata. After harassing the police and his opponents, Lungu’s party split. Furthermore, Lungu used his power as justice minister to remove a renowned public prosecutor from office and added positions for his loyalists. Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have gone even further, saying that the packing and weaponizing of courts and other neutral institutions is one of the methods that “democracy’s assassins” use to subtly and gradually kill democracy, as seen in Zambia.

With Lungu’s loss, Hakainde Hichilema is being recognized as a miracle worker. However, Zambia is only now beginning its uphill battle for democracy. According to political scientists Edward Mansfield and Jack Synder, authoritarian regimes transitioning to democracies are at one of the most volatile points in their governing histories, putting Zambia at high risk for conflict during its democratic transition. This risk has also been observed in Lesotho and Angola, where there are strains on the transitioning regime. As most of these nations have learned, subverting blossoming democratic ideals before they have had that chance to take root makes it significantly more difficult to implement reform when the time comes to shape a nation’s governing structure.