Two women walk past electoral campaign posters in Lusaka on Sunday. Zambians vote Thursday in a closely watched presidential election that will test whether recent economic gains can offset frustration over the high cost of living.GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP/Getty Images
A wave of election violence in Zambia has cast doubt on the fairness of this week’s vote in a country that has long been regarded as one of Africa’s most peaceful and democratic.
Zambia’s reputation for stability has helped attract billions of dollars in investment from some of Canada’s biggest mining companies, but the chaotic scenes at opposition campaign rallies have sparked concerns about a deterioration of human rights in the country.
President Hakainde Hichilema, elected in 2021, is a businessman who has won favour in Zambia’s mining sector with tax cuts and other pro-industry policies, maintaining its ranking as one of Africa’s top copper producers. Among its biggest investors are Canadian companies First Quantum Minerals Ltd. and Barrick Mining Corp.
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Mr. Hichilema was widely expected to win Thursday’s election comfortably, but an energetic campaign by the main opposition candidate, veteran parliamentarian Brian Mundubile, has complicated his path to victory.
Last week, an opposition rally was halted by stone-throwing supporters of Mr. Hichilema who blocked Mr. Mundubile’s motorcade from reaching its destination. Another rally was shut down by tear gas fired by the police.
A video posted online by Mr. Mundubile showed his entourage rushing him to safety after a barrage of tear gas from police in the town of Mongu.
“Had to run for my life,” he said in the social-media post. “Our teams are under attack from police who have blocked our rallies.”
He accused the ruling party of turning Zambia into “a police state” and using “thugs” to assault the opposition.
Another video showed police firing tear gas into an opposition rally as the crowd chanted: “We want change, we want change.”
In response, Mr. Hichilema has urged Zambians to allow peaceful campaigning by all candidates. “Political violence has no place in our democracy,” he said in a statement last week.
Zambia is considered a democratic leader in Africa because it has regularly held multiparty elections since 1991, with opposition candidates often winning. It has been praised as one of the few African countries to experience frequent peaceful transfers of power between different political parties.
Human-rights groups, however, say the latest campaign violence is part of a larger pattern of abuses by Mr. Hichilema’s government.
A new report by Amnesty International, scheduled for release on Monday, concluded that Zambia has suffered “an alarming regression into authoritarian practices.” It accused the government of using “repressive laws, intimidation and surveillance” to restrict freedoms in the country.
Mr. Hichilema himself was a target of similar tactics in the past when he was an opposition leader. In 2017, police fired tear gas into his home and arrested him on treason charges. The charges were dropped after he spent four months in prison.
After his election as president, he pledged to ensure respect for human rights. But his government has violated this promise by arresting and harassing journalists and politicians and introducing restrictive laws that facilitate abuses, Amnesty said.
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Zambian human-rights groups and church leaders have voiced alarm at the campaign violence of recent days. “Such violence threatens the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms and undermines the peaceful and credible conduct of the electoral process,” Zambia’s Human Rights Commission said in a statement last week.
Alick Banda, the Catholic archbishop of Lusaka, the Zambian capital, condemned the “disturbing rise” in political violence. “Violent confrontations at rallies, intimidation of citizens and targeted attacks on opposition candidates have stained the democratic landscape,” he said in a statement quoted by Zambian media.
These incidents were “direct attacks on democracy, the Constitution, and the values upon which Zambia was founded,” the archbishop said.
The Christian Churches Monitoring Group, an independent Zambian organization, said last week that it had recorded 52 incidents of political violence since the beginning of the election campaign, with the police acting on barely half of them.
Nicole Beardsworth, a political studies lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said Mr. Hichilema is likely to win the election. But the campaign by Mr. Mundubile has been impressive, with huge rallies across much of the country, despite having few resources, and he seems to have gained “significant ground” in the election, she wrote in an analysis published this weekend on the Democracy in Africa website.