Political turmoil is growing in Zambia after the arrest of dozens of opposition politicians, the fatal shooting of a former government minister and new reports suggesting that President Hakainde Hichilema benefited from fraud in the recent presidential election.
The tumult in the wake of his re-election last week has cast a cloud over Mr. Hichilema’s victory. When he was first elected five years ago, he was lauded as a champion of democracy in Africa. International observers and human rights activists accused the incumbent he defeated, Edgar Lungu, of using violence and repression to maintain power. Mr. Hichilema himself had been a political prisoner.
Now, some of those same observers have accused Mr. Hichilema and his party of using government resources to manipulate voter support and suppress opposition. The European Union said that its observer mission found “serious incidents and procedural irregularities during the counting and tabulation” of the election last week.
Zambian activists, the United Nations and Amnesty International have sounded alarms over the arrests of opposition politicians over the last week. The U.N. human rights chief has urged Zambian authorities to “stop arresting people arbitrarily.”
The Zambian authorities have said the arrests are related to a plot to overthrow the government. The police issued a request on Thursday for the main opposition leader and Mr. Hichilema’s election opponent, Brian Mundubile, to come in for questioning.
Mr. Mundubile is accused of engaging in activities that “have the potential to threaten or undermine national security,” the police said. Mr. Mundubile has denied the accusation.
An independent election monitor in Zambia issued a report on Thursday concluding that Mr. Hichilema’s vote totals had been fraudulently increased, citing discrepancies between the final tally and the results reported at various polling stations. But the report, by the Christian Churches Monitoring Group, which has monitored Zambia’s past four presidential contests, found that Mr. Hichilema still had enough votes to win.
Investors welcomed Mr. Hichilema’s re-election. Zambia, in southern Africa, holds vast reserves of copper, lithium, cobalt and other critical minerals. Mr. Hichilema used his first term as president to open up the country’s mining sector, where the United States has tried in recent years to break the grip of Chinese companies.
Mr. Hichilema’s supporters say that he remains a strong champion of good governance and described the chaotic aftermath of the election as an attempt by his opponents to topple the government.
For years, opposition leaders have threatened violence, said Sikwindi Situla, a spokesman for Mr. Hichilema’s party, the United Party for National Development. Now law enforcement authorities have uncovered credible allegations of an insurrection plot, Mr. Situla said.
He pointed to police reports that former military commandos had colluded with the opposition, and that weapons and tactical equipment had been recovered from a home used by opposition members.
“The issue of them trying to create anarchy and being the first ones to cry so that everybody else must see them as victims is part of their strategy,” Mr. Situla said.
Mutotwe Kafwaya, a former government minister and member of the opposition, was fatally shot by the police last week. He was killed during a raid on a home that the authorities said was being used to plot an insurrection, the police said. The police said officers were fired upon first, and that the minister was killed in a shootout.
But Paul Makaya, a lawyer for the National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity, the opposition, disputed that account. He accused Mr. Hichilema’s government of cracking down on lawful dissent and said many of the people who were detained in the last week have not been given access to a lawyer.
About 40 supporters of Mr. Mundubile, the opposition leader, have been arrested and remain unaccounted for, according to Mr. Makaya. “We are in uncharted territory right now in terms of brutality and the sheer venom coming from the state,” he said.
After Zambia’s electoral commission briefly halted vote counting because it said election workers were attacked and ballots were being stolen, it declared that Mr. Hichilema had won with 60 percent of the vote.
Zambia could “spend a very long time arresting and locking up people,” said Euston Chiputa, a political analyst and historian in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. Or, he said, the government could “start focusing on the economy, start focusing on governance, start focusing on people’s livelihoods.’’
Mr. Chiputa said it was important for Zambians to work out the political turmoil internally, arguing that the West was mostly interested in the competition with China for the country’s critical minerals.
“They will superficially, yes, talk about human rights,” he said. “We ourselves must be extremely careful. We can be dragged into a conflict.”
The post Zambia’s Democratic Facade Fractures in Post-Election Crackdown appeared first on New York Times.
