Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema faces elections subsequent 12 months. Picture: Provided
The concern of shedding energy — and the monetary and political advantages that include it — after just one time period in workplace is obvious in President Hakainde Hichilema’s more and more panicky and politically suicidal selections.
On the coronary heart of this clear expression of political insecurity is Hichilema’s realisation that he has didn’t ship a lot of his marketing campaign guarantees and grown unpopular. This example has left the president inclined to defeat in subsequent 12 months’s election, if the opposition can unite behind a robust candidate who is ready to articulate another nationwide programme or imaginative and prescient that resonates with the issues of nearly all of voters.
It has additionally instilled concern in him and members of his inside circle. They’re petrified of shedding every little thing they’ve amassed to this point and the foundations they’ve laid for additional accumulation, in addition to of the potential for ending up in jail for corruption and prison misuse of state energy.
Hichilema got here to energy in August 2021. Years of financial mismanagement, grand corruption and democratic erosion underneath his predecessor, Edgar Lungu, dissatisfied voters and enabled Hichilema, who spent a decade and half in opposition politics, to place himself because the reformist chief Zambia wanted to reclaim its democracy, remove corruption and set itself on the trail to financial restoration.
In energy, Hichilema has turned out to be almost every little thing he detested about his predecessor and, in some circumstances, a lot worse. After he commendably abolished the regulation on defamation of the president, he shortly turned to different repressive statutes to arrest critics and political opponents on a wide range of prices akin to sedition, prison libel, hate speech, espionage and illegal meeting. Underneath his watch, corruption is prospering on an enormous scale, the economic system is in shambles, ethnic divisions are worsening and democracy is actually non-existent. The person who was anticipated to guide reform has as a substitute transitioned into an aspiring despot.
On the coronary heart of this undesirable turnaround is concern — the concern of shedding energy. In her guide, Freedom from Concern and Different Writings, the Burmese human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi wrote that, “It’s not energy that corrupts however concern. Concern of shedding energy corrupts those that wield it and concern of the scourge of energy corrupts those that are topic to it.”
This anticipated lack of financial and political energy is the concern that has engulfed Hichilema. In a bid to stop the true prospect of shedding the 2026 election, his administration is enacting a collection of repressive legal guidelines that purpose to undermine the structure and stifle the freedoms of unusual residents, civil society, journalists and opposition events. A few of these anti-democratic legal guidelines are already in drive whereas others are within the pipeline. Under, I talk about a number of of them and their supposed victims.
Corrupting the Structure
The primary sufferer of Hichilema’s creation of authorized autocracy is Zambia’s structure. Right here, the objective is management of parliament. After utilizing the courts to block his fundamental rival, former president Lungu, from contesting the 2026 election, Hichilema is comparatively assured of successful. Moreover, he has appointed loyalists to go the Electoral Fee of Zambia (ECZ), the physique that manages the election, and reconstituted the constitutional court docket, the establishment that has the ultimate say on all issues referring to the election of the president, together with petitions.
As an illustration, the president has appointed his former private lawyer, Mwangala Zaloumis, to chair the electoral physique. Since its creation in 1996, the ECZ has benefited from being led by former excessive court docket or supreme court docket judges who commanded the respect of all political gamers and enhanced its credibility. Zaloumis, who has by no means served in a judicial function, was nominated for a place that required a easy majority for affirmation. The opposition in parliament opposed her nomination, but it surely was in the end accredited with the help of MPs from Hichilema’s occasion.
Hichilema has additionally appointed 4 new judges to the concourt (together with an in depth private good friend), sacked three who had been appointed by Lungu and promoted these seen as predisposed in direction of him to the court docket’s key management positions. Hichilema is frightened that he may win the presidential election however lose management of parliament, the place rigging is tougher, even along with his supporters answerable for ECZ. To keep away from this, the president has proposed two constitutional amendments to safe his occasion’s majority in parliament.
One proposal is to reportedly enhance the variety of parliamentary constituencies by 90 seats, most of them within the president’s strongholds, by means of delimitation. One other is to extend the variety of nominations the president could make as MPs from the present restrict of eight, as protected by the structure, to a quantity decided by an act of parliament. The Constitutional Modification Invoice containing these and different controversial proposals, none of which had been agreed upon by means of broad consensus, will probably be launched subsequent month and introduced earlier than parliament in June.
Hichilema and his officers are already boasting that they’ve secured the two-thirds majority help wanted in parliament to make sure the invoice’s passage when it’s tabled for voting in July this 12 months. Ought to these proposals move, they’ll allow Hichilema to make additional adjustments to the structure after conducting both the by-elections that might be created by the passage of the invoice or the subsequent basic election.
If a sitting president can rig an election, management the concourt, and compose parliament, it’s arduous to see how they will ever be voted out of workplace. The hazard right here is that when individuals lose belief in formal establishments, together with using elections as the most effective mechanism of adjusting governments, the chance of violence and instability is nice. This would possibly clarify why Hichilema just lately bizarrely urged troopers to be deadly when coping with civilians, ought to a state of affairs come up the place they’d be deployed to carry out capabilities which are ordinarily reserved for the police, akin to containing civil unrest.
Policing social media
The second sufferer of Hichilema’s implementation of authorized autocracy is freedom of expression. Right here, the goal are unusual Zambians who use X, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Fb, to carry the federal government to account. A little bit of context is crucial to understanding this level.
In opposition, Hichilema defended residents’ use of social media platforms as an important component of free speech, particularly when police arrested his predecessor’s critics for online-related offences. When Lungu, underneath the guise of stopping and punishing cybercrimes, signed the Cyber Safety and Cyber Crimes Act forward of the 2021 election, Hichilema made an correct evaluation of its risks. He described the Act as a menace to democracy and vowed to repeal it, if elected. “That horrible regulation will die alongside the Public Order Act. Change is coming,” he wrote on X 5 months earlier than he gained energy.
Hichilema later added: “They’ve briefly taken away your freedom of speech and expression by means of the rushed Cyber Safety Invoice to cease you questioning their incompetence and corruption. Our first activity as soon as you have chose us this August will probably be to repeal this dangerous regulation. The Cyber Safety and Crime Invoice isn’t about stopping cyber-bullying. It’s about clamping down on freedom of expression and spying on residents.”
After Zambians voted for him, Hichilema modified his tune. Social media grew to become “a menace” that wanted to “be addressed in a stronger method”. As well as, the Cyber Safety and Cyber Crimes Act grew to become a suitable regulation that his administration recurrently used to arrest critics and political opponents.
When unusual residents turned the warmth on Hichilema and posted about his unfulfilled marketing campaign guarantees, together with the pledge to repeal the “spying” regulation, the president accused them of spending “an excessive amount of time on social media” and utilizing the platform to advertise hate speech, cybercrimes, bullying and deceptive data — the identical justifications Lungu had offered when introducing the regulation.
Addressing parliament in March 2022, an agitated Hichilema described social media as “a vice [that] should not be celebrated or condoned”. As an alternative of solely repealing the Lungu-era Cyber Safety and Cyber Crimes Act, as he had promised, Hichilema determined to divide it into two, each of which comprise extra punitive sections than the unique regulation. The Acts had been strongly opposed by civil society, unusual Zambians and opposition events.
`Even the US Chamber of Commerce requested Hichilema “to contemplate the potential affect of this laws on overseas funding and the expertise sector”, fearing that they “may dissuade different American corporations from getting into the Zambian market as a result of perceived dangers related to working underneath such a regulatory framework” Hichilema, who has constantly proven little regard for public sentiment, ignored this mixed opposition, used his occasion’s parliamentary majority to move the payments, and signed them into regulation on 8 April.
The brand new Cyber Crimes Act accommodates dreadful sections which are each at variance with the rules of a constitutional democracy and far worse than the regulation that Hichilema had condemned when in opposition.
Because the US Embassy in Zambia wrote in a journey alert to its residents, the laws makes it a authorized requirement for digital communications service suppliers to allow real-time monitoring and interception of all communications akin to emails, textual content messages, calls and streamed content material seeking “crucial data”, a time period the regulation defines so broadly that it may apply to virtually any exercise, and to transmit the intercepted communications to a unit in Hichilema’s workplace. A number of the sections are terrifying. Listed below are a number of random examples.
Part 5: It’s an offence to speak “crucial data” to somebody not authorised. (15 years imprisonment).
Part 6: It’s an offence to own “crucial data” with out authorisation (15 years imprisonment).
Part 20: It’s an offence to make use of a pc or pc system for an exercise which constitutes an offence underneath any written regulation.
Part 24: It’s an act of cyber terrorism to incite or try to incite ethnic divisions among the many individuals of the Republic (imprisonment for all times).
Essential data is outlined within the Cyber Safety Act as “pc knowledge that pertains to public security, public well being, financial stability, nationwide safety, worldwide stability and the sustainability and restoration of crucial our on-line world together with — (a) private knowledge that’s managed, saved or transmitted by means of crucial data infrastructure or processed by a controller; (b) data referring to any analysis and improvement in relation to crucial data infrastructure; (c) data wanted to function crucial data infrastructure or (d) data referring to danger administration and enterprise continuity in relation to crucial data infrastructure”.
The obscure definitions of phrases used within the Cyber Safety Act, the broad discretion given to law-enforcement officers and the absence of judicial safeguards depart the 2 Acts open to abuse. This might result in what Hichilema in opposition referred to as the “clamping down on freedom of expression and spying on residents”. With these new legal guidelines, there may be limitless potential to crack down on any criticism of the federal government, particularly since this might occur in actual time with the interception of all digital communication.
The prohibition of use of computer systems or pc methods for offences locations a burden on residents to comb by means of not simply the Cybercrimes Act however all written legal guidelines in Zambia to establish doable offences, successfully prohibiting using computer systems and bringing about self-censorship.
If I or anybody else criticised Hichilema for selling ethnic divisions by means of skewed distribution of appointments to public workplace, police are obliged to arrest us for the offence of cyber terrorism that carries a sentence of life imprisonment.
If I’m, or anybody else is, sharing data deemed “crucial” by the authorities, police are obliged to arrest us for the offence of unauthorised disclosure of knowledge referring to crucial data or crucial data infrastructure that carries 15 years’ imprisonment.
The Cyber Crimes Act is thus more likely to curtail free speech, undermine official criticism of elected public leaders, and instil concern in residents. As Aung San Suu Kyi famous, “Inside a system which denies the existence of primary human rights, concern tends to be the order of the day. Concern of imprisonment, concern of torture, concern of demise, concern of shedding pals, household, property or technique of livelihood, concern of poverty, concern of isolation, concern of failure.
“A most insidious type of concern is that which masquerades as widespread sense and even knowledge, condemning as silly, reckless, insignificant, or futile the small, each day acts of braveness which assist to protect man’s self-respect and inherent human dignity. It’s not simple for a individuals conditioned by concern underneath the iron rule of the precept that may is correct to free themselves from the enervating miasma of concern.”
Via the brand new cyberlaws, Hichilema is testing our means to defend our rights, to suppose, maintain opinions and to freely publish such opinions. He’s additionally successfully undermining media freedom with out closing newspapers and imprisoning their staff by guaranteeing that they make use of self-censorship.
By utilizing authorized mechanisms to subvert democracy, Hichilema is in search of, within the short-term, to wrongfoot his critics by stating that he’s merely presiding in accordance with the legal guidelines of the nation and, in the long run, to consolidate and retain state energy by means of using formal establishments to remove any severe political competitors.
Probably the most horrifying half is that Hichilema’s bid to put in authorized autocracy in Zambia isn’t full. Within the offing are a number of much more repressive payments that can quickly come to gentle. One is the Zambia Institute of Journalism Invoice 2025 which is designed to offer for stringent circumstances for the registration, licensing and management of journalists and the print media. One other is the Impartial Broadcasting Authority Invoice which is ready to muzzle and management the published media much more strictly. Then, there may be the Public Gatherings Invoice which is meant to severely prohibit the political actions of opposition events. The ultimate one is the Non-Governmental Organisations Invoice which is supposed to strictly regulate the actions of NGOs.
I ought to finish by noting that the grave mistake that Hichilema is making in pushing these repressive legal guidelines on Zambians is the failure to grasp that authority can’t be exercised with out legitimacy. Elite and standard legitimacy is the inspiration of any political system, particularly a democratic one like Zambia’s. Unjust legal guidelines create illegitimate methods. Underneath an illegitimate system, individuals would possibly obey the regulation as a result of if they don’t, they danger arrest.
In addition to depriving such legal guidelines of the ethical drive they require to take pleasure in legitimacy, this sense of concern among the many unusual individuals is more likely to solely enhance their want to do away with the supply of their collective concern — the president. In introducing these repressive legal guidelines, Hichilema is in search of to lengthen his keep in energy. The irony is that these legal guidelines are more likely to expedite his removing from workplace.
It’s now clear Hichilema fooled many Zambians, together with me, into believing that he was what he’s, in actual fact, not. The Hichilema we’re seeing now could be the true Hichilema. The one we had been bought in opposition was a fraud. In opposition, Hichilema defended using social media, opposed his predecessor’s makes an attempt to each regulate civil society or NGOs and introduce statutory regulation of journalists. He additionally vowed to repeal anti-democratic legal guidelines and enact of their place progressive laws that might promote human rights and assist strengthen accountable democratic governance.
In energy, he’s doing the alternative of almost every little thing he promised. Zambians have found the important thing to understanding Hichilema — believing what he does, not what he says, and realizing that he virtually all the time means the alternative of what he says.
Any sane, goal, and eager observer can simply discover that Hichilema is set to additional destroy Zambia’s democracy. Sustaining this destruction would possibly quickly require these in energy to begin eliminating pro-democracy activists, critics and political opponents. If I find yourself as one of many victims, so be it. I’m satisfied that liberty is the appropriate of each individual to be trustworthy with others and with themselves, to suppose and to talk with out hypocrisy or concern, to danger something with a purpose to dwell the dictates of their conscience and to offer full expression to the braveness of their convictions and to hoist and proclaim advantage. I’m in keeping with my beliefs, a lot of which have taken root.
Let Hichilema and his supporters know one factor — like many unusual Zambians, the one factor that can shut me up is the supply of competent and high quality management that might restore our cherished democracy; get the most effective out of Zambia’s mineral wealth; respect the structure and the rule of regulation; combat corruption past rhetoric; promote real nationwide unity and equitable distribution of appointments to public service; kind out the cost-of-living disaster and the deplorable circumstances of life for many Zambians. It could conduct itself in a way that might encourage the very best expression of moral values — braveness, compassion and love for fellow human beings; ethical drive of character; integrity; real humility; honesty; a predilection for session, consensus-building, communication, co-operation, lively listening and the selfless pursuit of the general public good, and never the egocentric striving for private acquire.
Like many Zambians, I can’t be silenced by the unjust and repressive legal guidelines Hichilema is manufacturing. Utilizing my pen and voice, I’ll maintain combating in my little nook for a greater Zambia till victory or demise, whichever comes first. For the love of the nation and within the service of public curiosity, I’m ready to danger something together with my final breath. Unjust legal guidelines, like aspiring autocrats, deserve no respect. As was apartheid, they’re illegitimate and have to be fought relentlessly, tenaciously and courageously.
As Aung San Suu Kyi accurately famous, “Even underneath essentially the most crushing state equipment, braveness rises up repeatedly, for concern isn’t the pure state of civilized man.” And since the pure state of the “civilised” Zambian is to try to defeat all issues which retard our full expression and to all the time develop to larger standing, all spherical, I’m not too involved in regards to the ongoing political video games that Hichilema is taking part in. I’ve religion, real and deep-seated religion, within the collective energy and decisiveness of unusual Zambians. These briefly entrusted with the administration of public affairs can solely underrate the indomitable will and braveness of unusual Zambians at their very own peril.
Though one would possibly generally misinterpret our peaceable nature and relative silence in between basic elections as an indication of weak point, we Zambians have repeatedly demonstrated our willingness to come back collectively and push again when pressed towards the wall or each time the second calls for that we rid ourselves of presidents who suppose they know higher than us and refuse to hear.
We freed ourselves from Kenneth Kaunda. We freed ourselves from Rupiah Banda. We freed ourselves from Lungu. And we will definitely free ourselves from Hichilema. Historical past has proved it. Our expertise has confirmed this timeless fact — that we, the individuals, will win, in the long run. We all the time do.
Sishuwa Sishuwa is a senior lecturer within the division of historical past at Stellenbosch College.