Source: Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) | Published: 2026-11-06
Category: ODA·개발금융 | Keywords: democracy, oda
Perhaps the strongest hangover from colonialism is the relative lack of consent garnered by the ruling parties: the notion of them gaining “hegemony on a shoestring ” in a context where rulers’ goals are to keep labour costs as low as possible in order to expand profits of exports. The strategy depended upon indirect rulers defined by “traditions” (flexible and changing) and regions and required brokerage among shifting alliances. Lacking the ideological means of gaining consent via domination of media and civil society institutions, rulers resort to state violence and intimidation.
In 2021 Hichilema inherited a state structure that had, according to Amnesty International , over the previous decade undertaken a “systematic crackdown on the right to freedom of expression”, criminalizing peaceful dissent and forcing the closure of independent media outlets. One consequence is that there are no reliable sources of information on the current political crisis. What fails to make international news is any analysis of the prominent regional and ethnolinguistic divisions that animate street-level politics. There is also no analysis of the striking absence of any clear differences in ideological or policy orientations between parties. The currently jailed opposition leader Brian Mundubile heads a coalition formed for the sole purpose of getting UPND out of power while contestation rests largely on respective judgements of character and regional and ethno-linguistic criteria. Questions revolved around who gets to govern – rather than why they should govern. Youtube and Facebook searches for elections information do not yield much more than pastors and self-appointed “prophets”, prophesizing elections results rather than actual political analysis.
The campaign period leading up to the national election on August 13 th was marred by street violence among political supporters , backed up with intimidation of opposition supporters by police and military. International observers have documented instances of voter intimidation, assaults, abductions, and arrest of hundreds of opposition supporters. Even worse has been the loss of life. A day after the election, security forces killed opposition member,Mutotwe Kafwaya, a former cabinet minister, and Lovemore Chishima, a polling agent. The UN Special Rapporteur, Gina Romero, has called for immediate international scrutiny. The EU parliament passed a near unanimous resolution condemning the killings and the increase in political repression since the election and calling for an independent and impartial investigation. Hichilema has also cancelled the passports of at least six critics of his government, who include a prominent academic . When he was in opposition, Hichilema was a victim of the same repression he is inflicting on those who oppose his government.
For Tonga, Ila and Lenje ethnic groups (collectively referred to as ‘Bantu Botatwe’), a stronghold of the ruling UPND, and where Hakainde and the rest of Southern Province belong, his election victory in 2021 was the culmination of a 75-year struggle of supporting opposition candidates who called for liberal nationalism. This dates back to 1951 when Hakainde’s fellow southerner, Harry Nkumbula launched the Northern Rhodesian African Congress (later renamed as African National Congress). With Nkumbula being eclipsed by Kenneth Kaunda and the United National Independence Party (UNIP) throughout the independence struggle, he remained the primary opposition figure until the banning of the opposition parties in 1973. Since then, Southern and Western regions had maintained deep grievances. With the UPND in power, today these grievances find expression through periodical street battles involving loyal cadres, most of who are lumpenproletarian, against their opposition counterparts. Unemployed and in poverty, these cadres hope for hand-outs in exchange for political support. Ruling party cadres are often the ones who kickstart the political disturbances targeting the opposition, which include disrupting campaign rallies. Thereafter, the police and military, join in, ostensibly to restore order by cancelling the opposition rallies altogether, which ultimately benefit the party in power. This dynamic also led to the suspension of the 2026 election ballot counting in some areas.
Back to Nkumbula, his politics continue to be misunderstood despite a brilliant biography by Giacomo Macola that dispels much of the popular mythology that fuels animosity towards Tonga-speaking peoples. To understand some of the ethnolinguistic (read: “tribalist”) tensions in Zambia it is helpful to know some of the colonial history.
Early in the industrial-era conquest of “Northern Rhodesia”, portions of what is today Zambia’s Southern Province were the site of the earliest and highest concentrations of Christian missionary settlements. Prior to their arrival, cattle-rearing Tonga-speaking peoples on the “plateau” portions of the province were being preyed upon by neighbouring warring groups. Unlike many Bantu-speaking peoples, the Tonga had not reorganized their societies to support military self-defence, (nor did they elect chiefs with political power). Thus, they appreciated the relative calm brought by British rule.
Missionaries established schools and popularized the use of the ox-drawn plow. With their knowledge of English, Tonga peoples were quick to occupy roles as civil servants within the colonial state, and after. Large portions of their land were cleared and given to white settlers, but rather than burdening themselves with resentments, Tonga farmers emulated these settlers. They adopted the dominant crops of maize and tobacco production (which they had to sell at prices below what the white settlers would garner). Their cattle herds grew rapidly, especially among those with access to grazing on the nutrient-rich Kafue floodplains. Cattle were both wealth and traction to pull plows, leading to a cycle of accumulation. By the time of independence in 1964, many were wealthy enough to buy large-scale farms from white populations departing to the racist bastions of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. Other large private-titled plots were subdivided and sold to endogenous farmers, sometimes with low-interest, state-guaranteed loans.
By independence, most Tonga farmers had adopted key tenets of liberal democratic ideology including the belief that employers provide “opportunity” rather than exploitation. They were taught to approach “farming as a business” long before it became a mantra of the World Bank, AGRA and dominant development NGOs. They wanted an impartial state that would nurture indigenous capitalists.
Although they maintained an oppositional force in the first decades of independence, the plateau part of Southern Province benefitted from loans, an agricultural marketing board providing inputs, and a ministry of agriculture and veterinary department offering extension services, all while a growing urban population maintained a steady market for maize, sunflower, milk and livestock. They also had family members occupying positions as civil servants, whose savings could be invested back into their farms. This broke down during an economic downturn in the 1980s and since then, many Southerners have lamented what they perceive as a dysfunctional state, rife with corruption, and benefitting specific regions and ethnolinguistic groups, especially the Bemba of the country’s northern region. There are some parallels with the experiences of the Lozi, in Western Province, whose Litunga (king), from 1889, sought recognition from the British Monarchy through treaties, as a strategy of bolstering themselves from predation by the Makololo, and internal pretenders. Yet, in the post-independence era, their political power eroded, leading to a shared sense of marginalization in the national project.
Two structural differences in political mobilization in the North and East are larger migrant labour populations, who became an industrial (often unionized) proletariat, and that chiefs have held greater ability to mobilize electoral support. This differs from an organizational context in which Southern Province farmers are disadvantaged by geographic distance. Thus, to some degree, they have a harder time representing themselves (paraphrasing Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire). Their work disperses them
In this context, Tonga farmers have repeatedly sought a saviour figure, and Hichilema was their perfect organic intellectual so long as they didn’t look too closely. He was like them. He had succeeded in finance and in industrial cattle finishing (buying adult animals, fattening them in stockyards and re-selling). What they overlooked, however, was the degree to which he represents international capitalist interests that have bought out many of the large-scale farms gradually lost by Tonga peoples throughout the perpetual structural-adjustment, neoliberal era.
According to the neoliberal theory behind Structural Adjustment Programs imposed in the 1990s, an overburdening state was holding back the entrepreneurial capitalist class. In practice, it was the opposite. Without the state, Tonga farmers faced devastating loses that included widespread livestock epidemics, in turn contributing to periods of regional famine in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
From the perspective of other ethnolinguistic groups of the North and East, the Tonga are often resented for their seeming over-representation in positions within the state apparatus, banks and large corporations. Some Tonga farmers also bring ecologically destructive agricultural practices into the north (often led by tobacco, kiln dried alongside deforestation for cropping). In many instances this coincides with the displacement of previous inhabitants that did not adhere to capitalist property rights. With limited and distorting evidence, anti-Tonga sentiment is mobilized by some factions who have understandable grievances in an economy that works for so few.
If one looks at a voting map of the recent election results, they will see it split down the middle. While Hakainde succeeded in Central and Copperbelt, the margins of victory were much tighter, owing to the fact these provinces have greater diversity and large populations of Tonga within them.
The majority of Zambians oppose ethnic chauvinism (“tribalism”), but when there are no recognisable differences in political platforms, ethnicity and region is all that remains. HH foments these grievances when he publicly stated, in 2025, his preparedness to tactically “squeeze the throat” of his opponents. This talk emboldened thuggish behaviour from UPND cadres, before HH then prevented his predecessor, Edgar Lungu from leaving the country for medical care, resulting in his untimely death in June of that year. In the weeks before the election, numerous videos were posted on X and Tik Tok, of UPND cadres angrily miming a slash of the throat, suggesting that was coming for Mundubile.
The admiration Hakainde has attracted from international leaders and business interests is comparable to people like Macky Sall in Senegal, or Rwanda’s Paul Kagame. They are initially heralded as technocratic liberals who can wield gentlemanly liberal discourses. They can supposedly govern through reason and don’t need the blunt force and the carceral machinery of the state to succeed. They are seen as potentially neutral, managerial arbiters that will govern in national interest. And not steal. In these cases, we see that once in office, there are structural features of the neocolonial African state that pull them into old patterns and reveal the shallowness of the electoral discourse.
Many such features derive from the limited space for endogenous capital accumulation in economies that have incorporated Africans in subordinate ways. Neoliberalism deepened the dependence of African countries upon primary c