The Interaction of Structural Cleavages, Institutions, and Strategic
Choice: Multiethnic Parties and Changes in Cleavage Particization
in Zambia 1948-2007
James R. Scarritt
Institute of Behavioral Science and
Department of Political Science
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309, USA
Presented at the Workshop on “Politicizing Socio-Cultural Structures: Elite and Mass
Perspectives on Cleavages.” Workshop 19 of ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Helsinki,
Finland, 7-12 May 2007.
The Interaction of Structural Cleavages, Institutions, and Strategic Choice:
Multiethnic Parties and Changes in Cleavage Particization in Zambia 1948-2007
This paper first makes the theoretical argument that in order to study the politicization of sociocultural cleavages, the topic of this workshop, it is necessary to study the interaction of structural
cleavages, mobilization history guided by values and beliefs, political institutions, and strategic
choice. It then analyzes the interaction of these factors, including relatively stable ethnopolitical
cleavages, values and beliefs, and institutions, in producing five characteristics of competitive
elections in Zambia (1964, 1968, 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2006): 1) multiethnic rather than ethnic
parties, 2) high levels of party volatility, 3) changing bases of party support through changing
cleavage particization, 4) a dominant party in all or almost all elections depending on how such a
party is defined, and 5) the failure of opposition parties to coordinate in those elections in which
there were more than two parties. It argues that leaders have made strategic choices in favor of
multiethnic parties and an oversized ruling coalition because of their nationalism and nationalist
mobilization history, their interest in winning the powerful and high status presidency, the
absence of a majority ethnopolitical group, and—at least until recently—their inability or
unwillingness to mobilize around another type of structural difference or cleavage. It further
argues that ethnopolitical groups at two levels of inclusiveness have been virtually constant
during the post-independence period, but at the level of strategic interaction different parties have
attempted to mobilize or particize different ethnopolitical groups or coalitions of groups in each
election. It finally argues that opposition party leaders are losers in past competition within the
ruling coalition, and the importance of status among them leads to coordination failures among
their parties.
Special attention is given to comparison of the 2001 and 2006 elections because the latter
involved the most dramatic changes yet in the groups mobilized by different parties and the
mobilization of a class cleavage for the first time in urban but not rural areas, even though the
ruling party won both elections with the same presidential candidate. The substantial differences
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between the 2001 and 2006 election results are analyzed at the national and provincial levels (and
ethnopolitical group support is also estimated); constituency level results will be analyzed later in
order to illustrate these changes more effectively.
The paper concludes by discussing the relevance of Zambia’s pattern of shifting bases of
support for multiethnic parties, high volatility, a dominant party, and opposition coordination
failure for the future of Zambia and other countries--African and non-African--especially with
regard to the strengthening of democracy.
The Politicization and Particization of Structural Cleavages: Theory
Given the theoretical and bibliographic discussion that has occurred among workshop
participants, there is no need for this paper to include an extensive literature review on structural
cleavages or their politicization. Therefore the focus of this section will be on the presentation of
my theoretical approach and comparison of it to: 1) the approaches of some other workshop
participants, and through those comparisons 2) to the broader literature. Stoll approvingly quotes
(2004:21) Collier and Alcock (1999: 539) to the effect that “how scholars understand and
operationalize a concept can and should depend on what they are going to do with it.” I agree
with that point, and will use it to differentiate my approach from those of other participants and
the literature. This paper is part of a larger project on how change and continuity in the Zambian
party system, governmental institutions, and policies have been affected by the strategic choices
made by political leaders in interactions with one another and voters in the context of extant
social structures and institutions. Both cleavages and leaders’ shared and long-held values and
beliefs predate contemporary strategic interaction, although they have developed out of past
strategic interaction, which I call mobilization history. Thus it is useful to view them as social
structures, and to view cleavage particization as short-term outcomes of strategic interaction
guided by these structures. Social structure also includes the economy, which influences
cleavage particization more indirectly, and so is not discussed here. In the larger project, leaders
and other actors are involved in a messy ‘ecology of games’ (Long 1962: 139-55; Tsebelis 1990:
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32-3, 38) involving institutional stasis or reform, government-civil society relations, and
economic policy formulation and implementation as well as the particization of cleavages. This
requires multiple simultaneous and possibly contradictory strategic choices, making the inclusion
of social structure and institutions even more crucial to the explanation of actors' reactions. In a
recent paper (Scarritt 2006b), I have shown that game theorists, various types of institutionalists,
and general systems theorists have all emphasized interactions among social structure, institutions
and strategic choice, and have to some degree converged on the conception of such interaction
just outlined. Greif and Laitin (2004: 644-5) treat cleavage structure as an institution because it is
composed of beliefs, organizations, and rules, but they are the exception on this point. I believe
that my framework is applicable to Zambia and many other African countries, but it may need to
be modified for societies in which structural cleavages and/or values and beliefs are less stable.
My conceptualization is very similar to that of Enyedi (2006: 700), who says “... the
overall cleavage structure of a political society results from the interplay between three factors:
entrepreneurs, the pre-political preferences and structures of a society (the raw material political
entrepreneurs work with), and the constraining institutional structure.” Although his title can be
interpreted as indicating that he emphasizes the agency of entrepreneurs more than the other
components, his analysis actually focuses on the interplay among them.
Our shared conception
resolves for him and for me the debate in the literature between those who treat cleavages as
independent variables and parties as dependent and those who reverse the causal relationship
(Colmer and Puglisi 2005: 502-3) in favor of both sides being right sometimes.
Following Bartolini and Mair (1990: 215) Deegan-Krause (2006a: 12-20, 2006b) posits
that cleavages involve the combination of structural, institutional and attitudinal differences.
Intermediate between these differences and full cleavages are position divides (attitudinal +
structural differences), issue divides (attitudinal + institutional differences), and census divides
(institutional + structural differences).
My framework includes the interaction among all three
of these elements: in it, as indicated above: cleavages as well as long-held values and beliefs are
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structural, institutions are included as such, and the preferences that motivate strategic interaction
are attitudinal. All are involved in the politicization and particization of cleavages. What
Bartolini and Mayer and Deegan-Krause call cleavages, I call politicized cleavages, and they are
the ones that interest all of us the most. In the analysis of change and continuity over more than
forty years in Zambia that follows, structural cleavages remain relatively constant, while their
paticization changes rather frequently. Some values and beliefs also remain relatively constant,
while the preferences involved in strategic interaction change. My definitions are designed to be
useful in conceptualizing and explaining these differences. Deegan-Krause's terms census and
position divides do not capture structural stability combined with change in particization, but they
serve him well in the comparison of two cases in both of which issues have been very important,
but between which they have been significantly different. I find Zuckerman's (1975: 236)
conception of cleavage as a type of division compatible with my framework.
Deegan-Krause notes (2006b) that, in comparison to the literature on other world regions,
the literature on cleavages in Africa gives more emphasis to structures and less to attitudes;
Randall (2006: 390) makes the same point. My framework allows clarification of this point. My
unpublished research reveals a variety of attitudinal differences about desirable institutions and
policies among Zambian leaders (see Rakner and Svasand 2004: 56-8), and Bratton, Mattes, and
Gyimah-Boadi (2005) find similar differences within mass publics in Zambia and other African
countries, but these differences have played a minor role in the politicization of cleavages, at least
until recently, in part because of the strength of stable ethnopolitical cleavages. I will suggest that
changes in the particization of relatively stable already politicized structural cleavages in the
context of strong (although perhaps declining as indicated below) nationalism may have
strengthened Zambian democracy by making members of all ethnopolitical groups potential
“winners.”
Stoll’s (2004: 18-27) typology of latent, politicized, and particized cleavages is similar
but not identical to that found in my work with Mozaffar (Scarritt and Mozaffar 1999; Mozaffar,
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Scarritt and Galaich 2003; Mozaffar and Scarritt in progress). Latent cleavages in the social
structure and outside it become political cleavages through politicization. Those that emerge
from social structure tend to be more persistent, but this is not always the case. Then some
political cleavages are “particized, that is, made into important lines of partisan division (19).”
Stoll equates cleavages with preferences, prefers the latter term as her title indicates, and defines
them as inputs from social structure. “Political cleavages reside within voters' minds and are
expressed by what may be called their opinions, attitudes, or values. As such, the members of a
group generated by a cleavage perceive a shared interest; in other words, the cleavage ‘engages
some set of values common to members of the group and members know a common life’
(Knutson and Scarborough 1995: 494). Latent cleavages, in contrast, do not generate a set of
common values and life that is institutionalized in organizational form” (Stoll 2004: 26). Stoll
recognizes (n. 29: 28) that the ethnopolitical groups that Mozaffar and I code are not latent but are
politicized. But the ethnic cleavages that have been politicized in Zambia are not latent, but were
socially constructed prior to politicization, as mentioned above and described below. Their
politicization began some time ago, so politicized cleavages are structural facilitators and
constraints on contemporary strategic interaction. I use the term preferences for the immediate
goals of such interaction and the terms values and beliefs for the second order preferences
(treated as structural) underlying them, and I argue that this distinction is crucial for the
explanation of my case. Like Deegan-Krause, Stoll compares cases in which issues are crucial.
Not having seen her empirical analysis I cannot say how important this distinction is for it, but I
think that the distinction has very broad utility.
There are what Stoll calls latent cleavages within Zambian social structure, and one or
two of them may have been politicized and particized for the first time in the 2006 election. As
Deegan-Krause (2006b) and Randall (2006: 389) point out others have done, I employ a modified
version of the Lipset and Rokkan categories of urban-rural, worker-employer, center-periphery,
and church-state cleavages to analyze urban-rural, class, ethnopolitical, and Christian-secular
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structural cleavages in Zambia. I describe below how class was politicized only in urban areas in
the recent election and speculate on the potential effects of this change on Zambian cleavage
structure.
Construction and politicization of ethnopolitical cleavages during the colonial period
and the nationalist mobilization is an example of the Lipset-Rokkan hypothesis that cleavages
constructed in critical periods get frozen and hinder the politicization of other structural cleavages
which become relevant at a later time (Randall 2006: 389).
Explaining Stable Politicized Cleavages, Changes in Particization, and Their Effects on the
Party System in Zambia
Ethnopolitical cleavages have been predominant in competitive electoral politics in Zambia since
before independence, but most political parties have been multiethnic. In the name of national
unity, they have sought inclusive or oversized rather than minimum winning coalitions, with
varying degrees of success. Few parties receiving their support overwhelming from a single
ethnic group have emerged, and those parties have had very limited electoral success and have
been short lived. Not only has the dominant party always been highly multiethnic, but more
unexpectedly, most opposition parties—which tend to be small and based on personal and often
ethnopolitical ties to their leaders—have also sought and had some multiethnic support. A partial
answer to this puzzle lies in the absence of a majority ethnic group. But that answer is
incomplete because: 1) parties aspire to have broad ethnopolitical support rather than a minimum
winning coalition of the largest group (the Bemba with over 40% of the population) plus any one
of four others, as would be expected if ethnicity and institutions alone were determining party
behavior, and 2) plurality presidential elections do not require majority support.
This paper demonstrates that past ethnopolitical mobilization focused on national
leadership and guided by the nationalist and power and status-seeking values of political leaders
(and many followers) has interacted with ethnopolitical group morphology and presidential and
plurality institutions to structure political actors’ strategic choices to favor broad multiethnic
parties that engage in ethnic mobilization, frequently changing the pattern of particization of
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politicized cleavages. Governing parties have often attained dominance through the support of
oversized coalitions that are in principle open to members of all groups, while all opposition
parties have been founded by losers in the competition for national leadership who desired to gain
such leadership through multiethnic coalitions. This history has included the political downfall of
the one leader who assembled a successful minimum winning coalition and the in-process
downfall of another who restricted the leadership of his party to a single group, both in violation
of a key unwritten rule of the electoral game that mobilization of one's own group is accepted, but
mobilization that explicitly excludes other groups is not. These events have reinforced leaders’
nationalism and call into question the assumption that the Bemba would establish an ethnic party
if they were the majority group. In spite of being multiethnic and sharing a desire to win power,
opposition parties have had severe coordination problems because being the leader of even a
small party confers more status than being an official of a larger party.
Strategic Choice
The argument that the common strategic choice by Zambian party leaders (and voters) in favor of
these party system characteristics is structured by the interaction of mobilization history focused
on national leadership and guided by specific values with ethnopolitical morphology and
institutions attempts to explain lower order preferences affecting party strategies in terms of
deeper goals and beliefs (Clark, 1998: 252-4, 260). In strategic choice terms, values are general,
relatively stable, and intensely held endogenous preferences that have been developed through
socialization and learning in the process of interaction with others. They are thus second-order or
structural preferences.
The argument presented here elaborates on one part of Posner’s extremely theoretically
sophisticated and empirically rich analysis of Zambian ethnopolitics. He indicates that there are
many peaceful ethnic interactions in Zambia, including a high rate of intermarriage, but that
ethnopolitical cleavages have been predominant in competitive electoral politics in Zambia “…
because Zambians assume that having a member of their own ethnic group in a position of power
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will increase their access to patronage resources, they are inclined to join coalitions led by
members of their own ethnic groups, to be sympathetic to electoral appeals couched in ethnic
terms, and to be sceptical of promises made by leaders of groups other than their own” (2005:
91). He correctly argues that past institutions have made language and tribe the only available
identity options (until 2006) for reasons discussed below in the section on ethnopolitical
morphology. The choice between these two options, he believes, depends entirely on which is
more likely to produce a minimum winning coalition under specific institutional rules. In
multiparty legislative and presidential elections linguistic identities will be chosen in all
constituencies because these elections are national contests among parties over the formation of a
governing coalition. In multiparty contests, “… notwithstanding the fact that many Zambian
political parties have historically enjoyed significant support across ethnic lines, every major
political party in Zambia since independence has been perceived, to at least some degree and by
some citizens, to represent the interests of a particular ethnic group or region of the country”
(Posner, 2005: 107; Burnell, 2001: 239-63). Because there is no majority group, Posner states
that, “To be nationally viable, Zambian political parties must win support across ethnic
communities, and this means eschewing public identification with any single ethnic group. …
The goal … is to construct a solid ethnic coalition in the party’s home region while still
preserving the ability to win pan-ethnic (or non-ethnic) support in the rest of the country” (2005:
110). This paper explains the characteristics of the coalitions that parties attempt to construct.
The argument presented here can be contrasted to van de Walle’s argument that
presidentialism and clientelism create disincentives for opposition party consolidation and
incentives for “big men” to maintain small, personalised parties because some politicians believe
that maintaining an independent power base will improve the deal they can strike with the
president (van de Walle2003: 313-4). The latter argument does not explain why opposition
parties seek to be multiethnic, and does not address the possibility that their leaders might be
more likely to gain the presidency by working within either the governing party or a united
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opposition, but it does imply that these parties will not be long lived. It assumes that all leaders’
preference is to gain power and seeks to explain strategies based on this preference without
examining the values underlying it. Other conventional strategic choice theorists assume that
coordination failure stems from information deficit; all leaders believe they can win on their own.
But this assumption is not credible for the majority of Zambian opposition parties that receive a
very small percentage of the vote; their status-driven leaders are enthusiastic about opposition
alliances or mergers if they are selected to lead them.
Multiethnic and Ethnic Parties
There are several possible ways to specify the boundary between multiethnic and ethnic parties.
Defining parties as ethnic in terms of the recipients of their patronage or perceptions that they are
beholden to specific ethnic interests would not draw clear lines among Zambian parties or predict
their behavior well because, as Posner’s argument presented above makes clear, these
characteristics can coexist with seeking support from one or many ethnopolitical groups.
Defining them as ethnic only if they make overt and exclusionary appeals to specific groups
central to their mobilising strategy would result in there being no ethnic parties in Zambia
because, as Posner again makes clear, parties there do make some overt appeals to voters from
specific groups (usually in vernacular languages), but avoid explicitly excluding other groups in
these appeals.
The definition presented by Donald Horowitz is the most useful for addressing the puzzle
of multiethnic parties in Zambia because it focuses on support sought and won, makes the most
exact delineation between ethnic and multiethnic parties, and provides the most powerful and
specific predictions of party behavior. Horowitz states that: “An ethnically based party derives its
support overwhelmingly from an identifiable ethnic group (or cluster of groups) and serves the
interests of that group. In practice, a party will serve the interests of the group comprising its
overwhelming support or quickly forfeit that support, so the test of an ethnic party is simply the
distribution of support” (1985: 291-2). For Horowitz, the logic of pursuit of power by ethnic
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parties in electoral democracies is fundamentally different from the logic for multiethnic parties.
Multiethnic parties inevitably pursue ethnic interests, but they must balance the interests of
various ethnic groups in order to maintain their diverse support as they try to obtain or maintain
majority status. This is exactly what Posner says Zambian parties must do. For ethnic parties
support is essentially confined to their own group, and majority status is possible only if that
group comprises a majority of voters or can elect a majority of the legislature. Thus there is no
incentive for such parties to balance ethnic interests in their electoral appeals. If two or more
ethnic parties are competing for the votes of an ethnic group, they will tend to outbid one another
by advocating ever more extreme forms of group demands. The percentage of each group’s vote
going to a party yields no such specific predictions.
In order to apply Horowitz’s distinction to Zambia, it is crucial to operationalize his
concept of overwhelming support, which he does not do. The exact percentage of support that a
party must get from a single group in order to be driven by the logic of ethnic parties as described
by Horowitz is very difficult to specify, and being overly rigid on this point could result in failure
to find those ethnic parties that do exist. A two-part solution to this problem employed here.
First, it is assumed that 90 per cent support coming from a single group is clearly sufficient to
make a party follow the ethnic party logic, and that a party will not act as an ethnic party if less
than 67 per cent of its support comes from a single group because it will see the danger of losing
too many votes from members of other groups. Between these two percentages, a party is
potentially ethnic. Second, in order to clarify whether a potentially ethnic party is closer to being
multiethnic or ethnic, it is useful to look at other indicators such as its leader’s role in the
competition for national leadership, the number of candidates it puts up, and the nature of its
overt electoral appeals.
Ethnopolitical Morphology
Because cleavages as active structure may be somewhat controversial, Posner's discussion of the
construction of ethnic cleavages in Zambia and Scarritt and Mozaffar's classification of those that
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have been politicized at the national level will be summarized in some detail. Posner (2005: 2688) describes the construction of tribal and linguistic identities, with the former nested within the
latter. He describes how the British colonial government developed Native Authorities in rural
Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), each named for one highly amorphous pre-colonial tribal
society, but some also including members of other such societies, usually smaller ones. Native
Authorities enabled the colonial power to maintain order and collect taxes cheaply, although they
were justified as maintaining African traditions. Since Northern Rhodesia was a settler colony,
the towns were considered European areas and the many Africans who resided in them, especially
in the later colonial period, were considered as temporary migrants who maintained close links to
their villages of origin. The effort was therefore made to extend institutions related to the Native
Authorities into the towns, and it was initially rather successful. Thus Native Authorities and
their urban extensions became the institutional basis of tribal identities. They were
political/administrative entities from the beginning but were initially politicized in the national
arena when they began selecting the members of provincial representative councils and later a
national African Representative Council.
The linguistic groups discussed by Posner are based on the adoption of the Bemba,
Nyanja, Tonga, and Lozi languages since the early colonial period by Zambians who did not
speak these languages prior to that time, resulting in 43, 18, 19 and 8 per cent of Zambians
respectively speaking these languages as their first or second language. Missionaries were
primarily responsible for African education in the early colonial period, and initially converted
these languages into written form, translated the bible into them, and taught in them. Later the
colonial government took over education and continued to use these languages for primary
schools. It also used them—along with English—for newspapers and radio broadcasting.
Reducing the number of languages they used saved considerable time and money for both the
missionaries and the government. In order to keep wages down, Northern Rhodesian mining
companies reached an agreement with the government to recruit only Bemba-speaking workers
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for their mines on the Copperbelt and in Kabwe if South African mines, which paid higher wages,
were prohibited from recruiting among the Bemba. Low wages increased company profits and
thus taxes paid to the government. The best available transportation routes directed Nyanja
speakers to the capital city of Lusaka and Lozi speakers to Livingstone (which is surrounded by
Tonga territory). Thus these linguistic groups were constructed before they were politicised.
People from the North-Western Province (12 per cent of Zambians) speak three different
languages, but do not speak any of the four major lingua franca.. Their provincial substitute for a
language identity was constructed and politicised in response to the politicisation of the other
groups.
In the data set created by Scarritt and Mozaffar to analyze the complex patterns of
socially constructed ethnopolitical identities (politicised ethnic identities) in African countries,
Zambia was classified as having five separate but culturally similar ethnopolitical groups, with
twelve less inclusive groups found within four of them (Scarritt and Mozaffar, 1999:86-91). The
2006 election results indicate that two nested groups within the fifth more inclusive group need to
be added. Although their coding was done before Posner's data were known to them, their more
inclusive groups are Posner's language groups and the North-Western provincial group. Most of
the less inclusive groups nested within the more inclusive ones differ from one another along
what Posner calls tribal lines, but the Bemba and the Tonga are also divided by provincial
boundaries. These groups are listed in Table 1, along with their particization histories that are
discussed in the next two sections.
[Table 1 goes here.]
Since multi-party politics is usually focused on the more inclusive linguistic or provincial
groups, it is primarily in terms of these that the multiethnicity of parties is measured in this
analysis, although the strategic use of less inclusive group identities as alternatives in multi-party
competition will also be discussed. Politicization through economic differentials, efforts to
spread languages as widely as possible, and intra-party conflicts—as has occurred in Zambia--is
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more compatible with multiethnic parties and shifting multiethnic coalitions than other forms of
politicisation such as ethnic associations and violent conflict (Mozaffar, Scarritt, and Galaich,
2003: 382-3). Furthermore, the absence of a majority group means that a party cannot govern
alone unless it is multiethnic. But, as noted above, a Bemba ethnic party could dominate a
minimum winning two party coalition government formed with an ethnic party of any other
group. Thus the predominance of multiethnic parties that seek oversized majorities through
shifting coalitions cannot be explained by ethnopolitical morphology alone.
Political Institutions
All Zambian legislative elections have been conducted with a single member district plurality
(first past the post) system. In multi-party elections, this system tends to over-represent larger
parties and territorially concentrated parties, so that in the Zambian context it may over-represent
both highly multiethnic and ethnic parties (Mozaffar, 1998: 37-54; Reynolds, 2000). Reynolds
(2000: 215) demonstrates that, in the 1996 election in which the ruling party was opposed
primarily by small multiethnic parties, its legislative majority would have been reduced from 112
to 36 or 38 by the use of proportional representation. Constituencies have remained the same
since 1991, and urban constituencies tend to contain many more voters than rural ones.
A more significant institutional factor is that power within the government has been
highly concentrated in the president since independence, following the common African pattern
(Gertzel, Baylies, and Szeftel, 1984: 102-6; Rakner, 2003: 128-31), and the use of this power by
incumbents has favored their own parties, which have always been multiethnic, and have
weakened opposition parties, especially ethnic ones. The president’s influence over the party
system is especially strong because: 1) presidential and parliamentary elections have always been
held at the same time, and 2) in 1996 the Zambian constitution was changed to convert the
minimum number of votes necessary to win the presidency from a majority to a plurality. In the
absence of a Bemba ethnic party seeking a coalition partner, winning the presidency provides a
powerful incentive for all parties to be broadly multiethnic.
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Mobilization History
From the beginning of nationalist politics in 1948, mobilization in Zambia has been
predominantly nationalist and multiethnic, and the main conflict among those mobilising has
been over the top leadership position in the ruling party (the national presidency since
independence). All opposition parties—multiethnic or ethnic--have been formed by losers in this
conflict, and their formation has been the most common response to losing the competition for the
top job, even though the alternative responses of working within the ruling party or within a
united opposition party would often have been more likely to foster these politicians’ goal of
becoming president. Zambia’s current president, Levi Mwanawasa, is one of the few who
followed the latter strategy. This pattern of opposition party formation over time is described in
detail in the next two sections. Burnell notes “the Zambian phenomenon whereby many
politicians like to conceive of themselves as the president of a political party and envisage being
the next republican president, and treat parties as personal vehicles to that end” (2001: 245; see
also Rakner and Svasand, 2004: 62). Ethnopolitical group mobilization has been the most
important tool in rather than the cause of this competition.
Scarritt conducted interviews with about 120 Zambian political leaders in 1965-66 and
has been conducting similar interviews with a smaller number since 2000. His findings regarding
their values help to explain this pattern of opposition party formation and inter-party competition
(Scarritt, 1971: 31-54; Scarritt, 1979: 13-38). In both time periods, Scarritt found strong support
for nationalism—the unity of Zambia against external and internal forces. In 1965-66 leaders
acknowledged that feelings of ‘tribalism’ existed and could be exploited by those seeking to
enhance their own political power. Most of those interviewed shared a determination that this
would not be done, although there were different interpretations of what injecting ‘tribalism’ into
politics meant. Those interviewed since 2000 recognised that ethnopolitical mobilization had
been extensive, but believed that exclusionist mobilization that threatened national unity had been
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much less extensive. They believed that former president Frederick Chiluba had increased the
latter, and that it should be stopped, which was possible because it is not inherent in relations
among Zambians. As one respondent indicated, “The problems are the product of politicians at
Mulungushi” (where an exclusionist minimum winning coalition was constructed in party
elections in 1967); “things got bad late in Kaunda’s rule, and Chiluba made it worse.”
Nationalism has been strengthened since the early 1990s by the fact that privatisation of the
Zambian economy has favoured foreign investors, allegedly at the expense of citizens of all
ethnopolitical groups. By 2007, there was nostalgia among some leaders for the immediate postindependence years in which Kaunda other top leaders were really nationalists rather than merely
builders of broad ethnopolitical coalitions like Mwanawasa who have stirred up tribal feelings in
ordinary Zambians in the process. Bratton, Mattes, and Gyimah-Boadi 2005: 191 find many
ordinary Zambians agree, while Posner presents data to show that Zambian citizens share this
nationalism but combine it with the belief that people with access to resources will channel them
to members of their own ethnic group (Posner, 2005: 92-104).
In 1965-66 leaders believed that political power exercised by the right people was
necessary and useful in attaining desired goals such as independence, but that it was dangerous
when misused by others. Those interviewed since 2000 had an ambivalent but more negative
attitude to power. They were very critical of abuses of power by those who had exercised it in the
intervening years, especially Zambian presidents, and although a majority still believed that
Zambia needs a strong leader, many were anxious to change the constitution to limit his power.
Almost all leaders interviewed by Scarritt, both in 1965-66 and since 2000, were deeply
concerned with status. One of them has written “... the majority of men and women go into
politics in order to acquire power or status or both, usually with a purpose in mind of exercising
power to introduce their policies” (Mwanakatwe 2003: 155). In 1965-66 leaders rejected absolute
economic equality, while favouring equality of opportunity in both the economic and political
spheres. They felt they had sacrificed a lot during the independence struggle in order to obtain
15
their present positions, and believed that they and others should and would be able to reap the
political and economic rewards that they deserved because colonial rule would no longer prevent
this outcome. By 2000 leaders felt that this legitimate expectation held by them and their
predecessors had been frustrated, in part by circumstances, but primarily by the policies of the
first two presidents. The frustration of their political expectations is most relevant for party
system development. Long-time first president Kenneth Kaunda had frustrated these expectations
through centralising power in his own hands and rotating subordinates among positions so often
that they had no opportunity to accomplish anything. Second president Chiluba had promised to
open up political opportunities, but had instead followed Kaunda’s practices, in perhaps an even
more humiliating way. Being a party leader, even if the party is small, is valued for conferring
status.
The combination of nationalism, acceptance of the utility of leadership by the right
people, need for status, and the feeling of status deprivation reinforced leaders’ focus on the
competition for the presidency and on leadership of opposition parties seeking broad support as
the best alternative for the losers in this competition. These values led them to engage in nonexclusive ethnopolitical mobilization as a tool in this competition, but at the same time focused
them on gaining multiethnic support and an oversized majority for their parties.
Changing Cleavage Particization and the Party System, 1948-1972
The nineteen years of the one-party state, known as the 2nd Republic, going from the beginning
of 1973 through almost the end of 1991, separated Zambia's two periods of multi-party
competition, known as the 1st and 3rd Republics. Although there were important similarities
between these two periods in structural cleavages, institutions, and their interaction, there were
sufficient differences in cleavage particization and strategic interaction around it to justify
treating the two periods separately.
The African National Congress (ANC), the original nationalist movement in colonial
Northern Rhodesia, was led by a multiethnic group of leaders from its founding in 1948 until
16
1958, when most top leaders and many members left ANC over a strategic disagreement with
President Harry Nkumbula about how to best attain independence. By 1960 they had coalesced
into the United National Independence Party (UNIP) under the leadership of Kenneth Kaunda,
which obtained the majority of support in areas inhabited by ethnopolitical groups other than the
Tonga-Ila-Lenje, particizing an ethnopolitical (politicized structural) cleavage. In the preindependence elections of 1962 and 1964 Nkumbula aspired to regain the national leadership and
the ANC aspired to be multiethnic. In both elections, ANC was a borderline potential ethnic
party as defined above. But it ran candidates in most constituencies and stressed moderation in
its electoral appeals. In 1962 no party obtained a majority of seats in the colonial Legislative
Assembly, and Kaunda had to share the national leadership with Nkumbula in a coalition of their
two parties. In 1964, when universal franchise took effect, UNIP won a large majority and
Kaunda became president at independence (Scarritt 2006a: 244).
Politicians in UNIP from the dominant group in the Western (formerly Barotse)
Province—the Lozi—felt insecure about their place in UNIP because their organisational base
was weaker than those of politicians from other provinces. Many also were angry because the
UNIP government, in the name of fighting apartheid, had denied Lozi the economically vital
right to work in South African mines and, in the name of national unity, had abrogated the special
status awarded to their traditional leader in the independence agreement. In 1966 a few Lozi
politicians formed the United Party (UP). Although it was banned before it could contest an
election, this was almost certainly an ethnic party in terms of both its support and its articulation
of ethnic grievances (Scarritt 2006a: 244), and another ethnopolitical cleavage had been
particized.
At its General Conference in 1967 UNIP held competitive elections for its Central
Committee for the first time. Tonga leaders were represented in terms of the population share of
their group rather than in terms of the group's past support for UNIP, in the hope that this would
give UNIP a victory among the Tonga in the next general election.. A coalition of Bemba
17
speaking and Tonga-Ila-Lenje candidates defeated a rival coalition of Nyanja speakers and Lozi
for all of the positions for which they opposed one another. Most importantly, ambitious Bemba
leader Simon Kapwepwe replaced a Nyanja-speaker as vice-president, while a Lozi lost the
position as Secretary General to a Tonga. Kapwepwe allied with the Tonga because their lack of
voter support meant they were weak within the party. But this strategically logical move
violated many leaders' nationalist values. This was the only example in Zambia’s pre-2006
electoral history of a minimum winning ethnopolitical coalition that explicitly excluded other
groups, and it had significant negative consequences, especially for Kapwepwe. It initially
triggered an exodus of Lozi politicians from UNIP to UP, which led to the banning of the latter
party prior to the 1968 elections. It later led to Kapwepwe’s downfall. It is recognised by
Kaunda (interview, 2003) and other recent respondents, as well as by scholars, as a time of
uniquely intense conflict in Zambian ethnopolitics that demonstrated the disadvantages of the
strategic choice of an exclusivist minimum winning coalition, even in an intra-party election
(Scarritt 2006a:245).
When UP was banned its leaders joined ANC, which was thus no longer a potential
ethnic party. In the 1968 elections UNIP’s campaign emphasised its official non-ethnic ideology,
while that of ANC emphasized multiethnic resistance to Bemba domination. Thus was another
change in cleavage particization but, as shown below, it was a temporary, although recurring,
multiethnic alliance (Scarritt 2006a: 245). It was Zambia's only example of successful opposition
coordination, but its proximate cause was government's banning of one opposition party.
Agitation within UNIP to undo the results of the 1967 Central Committee elections began
almost immediately. Kapwepwe’s position as vice-president and heir apparent was the chief
target of this agitation. Kaunda eventually responded by dissolving the elected Central
Committee and replacing it with an appointed one that included Kapwepwe but had fewer Bemba
speaking members. This change and the agitation that continued in spite of it alienated Bemba
speaking leaders, and in August 1971 Kapwepwe and a number of others resigned from UNIP to
18
found the United Progressive Party (UPP). It is somewhat difficult to be certain that it was an
ethnic party because it was severely repressed during its entire existence. Its only electoral
participation was in the December 1971 by-elections, contesting five seats in an electoral alliance
with ANC. It obtained over 3500 votes (in comparison to UNIP’s 9450) and one seat
(Kapwepwe) in two primarily Bemba speaking Copperbelt constituencies that also contained
some former ANC supporters, but few votes and no seats in three rural constituencies, two of
which had homogeneous Bemba populations. In the Bemba speaking Northern Province, it was
reported that UPP had widespread support in previous UNIP strongholds, and was organising
covertly but very actively on the basis of ‘explicitly sectionalist’ appeals. UPP pursued ethnic
interests and received support almost exclusively from one ethnopolitical group. Kapwepwe’s
prior and subsequent actions in pursuit of the Zambian presidency, as well as the party’s election
manifesto, support the assumption that UPP aspired to expand beyond its ethnic base (Posner,
2005: 111-12), but whether it would have done so if it had not been repressed cannot be known.
It is interesting to note that in the process of intra-UNIP conflict and the rise of UPP,
Kaunda's ethnopolitical identity changed from Bemba (based on his place of birth--he grew up in
the same place as Kapwepwe—first language, and being made a Bemba by the Paramount chief)
to Nyanja (based on his parents place of birth and language). The latter criteria had previously
been considered irrelevant since they were foreigners born across the border in Malawi.
In the years of the competitive nationalist struggle and 1st Republic, UNIP remained a
multiethnic dominant party, winning an average of over 70% of the vote the 1964 and 1968
universal franchise elections. Volatility was low between these elections, with a Pedersen's index
of 4.6 for the two presidential elections. The particization of ethnopolitical cleavages changed
from Tonga vs. the rest to Tonga and Lozi vs. the rest, and was changing to Bemba vs. Tonga and
Lozi vs. Nyanja and North-Westerners, probably to the end of UNIP dominance, and possibly to
UNIP's electoral defeat when multi-party politics was suspended under the one-party state.
19
Kapwepwe and Nkumbula were old enemies, and their efforts to negotiate a merger soon failed,
setting a precedent for opposition coordination failure.
Changing Cleavage Particization and the Party System, 1991-2007
Under strong pressure from the newly founded multiethnic Movement for Multiparty Democracy
(MMD), UNIP reluctantly agreed to return to a multi-party system. In preparation for the
October 1991 elections MMD converted itself into a political party and selected Frederick
Chiluba, the head of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions and a Bemba speaker from Luapula
Province, as its presidential candidate. Both MMD and UNIP, which selected Kaunda as its
presidential candidate, fielded candidates for all 150 seats in the legislature. Both parties
emphasised non-ethnic appeals and were multiethnic in organisational reality.
Dissatisfaction with UNIP and the one-party state was greatest among members of
ethnopolitical groups that had supported ANC and UPP in 1968-71, and MMD handily won the
presidential election and most of the legislative seats in provinces inhabited by those groups,
making it the new dominant party. The Nyanja speakers of the Eastern Province, who had never
identified with an opposition party, who played a more important role in UNIP after the downfall
of Kapwepwe, and with whom Kaunda was now identified, gave the latter his only provincial
victory in the presidential election and elected UNIP candidates to all of the province’s legislative
seats. This does not mean that UNIP became even a potentially ethnic party. In the presidential
election, only 41 per cent of Kaunda’s vote came from Eastern Province. Outside Eastern
Province his core ethnopolitical group is present in significant numbers only in Lusaka Province,
but only 49 per cent of his vote came from Eastern and Lusaka Provinces together. In the
legislative elections UNIP won only 39.4 per cent of its votes in the Eastern Province and an
additional 12.4 per cent in Lusaka Province (Scarritt 2006a: 246-47).
The multiethnic coalition that led MMD to an overwhelming victory in 1991 was hastily
assembled and fragile, and it soon began to fracture. Older, more experienced, more educated,
and wealthier politicians from the Western, Southern and North-Western provinces had competed
20
with Chiluba for the MMD presidential nomination. Ministers and other politicians sharing some
or all of these characteristics, including several prominent Bemba speakers, soon fell out with the
new president. They resigned from the MMD between 1992 and 1994, and most joined the
National Party (NP) formed in 1993. Zambia appeared to be creating a party system comprised
of three multiethnic parties, each having its own ethnopolitical base. MMD won five of the
eleven by-elections in 1993, NP four, and UNIP two. Each party received at least 20 per cent of
the vote in constituencies inhabited by ethnopolitical groups other than its core group, so none
appeared to be ethnic parties (Scarritt 2006a: 247). The most important race involved the defeat
of the NP’s Bemba leader by a lesser-known MMD candidate. Seven of the nine by-elections in
1994 were won by MMD. In 1995 Baldwin Nkumbula was defeated as NP leader by a Kaonde
and resigned from the party; the Lozi leaders also left to form a new party. Thereafter the party’s
Tonga and Lozi support declined rapidly.
In 1996 the MMD government revised the Zambian constitution to place a retroactive
two-term limit on the president and to require presidential candidates’ parents to have been born
in Zambia. Both of these changes were clearly aimed at Kaunda, who was greatly feared by the
MMD. The latter provision probably also made Chiluba ineligible, but the courts ruled that it did
not (Chitala 2006: 167-73, 286-324). UNIP decided to boycott the 1996 elections, but four other
parties, including the NP and the Zambia Democratic Congress (ZDC), which split off from
MMD in 1995 under the leadership of Dean Mung’omba, refused to do so. In the absence of
UNIP Chiluba won the 1996 presidential race with 69 per cent of the vote. MMD won 131 out of
150 seats in the legislature with 58.5 per cent of the vote due to the plurality electoral system.
Both MMD and ZDC were clearly multiethnic parties that had candidates in virtually all
constituencies. It is impossible to specify an ethnopolitical base for ZDC; although Mung’omba
was a Bemba, it won fewer votes in the Bemba speaking provinces than elsewhere. MMD
received about 47 per cent of its votes from the primarily Bemba speaking provinces and carried
the Nyanja speaking areas. NP was perhaps closer to being an ethnic party, winning four seats in
21
the Northwestern Province but none elsewhere, but it ran ninety-eight candidates and only 36 per
cent of its votes came from that province. There was a slight shift in cleavage particization, as
indicated in Table 1. Volatility between the 1991election and this one was higher than in 196468, with a Pedersen's index of between 13.7 and 27.35 in the presidential elections depending on
whether one counts the UNIP boycott and the small parties that entered this election but faded
away quickly (recognized as a problem by Pedersen 1983: 33). Opposition coordination failure
was probably greater than ever, especially if UNIP's boycott is counted as part of it.
Electoral politics were very intense for the two years preceding the December 2001
elections because of divisions within the MMD, the formation of new parties, and constant byelections (Scarritt 2006a: 248-50). Although eleven parties fielded presidential candidates, the
following analysis will focus on the six parties (out of the seven largest) that ran candidates in
both 2001 and 2006, to avoid confusing detail. UNIP selected Kaunda’s son Tilyenji as its
presidential candidate. In 1998 Anderson Mazoka, former Managing Director of the South
African mining multinational Anglo-American and a Tonga, formed the United Party for National
Development (UPND) after he apparently received no takers on his offer to lead a united
opposition. NP was absorbed into UPND.
In 2001 opponents of Chiluba’s aborted efforts to obtain a third term, some with
presidential ambitions, were expelled from the MMD. Most of those expelled formed the Forum
for Democracy and Development (FDD) and selected former vice-president Christon Tembo as
its presidential candidate. Former vice-president Godfrey Miyanda, unhappy with the role he was
offered in FDD, formed the Heritage Party (HP). The winner of the contest for MMD’s
presidential nomination was Levy Mwanawasa, Chiluba’s first vice-president (1991-94), who had
since been politically inactive but had remained in the party in spite of being approached by
UPND. Mwanawasa is of Lenje and Lamba ancestry, placing him at the edges of both the more
inclusive Tonga and Bemba-speaking groups. The MMD Secretary-General Michael Sata, a
Bemba-speaker, had expected to get the nomination because he had supported Chiluba in his third
22
term bid, and protested so vigorously when he did not do so that he was expelled from the party.
He became the presidential candidate of a new party, the Patriotic Front (PF).
Negotiations among opposition parties to form a ‘government of national unity’ failed
once again. With the possible exception of UPND and FDD, which believed that they might win
on their own, these parties were too completely the personal vehicles for the presidential
candidacies of their leaders to join a united opposition. This series of events created a larger
opposition than had previously existed in Zambia, except perhaps for ANC and UPP in 1972,
although it was highly fragmented. This extreme multi-partism also might be thought to have
greatly enhanced the prospects for the existence of ethnic parties. While all parties aspired to
obtain national support, they all—except perhaps HP and some very minor parties—had
ethnopolitical bases of support. Among parties winning more than a handful of votes, there were
no ethnic parties and only PF and one other party were potential ethnic parties.
Votes received in the presidential election are reported in Table 2, but to facilitate
comparison with the 2006 results only parties that participated in both elections are listed there.
The winning candidate--MMD’s Mwanawasa--won only 59 per cent of his 506,694 votes in the
Bemba speaking Copperbelt, Northern, and Luapula Provinces and the predominantly Bemba
speaking constituencies of the Central Province. As reported in Table 3, also based only on
parties that participated in both elections, only 55 per cent of the MMD’s 490,680 parliamentary
votes were from these areas, and seats won outside this base were crucial in the party’s obtaining
a plurality of legislative seats (based on Electoral Commission of Zambia, 2002). Only 44-45 per
cent of UPND presidential candidate Mazoka’s 472,697 votes and the party’s 416,236
parliamentary votes came from the Tonga speaking Southern Province and adjacent rural areas of
Lusaka and Central Provinces. Thus Mazoka came close to winning the presidency (and claimed
to have been denied it only by fraud) and UPND came in second in the parliamentary vote only
by getting more than half of their votes from outside this base. Mazoka got 72 per cent of his
votes from his multiethnic base that also included the Lozi of the Western Province and some
23
ethnopolitical groups in the Northwestern Province, and the party got 68 per cent of its
parliamentary vote from this multiethnic base. But this was a multiethnic rather than an ethnic
base.
FDD began as a multiethnic coalition of opponents of Chiluba’s third term, but 54 per
cent of Tembo’s third place 228,861 presidential votes and 48 per cent of the party’s 272,817
parliamentary votes came from Eastern and Lusaka provinces. This base combined Tembo’s
Nyanja speaking ethnopolitical group and multiethnic urban Lusaka. UNIP continued to be
primarily an Eastern party, with 45 and 41 per cent of its 175,898 presidential and its 185,535
parliamentary votes respectively coming from that province, but it also continued to fall far short
of being an ethnic party. HP was primarily an urban party. PF was a potential Bemba ethnic
party, with 75 and 69 per cent of its 59,172 presidential and 49,362 parliamentary votes (placing
it seventh in both contests) coming from the predominantly Bemba provinces. But it ran 102
candidates for the 150 seats (Rakner and Svasand, 2004: 54).
Another indicator of multiethnic support for parties is extensive strategic voting, which is
most clearly revealed in the 2001 election in Zambia by extensive differences between the
presidential and the parliamentary vote of all parties except the MMD. Such differences in
individual constituencies could be due to exceptionally popular or unpopular parliamentary
candidates or to ballot irregularities, but UPND’s presidential candidate Mazoka, who was widely
perceived as having the best chance to defeat MMD’s Mwanawasa, outdistanced his party’s
parliamentary candidates in seven provinces and by 12.2 per cent nationally, while the FDD and
UNIP presidential candidates fell behind their parties’ parliamentary candidates in all or most of
these provinces, and by between 5.1 and 17.4 per cent nationally. The election results in Lusaka
Province provide a particularly clear example of the importance of strategic anti-MMD voting
rather than ethnopolitical voting. In the presidential election Mazoka won 31 per cent of the
provincial vote to Tembo’s 24 per cent; while this outcome was reversed in the Parliamentary
24
election, with FDD winning 29 per cent of the votes to UPND’s 24 per cent. Multiethnic urban
constituencies accounted for most of this difference.
Most parties remained multiethnic in 2001 but MMD's dominance was called into
question or ended, depending on the definition of dominant parties Rakner and Svasand 2004).
The particization of cleavages became Bemba vs. Tonga, Lozi, and North-Westerners vs.
Easterners, although this particization was less complete than in 1964, 1968, or 1991. Volatility
between the 1996 and 2001 presidential elections had a Pedersen's index of at least 51.7.
Opposition coordination failure continued, in spite of the opportunity offered by the low level of
ruling party support. Kaunda endorsed his son, but also Mazoka and another candidate; if UNIP
had effectively endorsed Mazoka, he could have won by over 140,000 votes.
In the years between the 2001 and 2006 elections, a number of changes occurred in the
party system, some of which were related to the particization of cleavages.
By the time of the
latter election only MMD, UPND, FDD, UNIP, HP and PF from the former election existed, and
serious splits occurred in all of them except PF. The split within MMD was between those loyal
to Mwanawasa and those loyal to Chiluba. The latter apparently expected to be able to
manipulate his successor and to be cleared by him of charges of massive corruption, and was
deeply disappointed that Mwanawasa moved in the opposite direction on both points, reducing
Chiluba's influence within the party. Chiluba supporters threatened to leave the MMD and take
the Bemba vote with them, and a few actually left in 2004 and 2005 to form the Party for Unity,
Democracy and Development (PUDD). But Mwanawasa remained firmly in control of the party
in most provinces, and the splits in MMD were less serious than those in opposition parties.
The UPND began losing MPs, mostly from outside its Tonga core in 2002 due to
enticements offered by Mwanawasa, including junior ministerial positions (whose occupants
were not required to change parties but were expelled from UPND for accepting). But by far the
most serious split and the one that most strongly affected cleavage particization came with
Mazoka's death in May 2006. Although he knew of the seriousness of his illness, Mazoka had
25
not named a successor, for which different explanations have been offered. Sakwiba Sikota, a
Lozi, had been acting president of the party during Mazoka's illness, and apparently assumed that
he would succeed him. But some Tonga activists insisted that the party president must be a
Tonga, and Haikinde Hichilema, a. wealthy businessman who had donated money to the party but
had not otherwise been involved in it, was elected leader by more than 70% of the vote at the
party's general assembly in July. Sikota and his supporters left the UPND to form the United
Liberal Party (ULP) a few days later, and formed an electoral pact with the PF. The UPND thus
became a potentially ethnic Tonga party. But the meaning of Tonga also narrowed when the
former Lenje leader of UPND, who is also Mwanawasa's nephew, switched to MMD in May.
The split in UNIP was over the former ruling party's still considerable financial
resources, the domination of the party by the Kaunda family, and whether to ally with MMD or
UPND. When those who favoured an alliance with MMD lost out to the Kaunda faction, they
joined MMD, enhancing its support in the East considerably. Kaunda endorsed Hichilema just
before the election in 2006. FDD and HP weakened rather than fractured. When Tembo retired,
probably because of his inability to raise money for the party, it elected Edith Nawakwi, a
wealthy Bemba, as its president. It lost some members as a result and the tiny All Peoples'
Congress that got less than one percent of the presidential vote in 2006 was a spin-off.
In 2006 prior to the election, two inter-party alliances were formed, one lasting through
the election, although not without internal conflict, the other quickly collapsing. In early March
the long-anticipated creation of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) of UPND, FDD, and
UNIP was announced, with Mazoka as its presidential candidate and Nawakwi as its vicepresidential candidate. Their leaders together had out-polled Mwanawasa by 370,762 votes in the
2001 presidential race, so this appeared to be an example of strong opposition coordination. But
the splits and weakening of all three parties indicated even before Mazoka's death that the UDA
was by no means certain to defeat MMD; the major split in UPND that followed his death made it
certain that MMD would defeat UDA. A week later PF, PUDD, and three minor parties formed
26
the National Democratic Front (NDF), but PF pulled out four days later after the other parties
would not agree to automatically make Sata the NDF leader, and both the alliance and the parties
in it disappeared from the presidential scene prior to the election.
While all this was going on, Michael Sata had reacted to his poor showing in 2001 by
adopting a populist stance, promising to chase away Chinese, Indian and Lebanese investors,
award miners shares in the mines, cut personal income tax, build modern houses, and create
manufacturing jobs. Later he promised to stop the prosecution of Chiluba and others accused of
corruption on the grounds that Bemba were treated differently than other accused. He quickly
withdrew this promise but it was remembered, especially by the Bemba. Shortly before the
election, Chiluba endorsed Sata.
As indicated in Table 2, MMD's Mwanawasa won the presidential race, increasing his
percentage of the vote from 29% to almost 43%, although still a minority, with a substantial
increase in turnout of just over a million voters (57%). The percentage of his vote that came from
the Bemba speaking Copperbelt, Northern, and Luapula Provinces and the predominantly Bemba
speaking constituencies of the Central Province declined from 59% to 40%, and the percentages
from the Nyanja and Lozi speaking areas and the North-Western Province increased substantially.
Within the Bemba-speaking areas he won a majority of the votes in the primarily Lala-Lamba
rural Copperbelt constituencies, where voters have long been looked down upon by urban Bemba
from the Bemba heartland and resented this (Seigel 1989). He won even bigger majorities
(averaging almost 80%), substantially increased from 2001, in eight primarily Mambwe Northern
Province constituencies, enabling him to win that province. Within the Lenje sub-group of the
Tonga in the Central Province, he won in five constituencies that had gone to Mazoka in 2001. It
can be seen from Table 3 that the same trends are found in the parliamentary election results,
which produced a smaller vote gain (28% to 39%) for the MMD. But this was enough to produce
a narrow majority of 82 seats when nominated members were included.
[Tables 2 and 3 go here]
27
The MMD returned to the status it had in 1991 and 1996 as a very highly multiethnic
party. But what about the multiethnic status of PF and UDA? Although the PF made explicit
(but exclusionary) appeals for the Bemba vote, at least 34% of Sata’s presidential votes came
from outside the predominantly Bemba provinces, making it a multiethnic party (although barely
so). This is an excellent example of how employing Horowitz’ definition of a multiethnic party
can produce results that are not expected. Most of Sata’s non Bemba supporters were in Lusaka
province, where he made explicit non-ethnic class appeals. In the campaign to elect Hichilema as
president of UPND, which was correctly assumed to lead to his being the presidential candidate
of the UDA, exclusionary appeals were made concerning the necessity of having a Tonga in that
position. That virtually eliminated much of UPND’s former multiethnic base, but the addition of
some FDD and UNIP voters in the election meant that only 53% of its support came from Tongas
in Southern and Lusaka provinces.
The Pedersen index of volatility declined to 33.7 from the 2002 to the 2006 presidential
elections, counting the UDA as one party and omitting very small parties in both elections.
Almost 98% of the votes in the vote went to the three major presidential candidates, and 84% of
the parliamentary vote went to candidates from these parties. This moves toward a smaller
number of multiethnic parties, each attracting a new combination of cleavages (ethnopolitical and
class), and perhaps back toward a dominant party have probably established an important
precedent for the future.
The consequences of opposition coordination failure are dramatically illustrated in Graph
1, which shows if the parties that were in UDA by 2006 had fielded a single presidential
candidate in 2001, he would have won handily. Although the analysis is a little more complex,
they would have won a majority in Parliament if they had run a single list of candidates. By
2006, when they did actually coordinate, MMD and PF had attracted major parts of their base,
and they finished third in both the presidential and parliamentary races. It is widely believed that
28
if the constitution had been changed to require a run-off in the presidential election, Mwanawasa
and Hichilema would have formed an alliance.
[Graph 1 goes here.]
Conclusion
This conclusion discusses the relevance of Zambia's pattern of shifting multiethnic coalitions,
multiethnicity of parties, dominant party, and opposition coordination failure for strengthening
democracy in Zamia, Africa and elsewhere. As indicated above, Zambian leaders whom I
interviewed in March 2007 looked backward on Kaunda’s motto, One Zambia, one nation more
favorably than Mwanawasa’s politics of shifting multiethnic coalitions, which they see as having
been unfairly implemented to the benefit of his groups, and as stimulating further ethnic demands
by all groups. It is widely assumed that Sata will run for President again in 2011 without
broadening PF’s ethnopolitical or class base or forming a pre-election alliance, and that he will be
opposed by a strong single party or a strong coalition of parties that will defeat him. If, as
expected, the new Constitution requires a run-off if no candidate obtains a majority on the first
vote in the presidential race, a coalition will form around the highest other finisher. But it is
feared that Sata would promise anything in the latter situation. So plans will be laid well before
that situation arises for a reorganization of other parties that will unite MMD and UDA voters
from 2006. Some will want this to happen under the MMD name but others will want it to
happen under a new name, arguing that people are ready for a change of the ruling party, and this
may make coordination difficult. If this occurs the next president will have a strong majority,
multiethnic mandate and opposition coordination will be eliminated. Beyond that, people hope
that will lead to a two or three party system, lower volatility, and the absence of a permanent
dominant party. Zambia has had four peaceful multi-party elections since 1991, and that has set a
good precedent. Although the views of my respondents about the future of the party system
reflect a combination of their wishes and their predictions, it is possible that have found a formula
to make Zambia more democratic without institutionalizing parties until later in the process, but
29
laying the necessary groundwork for doing so before 2011. I believe, contrary to most of my
recent respondents, that continuing to have shifting multiethnic coalitions within parties is part of
that groundwork.
Not all of the lessons that my Zambian respondents draw about how fix their party
system are applicable to other democratizing countries in Africa or elsewhere, but some are more
broadly applicable. Social structural cleavages contain varying degrees of stability but are never
totally inflexible: new identities arise and old ones are submerged in more inclusive new ones or
just fade away. There is greater flexibility in politicizing them (making them ethnopolitical) and
the greatest flexibility in particizing them. In countries such as Zambia in which there is some
commitment to national survival, no undivided dominant group and no tradition of civil war
among groups or secessionism, shifting particization may give everyone a chance to be a winner
in democratic competition at one time or another. We in this workshop who are students of
cleavage politics all know that this will not please everyone; some leaders and voters will think
they don’t get as much chance to win as they should. Saying so is to some degree a tactic of their
strategic interaction. And political institutions such as presidentialism and electoral systems may
hinder or facilitate actual power sharing. But shifting coalitions may facilitate the building
stronger democratic parties, enhancing opposition coordination, and reducing volatility in the
long run.
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33
Table 1: Particization of Structural Cleavages in Zambia
Election
1964
[1967] 1968
1991
1996
2001
2006
Ethnopolitical Group
Bemba Speakers
Bemba-Bisa
Luapula
Lamba-Lala
Mambwe
UNIP BTFac UNIP MMD MMD MMD PF
Tonga-Ila-Lenje
(Bantu Botatwe)
Tonga-Ila
Lenje
ANC
Nyanja Speakers
UNIP NLFac UNIP UNIP MMD UNIP/ MMD/
FDD UDA
(MMD)
(UNIP) (MMD)
BTFac ANC
MMD MMD UPND UDA
(MMD)
Chewa-Ngoni
Kunda
Tumbuka
Lozi Speakers
Lozi
Nkoya
UNIP NLFac ANC
North-Western Province
UNIP
MMD MMD UPND MMD
(UNIP)
UNIP MMD MMD/ UPND MMD
NP
Lunda
Louvale
Kaonde
Urban Lower Class
PF
[1967] is UNIP Central Committee election between Bemba-Tonga and Nyanja-Lozi factions.
Parties listed individually are estimated to have received 50%= of the group’s vote in the
presidential election (45% in 2001).
Parties in parentheses () indicate that a minority less inclusive group was particized differently
than the more inclusive group to which it belongs.
Two parties with a / between them each are estimated to have received 30%-45% of the group’s
vote in the presidential election.
34
Table 2: Comparisons of Votes in 2001 and 2006 Presidential Elections
Voter
%
2006
%
Increase
CENTRAL
2001
MMD
43,117
32.08
157,598
59.96
114,481
PF
1,930
1.44
37,961
14.44
36,031
UDA
63,540
47.27
63,343
24.10
-197
HP
15,406
11.46
2,964
1.13
-12,442
Other
10,420
7.75
972
0.37
-9,448
Total
134,413
100.00
262,838
100.00
128,425
COPPERBELT
MMD
125,064
38.44
169,870
38.30
44,806
PF
23,619
7.26
233,600
52.66
209,981
UDA
81,221
24.96
32,962
7.43
-48,259
N
63,645
19.56
5,823
1.31
-57,822
Other
31,797
9.77
1,318
0.30
-30,479
Total
325,346
100.00
443,573
100.00
118,227
EASTERN
MMD
35,889
16.45
148,139
44.28
112,250
PF
1,623
0.74
36,677
10.96
35,054
UDA
151,343
69.36
130,485
39.01
-20,858
HP
14,885
6.82
11,049
3.30
-3,836
Other
14,473
6.63
8,166
2.44
-6,307
Total
218,213
100.00
334,516
100.00
116,303
LUAPALA
MMD
71,509
53.91
64,936
33.26
-6,573
PF
4,832
3.64
118,901
60.91
114,069
UDA
27,322
20.60
8,234
4.22
-19,088
HP
3,133
2.36
1,795
0.92
-1,338
Other
25,837
19.48
1,351
0.69
-24,486
Total
132,633
100.00
195,217
100.00
62,584
LUSAKA
MMD
40,225
15.91
116,164
27.71
75,939
PF
9,484
3.75
206,023
49.15
196,539
UDA
157,116
62.15
90,039
21.48
-67,077
HP
22,032
8.71
5,633
1.34
-16,399
Other
23,956
9.48
1,280
0.31
-22,676
Total
252,813
100.00
419,139
100.00
166,326
NORTHERN
MMD
82,867
42.82
163,663
49.88
80,796
PF
15,781
8.15
139,953
42.66
124,172
UDA
59,665
30.83
18,393
5.61
-41,272
HP
8,399
4.34
3,335
1.02
-5,064
Other
26,818
13.86
2,743
0.84
-24,075
Total
193,530
100.00
328,087
100.00
134,557
35
%
Increase
27.88
13.01
-23.17
-10.33
-7.38
-0.14
45.40
-17.53
-18.25
-9.48
27.84
10.22
-30.35
-3.52
-4.19
-20.65
57.26
-16.38
-1.44
-18.79
11.80
45.40
-40.67
-7.37
-9.17
7.07
34.50
-25.22
-3.32
-13.02
NORTHWESTERN
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
SOUTHERN
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
WESTERN
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
NATION
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
37,336
275
66,948
5,077
4,157
113,793
32.81
0.24
58.83
4.46
3.65
100.00
121,190
3,386
45,255
2,378
1,090
173,299
69.93
1.95
26.11
1.37
0.63
100.00
83,854
3,111
-21,693
-2,699
-3,067
59,506
37.12
1.71
-32.72
-3.09
-3.02
36,068
790
187,544
5,284
8,821
238,507
15.12
0.33
78.63
2.22
3.70
100.00
75,654
13,359
279,329
5,641
1,704
375,687
20.14
3.56
74.35
1.50
0.45
100.00
39,586
12,569
91,785
357
-7,117
137,180
5.02
3.22
-4.28
-0.71
-3.24
34,619
838
82,757
2,817
7,669
128,700
26.90
0.65
64.30
2.19
5.96
100.00
160,632
14,888
25,732
4,273
2,297
207,822
77.29
7.16
12.38
2.06
1.11
100.00
126,013
14,050
-57,025
1,456
-5,372
79,122
50.39
6.51
-51.92
-0.13
-4.85
506694
59172
877456
140678
153948
1737948
29.15473
3.404705
50.48805
8.094488
8.858033
100
1,177,846
804,748
693,772
42,891
20,921
2,740,178
42.98429
29.36846
25.3185
1.565263
0.763491
100
671152
745576
-183684
-97787
-133027
13.83
25.96
-25.17
-6.53
-8.09
36
Table 3: Comparisons of Votes in 2001 and 2006 Parliamentary Elections
CENTRAL
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
COPPERBELT
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
EASTERN
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
LUAPULA
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
LUSAKA
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
NORTHERN
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
2001
42,570
1,874
64,560
17,233
11,255
137,492
%
30.96
1.36
46.96
12.53
8.19
100.00
2006
149,302
38,051
62,081
116,256
17,227
98,239
55,816
44,508
332,046
35.01
5.19
29.59
16.81
13.40
100.00
160,759
201,469
38,408
37,887
1,980
145,935
13,921
16,600
216,323
17.51
0.92
67.46
6.44
7.67
100.00
131,914
23,513
106,043
69,004
4,629
26,861
2,860
32,249
135,603
50.89
3.41
19.81
2.11
23.78
100.00
39,590
7,125
155,716
20,622
29,509
252,562
15.68
2.82
61.65
8.17
11.68
100.00
74,044
12,132
62,422
9,833
32,269
190,700
38.83
6.36
32.73
5.16
16.92
100.00
15,608
265,042
42,562
443,198
77,428
338,898
73,264
82,252
10,040
30,027
195,583
123,841
167,051
79,366
46,043
416,301
138,778
104,951
25,190
44,108
313,027
37
%
56.33
14.36
23.42
0.00
5.89
100.00
Voter
Increase
106,732
36,177
-2,479
-17,233
4,353
127,550
36.27
45.46
8.67
0.00
9.60
100.00
44,503
184,242
-59,831
-55,816
-1,946
111,152
1.26
40.27
-20.92
-16.81
-3.80
38.92
6.94
31.29
0.00
22.85
100.00
94,027
21,533
-39,892
-13,921
60,828
122,575
21.41
6.02
-36.17
-6.44
15.17
37.46
42.05
5.13
0.00
15.35
100.00
4,260
77,623
-16,821
-2,860
-2,222
59,980
-13.43
38.64
-14.68
-2.11
-8.43
29.75
40.13
19.06
0.00
11.06
100.00
84,251
159,926
-76,350
-20,622
16,534
163,739
14.07
37.31
-42.59
-8.17
-0.62
44.33
33.53
8.05
0.00
14.09
100.00
64,734
92,819
-37,232
-9,833
11,839
122,327
5.51
27.17
-24.69
-5.16
-2.83
% Increase
25.37
12.99
-23.53
-12.53
-2.30
NORTHWESTERN
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
SOUTHERN
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
WESTERN
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
NATIONAL
TOTALS
MMD
PF
UDA
HP
Other
Total
37,111
636
61,261
6,668
10,219
115,895
32.02
0.55
52.86
5.75
8.82
100.00
87,697
123
45,081
27,032
159,933
38,541
1,027
182,460
3,370
16,760
242,158
15.92
0.42
75.35
1.39
6.92
100.00
75,654
13,359
279,329
5,641
1,704
375,687
35,677
2,732
77,134
1,988
11,042
128,573
27.75
2.12
59.99
1.55
8.59
100.00
113,028
257
24,634
490,680
49,362
874,588
132,311
204,411
1,751,352
28.02
2.82
49.94
7.55
11.67
100.00
50,586
-513
-16,180
-6,668
16,813
44,038
22.81
-0.47
-24.67
-5.75
8.08
68079
371179.00
37,113
12,332
96,869
2,271
-15,056
133,529
80927.08
5196.58
216884.65
-1.39
68072.08
72,085
210,004
53.82
0.12
11.73
0.00
34.33
100.00
77,351
-2,475
-52,500
-1,988
61,043
81,431
26.07
-2.00
-48.26
-1.55
25.74
1,059,526
622,864
607,803
0
422,972
2,713,165
39.05
22.96
22.40
0.00
15.59
100.00
568,846
573,502
-266,785
-132,311
218,561
961,813
11.03
20.14
-27.54
-7.55
3.92
38
54.83
0.08
28.19
0.00
16.90
100.00
80943
5197
216960
Graph 1: Presidential Election Results 2001 (inside loop) and 2006 (outside loop)
39