CHAPTER 7: WHOSE IDENTITY, WHOSE CONSTRUCTS AND WHOSE INTEREST? THE SYNTHESIS OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DATA IN
5.7 The Patriotic Front
After the attainment of independence in 1964, the second biggest event in the history of Zambia was the replacement of the UNIP government with the MMD. The third biggest milestone was the replacement of the MMD, after twenty years at the helm, with the Patriotic Front (PF) in September 2011. Just as a number of influential politicians in the MMD were former adherents of UNIP, those that formed the PF government were mostly erstwhile members of both UNIP and the MMD. Sata was himself a member of UNIP and the MMD and then left the latter to form the PF after Chiluba picked Levy Mwanawasa as his successor for the 2001 general elections (Chan 2014). In a fit of pique Sata formed the Patriotic Front, taking with him politicians like Guy Scott who were once MMD loyalists but had grown disenchanted with Chiluba’s leadership and decisions. This spill-over effect of membership nurtures continuity in ideological orientation.
The 2011-2016 manifesto of the Patriotic Front is cited in this section to imbue the section with the primary information of the Patriotic Front’s vision for Zambia. The manifesto was inscribed before the Patriotic Front came to power.
Members of PF were more heterogeneous in terms of tribal and ethnic demographics; in fact, tribalism is one of the “vices” from which the PF committed “to redeem its citizens” (Patriotic Front Manifesto 2011:4). This was partly because they were united by a shared disenchantment with Frederick Chiluba. However, to say that tribal sympathies were totally obliterated would simply be at variance with the truth. Sata, himself not a Bemba, but nonetheless a fluent speaker of the language, was always considered, by casual observers, as Bemba. Since the formation of his party, the Patriotic Front has its most loyal following in Bemba speaking regions of northern
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Zambia, the Copperbelt Province and Lusaka. It is also fair to argue that, like Danielle Resnick’s (2012:1351) empirical study does, in lieu “of vote buying, ethnic alignments, or economic voting… the urban poor’s voting decisions are related to the strategies used by political parties to incorporate them into the political arena.” This could explain Sata’s stronghold of the urban areas during his time as leader of the opposition.
Sata’s populist rhetoric (see Spilsbury 2012) struck a chord with the poor, especially those in urban areas (Cheeseman and Hinfelaar 2010) who had first-hand experience of labour injustices meted out by investors that the MMD’s privatization and liberalization policies had attracted.
While Chiliuba’s reign left corruption as its most outstanding legacy, the rule of Levy Mwanawasa, who succeeded him, embarked on a zero tolerance stance on corruption, but was accused of being unreasonably lenient with investors, especially Chinese nationals. Apart from the gruesome picture of Chinese investment that Sata painted, he also capitalized on the controversial conduct of the Chinese and their labour practices. The significance of anti-Chinese sentiment was so high that Sata made it the central agenda of his rhetoric in the elections of 2006.
In 2006 Sata precipitated a diplomatic crisis between China and Zambia when he threatened to recognise Taiwan as a de jure independent state, should he win the election (Chan 2014). This was in effect a threat to sever ties with mainland China as the People’s Republic has always striven for the One-China policy. The Chinese ambassador to Zambia, as said in the second chapter, threatened to cut ties with Zambia should Sata win the polls. Arguably, it was the only time when China blatantly abandoned its foreign policy of non-interference with internal politics of other states. Larmer and Fraser (2007:611) argue that despite the MMD retaining power in 2006, “the most important outcome of the campaign was the successful articulation of a new populist politics by Michael Sata's Patriotic Front (PF), which won a significant majority in urban areas.” It was argued that Sata’s rhetoric on the pernicious and corrupt nature of China’s relations with the MMD resonated with Zambians residing in urban areas who were “already angered by the negative impact of economic liberalization” (Larmer and Fraser 2007:611).
The 2008 by-election after the death of Mwanawasa, which Sata lost, saw continuity in attacking Chinese investment. The corruption which came to be associated with Rupiah Banda’s government from 2008 to 2011 gave Sata another subject to overstate in his quest for the
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presidency and also moderated his rhetoric against China, though not completely. As testament to how entrenched corruption became during Banda’s term, in his last year in office, “the Global Fund suspended health assistance and the European Union halted aid for road construction citing corruption in the country” (Reuters 2010). In response, Banda said that “We must not allow donors to feel they can interfere in the internal affairs of this country because it is a sovereign and independent state” (ibid). As the current research shows, China’s vow not to interfere in internal affairs of sovereign countries, questionable as it is, has been a major factor in cementing its relations with Africa. Banda’s defensiveness against the Global Fund and EU directly espouses China’s non-interference policy.
5.7.1 The Patriotic Front in Power: 2011 to Present (2017)
The victory of Michael Sata’s Patriotic Front in 2011 was both a confirmation of the general dissatisfaction with the MMD government and proof that Zambians bought into the anti-Chinese investment sentiment which Michael Sata had made his rallying cry. Masterson asserts that Sata’s victory was “the first time in Africa [that] the electorate… pronounced their opinion [on the China-Africa] relationship.” The PF victory was also an indication of the general attitude towards Rupiah Banda’s government which was seen as a return to the Chiluba era type of corruption which people saw as customary to MMD government, with a hiatus during Mwanawasa’s rule. The controversial sale of state owned Zambia Telecommunications Company (Zamtel)73 “and the repeal of the abuse of office provision in the Anti-Corruption Act in 2010” (Patriotic Front Manifest 2011: 4) all done during Banda’s rule were seized upon by the Patriotic Front as evidence of corruption and an unwillingness of the MMD government to hearken to the needs and interests of ordinary Zambians. One of the major decisions that the PF government took shortly after acceding to power was to reverse “the sale of Zamtel to 100 percent government ownership” (Zamtel 2015).
In terms of its ideology, Michael Sata described his party as espousing social democracy, an ideology which the MMD government also ascribed to itself. The Zambia that the PF government inherited was a far cry from the Zambia immediately after independence, which was
73 In July 2010 Zamtel was partially privatized by the MMD government with a lot shares sold to LAP Green of Libya (Zamtel 2015).
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described as a middle income country or “rich by African standards” (Tordoff 1977:60).
Unemployment and extreme poverty rates in rural areas were alarmingly high in 2011, according to the 2011 Human Development Report. Zambia ranked 164 out of 187 countries on the Human Development Index (UNDP 2011). That this period coincided with China investing in Zambia’s economy to an unprecedented degree aroused questions of whether or not China’s FDI is development oriented (Spilsbury 2013).74 One of the major challenges that the PF ascertained to have inherited was the lack of social justice. In its manifesto, the party states emphatically that
“social justice shall form the core of the PF government in its domestic and foreign policy” (PF Manifesto 2011:5). Thus, in its dealings with indispensable aid and investment, the Patriotic Front committed to the promotion of social justice as a significant goal. Chinese investment was exposed as stymying this goal.
The 2011 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report added to the anti-Chinese discourse of the time.
The report claimed to have empirical insights on the labour conduct of China Non-Ferrous Metal Mining Co (CNMC) a Chinese state owned enterprise. The data from the research was mainly gathered from workers who had worked elsewhere and where now working for CNMC and those who had only worked for CNMC. The respondents referred to low pay, inappropriate work conditions, long hours of work and flouting of union rights as characteristics of CNMC employment. Those that defend China interpreted the HRW as akin to “the larger, highly-skewed Western discourse of 'China-in-Africa’” (Sautman and Yan 2011). That Zambia still relies mostly on mining makes controversial behaviour by investors in that sector likely to inflame local emotions. It can thus be argued that drawing popular attention to the perceived abominable conduct of Chinese investment was handy for the PF government to lure voters from the ruling MMD. Sata’s rhetoric was arguably a means to an end. The subsequent manner with which the PF dealt and continues to deal with China could bear this argument out. The 2014 Country Report says that even under the PF government, Chinese investors were favoured though the party came to power partly by whipping up anti-Chinese sentiment (see also Smith 2014).
74 A fair analysis of the impact of China’s FDI on Zambia’s development should take into account the fact that China is comparatively a new comer in Africa in terms of major economic involvement. While China has always been involved in Africa, this involvement has been marginal compared to Western involvement on the continent.
Furthermore, it is suspicious to expect China’s impact in Zambia to be instantaneous.
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The PF stance could be well explained by the daunting problems that Zambia continues to face, problems which could partly be relieved by the much-needed Chinese investment. There seems to be the realization that forcing China into a precipitate retreat from Zambia could be apocalyptic for a fragile economy. This could be explained as the PF’s pragmatism. The pre-PF government rhetoric was moderated by the reality of the situation in Zambia. One of Sata’s first high-level audiences in government was actually given to Chinese Ambassador Zhou Yuxiao.
The Migration Policy Institute (2015) has stated that though the presence of Chinese nationals
“in Zambia has received much negative media attention mainly due to the anti-Chinese rhetoric of late President Michael Sata, the Zambian government now largely recognizes the importance of the economic relationship.”
The PF recognizes Zambia’s continued weak economic status which has partly been fashioned by institutional failure (Barton 2015) and the lack of diversification of the economy. For its second full term in power (2016-2021) the PF government promised “fulfilment of economic growth and diversification” (PF Manifesto 2016:78). Through the Smart Zambian Initiative launched in 2015 the PF government, hoped that through lessening dependency on copper Zambia will achieve the goal of becoming a developed country by 2064, a century after its independence. Tangible diversification could reduce the role that China is likely to play in determining Zambia’s economic future.