West’s Favourite African Leader Faces Rule of Law Crisis at Home

When accountancy CEO, Hakainde Hichilema, was finally elected President of Zambia (on his sixth attempt) in 2021, international observers breathed a sigh of relief. Here was a man with a reputation for business probity to tackle the deep problems of the near-bankrupt African country that defaulted on its foreign debt in 2020.

Even distinguished think tank, Chatham House, praised Hichelima, on his first year in power saying he had “ushered in a new style which is not only distinct from his predecessor but also sets him apart from other regional leaders”.

That optimism seemed to be well-placed after Hichilema impressed French President Emmanuel Macron enough to help Hichilema lead a round of successful debt negotiations, even getting China on board, to restructure over $6 billion of sovereign state to state debt.

Hichilema’s international reputation was further burnished this summer, when the President flew to Scotland for an honorary doctorate for “his visionary leadership”. He also got a rare (during the King’s cancer treatment) personal audience with King Charles III.

Ranked about half-way in the league table of African economies, despite its huge commodity wealth, Zambia’s economy had crumpled under the weight of over $18 billion of debt (at the end of 2022), on an economy whose GDP is worth just $29 billion. Inflation is double the Central Bank’s target and the Kwacha (Zambia’s currency) depreciated 42% in 2023.

Severe drought has impacted agricultural and food production, leading President Hichelima to exclaim that in Zambia “Hunger is Biblical”, as severe food shortages have plagued the country (despite the President inheriting a huge maize surplus from his predecessor, which Hichilema chose to sell internationally rather than maintain as a strategic food reserve). Zambia is plagued with woefully inadequate infrastructure leading to water and power outages. To cap it all, the country this year suffered from a huge cholera outbreak.

There are already signs that Hichilema’s government is more admired in the West than at home. Unless Hichilema’s fortunes change, his may be headed for only a single term.

As Hichilema’s government passes its midway point, Zambia seems to be slipping into old habits with political manoeuvres to suppress opposition, and fears that corruption is as bad today as under Hichilema’s predecessors. President Hichilema has just had to accept the resignation of the Head of the Anti-Corruption Commission, who was himself accused of taking kickbacks, even as Zambia’s Solicitor General, Marshal Muchende, weathered growing pressure to resign following questions about $500,000 he received around the time he negotiated immunity deals in the liquidation of the formerly state-owned Konkola Copper Mines.

The international think tank, Freedom House, gives Zambia a poor 54/100 score (‘partly free’) on the state of its democracy. More people were arrested and sent to prison for defamation of the president in Hichilema’s first year than were under six years of his predecessor, Edgar Lungu.

Most recently, and perhaps more shocking, has been President Hichilema’s outburst about “lacunae” in Zambia’s constitution, which he warns could delay presidential elections (due in 2026), unless his government makes (as yet unknown) changes to it. This was followed by Hichilema’s ‘revenge’ suspension of three Constitutional Court judges who had denied then-opposition leader Hichilema’s court challenges against then President Lungu. The combination of these two events has made things very tense in Lusaka.

In an even more worrying sign, Hichilema has also targeted nearly all other opposition leaders for electoral exclusion using the court system in Zambia. The African academic renowned on Zambian affairs, Sishuwa Sishuwa, calls this ‘lawfare’.

As part of this ‘lawfare’ against opposition parties in Zambia, commentators point to Government’s misuse of the police. In recent weeks, Zambia’s highly partisan domestic press has been obsessed by the apparent abduction of opposition MP, Jay Jay Banda, in which the police have been criticised for their seeming complicity. Controversial too, the apparent pressure – revealed in clandestine recordings – government officials placed on the abducted MP to withhold the identity of his abductors.

Astonishingly, allegations of police involvement in Zambian abductions are not a rarity, as recently revealed in the race to be Preferred Candidate to succeed as the next Secretary General of INTERPOL.

Although surprising to many western commentators, it was a Zambian candidate  – Mubita Nawa – who had won the unanimous backing of African Union countries to be one of the four shortlisted candidates, making him an early favourite at a time when there was a call for the next INTERPOL Secretary General to be the first from the ‘global South’.

However, Nawa’s race to become the next INTERPOL boss hit to skids after the Guardian revealed that Nawa himself had been implicated in an abduction in Zambia.

International lawyers acting for members of the Sadhu family informed INTERPOL bosses that Nawa was the senior police officer involved in their abduction and attempts to extort the family of nearly a hundred and twenty million Swiss francs (a sum that the Zambian government acknowledges it owes their company, Sun Pharmaceuticals).

The Sadhus are now suing the Zambian government for abduction, including being “transferred to a police station where they continued to be subject to threats and coercion by new kidnappers, assailants and extortionists, including Mr Nawa.” wrote lawyers to INTERPOL leaders.

In response, the Zambian police issued a statement saying the Sadhus were fugitives from justice, despite the Sadhus showing any western journalist who asks them, the passport stamps showing they have been able to freely travel in and out of Zambia without ever being stopped, let alone arrested.

The Sadhus also announced a Judicial Review in Zambia, against the government, as to how police froze the Swiss franc compensation fund (without any court order) the Ministry of Justice has admitted has been set aside to be paid to the Sadhus’ company. Independent media inside Zambia, also revealed that “individuals within the state machinery have schemed to illegally take over the company as the means to capture for themselves the compensation money belonging to Sun Pharmaceuticals”.

As surprising it might seem that the Zambian police could be accused of such blatant criminal behaviour, it is not the first scandal reported about them in western media this year. The BBC has written about an extraordinary tale of fake gold and cash being found on board an Egyptian private jet seized at Lusaka’s main airport.

The BBC wrote of Zambian police: “Several of the officers who entered the plane are now being investigated for allegedly receiving up to $200,000 each from the Egyptian nationals aboard the plane. It is claimed this was their reward for allowing the plane to take off without arresting anyone.”

Several have since been arrested for corruption. However, among the Zambians appearing in court was an official from State House, the official residence and office of the president.

The fact that a State House official was also caught up in the Egyptian plane scandal mirrors the fact that at least two of the individuals the Sadhus are suing, in their separate abduction case, are named as either State House employees or otherwise connected to President Hichilema’s ruling party.

When it comes to the Zambian police, one man sits at the apex: Jack Mwiimbu, the Minister for Home Affairs and Internal Security. Mwiimbu is so powerful in Hichilema’s government, he has even acted as pro tem head of it before parliament and as stand-in for President Hichilema at international summits and foreign state occasions.

It is not the first-time criticisms have been levelled at Mwiimbu, not least over the continued power of ‘cadres’ in Zambia. Cadreism in Zambia is the way, often armed, gangs of violent young men, affiliated to the main political parties in Zambia, become the money-making and extorting arm of political parties. Have the Zambian police, critics ask, ‘privatised’ themselves and now act as the biggest cadre of them all?

As one senior Zambian official, who spoke to the author on condition of anonymity (as they are not authorised to speak to the press) said: “The rival factions inside State House mean that Hakainde Hichilema doesn’t always have his own hands on the levers of Zambian power. He may not know or can control everything done in his name.”

“He wouldn’t be the first African leader”, said this senior source close to State House, “who would rather look guilty than appear impotent in controlling his own government”.

If Hakainde Hichelima is to keep his reputation in the West intact and win back slipping voter support for a second term, he is going to have to find ways of bringing the factions in his government within one leadership chain of command. That must include ensuring whoever runs Zambia’s police and internal security apparatus acts only at the President’s behest and in line of the Rule of Law.

Stephen Lock has lived and worked in Russia, Turkey, Indonesia and Brazil and has focused on international politics, foreign investment and investor disputes. Originally graduating in law from Cambridge University, he qualified as an investment banker, training at Lazard’s.

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