Tag Archives: Frederick Chiluba

The Case for Term Limits, Angola Edition

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The erasure of Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ 38-year rule in Angola appears to be accelerating. Angola does not have executive term limits, but Eduardo dos Santos finally stepped down as president in late 2017.

On Wednesday his successor, Joao Lourenço, removed replaced his son (Jose Filomeno dos Santos) as head of Angola’s $5b sovereign wealth fund. This follows the sacking of Isabel dos Santos (Africa’s wealthiest woman) as head of the country’s state oil company last year. President Lourenço has also moved to replace key security chiefs in sub-Saharan Africa’s third largest economy and second biggest oil producer.

When Eduardo dos Santos said he’d retire I was skeptical. The anointment of his defense minister, Joao Lourenço, as his successor (while retaining position atop the ruling party) did little to change my mind. But like in Mozambique and Zambia before it, the mere change of guard in Angola appears to have initiated a process of elite churn that is accompanied by a dismantling of the old order (at the very least within the ruling party).

Now, there is no guarantee that this will lead to normatively desirable outcomes (such as better governance and service delivery in Angola). Change for its own sake is only good up to a point. But it is a testament to the political importance of term limits. Regular leadership turnover is a nice way of ensuring that no single interest group or ruling cabal completely dominates a country’s political economy.

Relatedly, I am not a close watcher of Angola but recent events have led me to update my view of the level of institutionalization of MPLA. For a long time I thought that it was just an electoral/patronage SPV for Eduardo dos Santos. But news events seem to suggest that its powers transferred almost intact to Joao Lourenço (I could be wrong of course).

 

What does a Sata Presidency Mean for Zambia?

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UPDATE:

For a closer take on the Sino-Zambian connection check out Louise Redvers’ piece for the BBC.

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So the Economist beat me to writing about what a Sata presidency means for the Zambian economy, especially with regard to foreign investment.

For the two of you out there who are not conversant with the campaign details in the Zambian election, Mr. Sata’s main campaign strategy involved characterizing incumbent President Banda as someone who was out to mortgage Zambia’s future to foreign investors, and especially China.

Here is what the Economist had to say:

“He is too savvy a politician not to realise how much this impoverished country of 13m people needs China’s cash. Over the past decade, the Chinese have invested over $2 billion in Zambia, the GDP of which is only $16 billion. More than half of that came in last year. And China is committed to pouring in billions more. There are now about 300 Chinese companies in Zambia, most of them privately owned, employing around 25,000 locals. Standards differ: some companies treat their workers badly, but most of the big state-owned companies genuinely seek to respect local labour laws.”

The long and short of it is that Sata will definitely kick out a few shady companies that were operating outside the law – and these are not just Chinese firms; the South Africans and Australians also have some shady businesses in Zambia. The former, especially, have a lot of money-laundering operations.

More on this here and here.

On the democracy and governance front, things won’t change much. President Sata’s camp is full of recycled UNIP veterans. UNIP was the independence party that ruled Zambia between 1964 and 1991. Mr. Sata, however, could surprise us by finally passing through a new constitution for Zambia. The last parliament killed the proposed constitution.

Sata is Zambia’s president-elect

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NB: Still hoping from airport to airport and will give my reaction to the Sata victory when I finally get back to Palo Alto on Friday evening Pacific Time.

Michael Sata of the Patriotic Front is the new president of Zambia. Mr. Sata beat incumbent president Banda after getting 43% of the declared results in the just concluded general elections in Zambia.

As was expected, the high turnout (from the numbers I have, low 60s), favored Mr. Sata. In the last election turnout was a dismal 45%.

For more of this read the Post.

 

more on the zambian elections

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Check out African Arguments for a brief backgrounder.

The election remains too close to call, which means that Banda is winning.

Given how stacked things are against the opposition, they can only win if they do so convincingly. If it is close (like it was in 2008 when the president won by just over 30,000 votes) the electoral commission will be under immense pressure to hand the ruling party, MMD, the win.

Mr. Sata (the main opposition (PF) candidate) has urged his supporters to stay at polling stations to monitor the tallying and relay of results. I understand there will be an NGO-led parallel vote tallying (but which won’t be publicized because of govt. sanctions). I hope I can get a hold of these results before the end of the week. The electoral commission of Zambia has promised to release the results within 48 hours of the polls closing – that is Thursday evening.

In Lusaka everything is slowing down in readiness for the elections. There is a sense that there will be isolated violence in some parts of the city but nothing too serious. From what I gather the Copperbelt is the region most at risk of election-related violence. People there have (or believe that they do) the most to gain if PF wins (The Copperbelt is also majority Bemba. Mr. Sata is a Bemba speaker).

The MMD’s privatization drive (of the mining sector) since the early 1990s has hit this region the most. Many lost their sinecures in parastatals;  free medicare and schooling disappeared; and there is also a sense that foreigners are benefiting at the expense of ordinary Zambians in the region. Mr. Sata has promised to channel more resources from the mining sector into social programs and a more aggressive job drive.

This is largely campaign hot air but it appears to be sticking. The MMD will be lucky if it gets even a single parliamentary seat in the Copperbelt.

Accountable leadership 1 Abdoulaye Wade 0

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Abdoulaye Wade is a study in delegative democracy gone crazy (In the words of Paul Collier, democrazy). Delegative democracy  is the phenomenon of elected leaders going rogue and essentially performing auto-coups (mostly through constitutional gymnastics) in order to entrench themselves in power (see O’Donnell). Leading lights in this regard include Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, the late Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand.

Mr. Wade’s latest assault on Senegalese democracy has been his attempts to lower the threshold for the election of a president to a mere 25% down from 50%. He’d much rather win cheap against a fractured opposition in the first round than risk a runoff against a single opposition candidate. After 11 years in power without much to sing about the risk is just too high for the Wade regime. President Wade also wanted to create the position of an elected vice president before the 2012 elections. Many believe that Wade had his son Karim in mind for this new post.

In the end determined opposition protest outside the Senegalese parliament forced the president to withdraw the draft legislation.

If the opposition unites [and that is a big IF], they could beat Mr. Wade in 2012. Frequent power cuts, a flagging economy, rampant inflation and Wade’s brand of crass and tone deaf nepotism (he wants to be succeeded by his own son despite the revolutions the Islamic near-abroad) have served to alienate the aging leader from many voters, particularly in urban areas.

Mr. Wade is expected to run for a third 7-year presidential term next year. He is 85.

chiluba dies

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The firebrand Zambian trade unionist-cum president, Frederick Chiluba, has died. The Daily Nation reports that the former president of Zambia died in the early hours of Saturday.

Mr. Chiluba came into power in 1991 following the defeat of Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia’s first multiparty elections. Although tainted by allegations of corruption – he has been accused of having embezzled US $46 million – Mr. Chiluba will be remembered as one of the fearless civil society leaders on the continent who championed the democratic cause at a time when it was dangerous to do so.

the democratic republic of congo, what a mess

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The Democratic Republic of Congo is in a deep hole. And it is not just because its president, the younger Kabila, wants to extend presidential terms by 2 years and then may be abolish term limits, at least according to the Economist.  It is primarily because almost everyone in the country seems to have incentives to keep the war in the east raging on – well, everyone except the civilians on the ground. The New York Times reports that an upcoming UN Report will implicate bigwigs in the Congolese army of colluding with rebels in the east to profit from illegal mineral exports, among other commodities. FDLR, the rebel outfit which has among its ranks remnants of the genocidal Intarahamwe from Rwanda, is among the chief beneficiaries.

Quoting the Times:

“There is ….. creeping warlordism. Local army commanders are taxing timber, charcoal, tomatoes, anything that passes through their roadblocks, making $250,000 a month, the report said. Commanders are even conscripting civilians to haul wood through the forest, reminiscent of the Belgian colonial days when pith-helmeted officers whipped Congolese porters with hippopotamus hide.”

The Congo conflict is more than anything else an economic conflict. It will only stop when those profiting from it come to their senses (I don’t know what will prompt this if 5 million deaths and counting can’t do the trick). And the web of war-profiteers  is huge.

Meanwhile in Zambia, it’s everything goes like it is still 1991. A section of donors have suspended aid to the health ministry because $ 2.1 million went missing (“more than 100,000 Zambians die every year from malaria and HIV/AIDS”– Economist). The government is reluctant to fight corruption. Mr. Rupiah Banda, the current president, seems bent on becoming the new Frederick Chiluba – the kleptocrat who ruled Zambia for ten years. Things never change.