Zambia has long occupied an unusual position in the political history of sub-Saharan Africa. Since the return to multiparty politics in 1991, power has changed hands through elections, presidents have lost office, and political competition has remained sufficiently meaningful to distinguish Zambia from the continent’s more entrenched authoritarian systems. The alternation of governments in 1991, 2011 and 2021 demonstrated that incumbency was not necessarily permanent and that electoral defeat could still remove a sitting president. This history gave Zambia an important democratic reputation.
Yet the 2026 presidential election has exposed a more troubling question: what happens when leaders who once fought an incumbent system begin to reproduce the institutional practices that they previously condemned?
President Hakainde Hichilema’s political trajectory makes this question particularly important. He entered State House in 2021 after years as an opposition leader, campaigning against the restrictions, intimidation and institutional abuses associated with previous administrations. His victory represented not simply a change of government but a moment of democratic renewal. Five years later, however, the election that returned him to office has been accompanied by allegations of irregularities, concerns about the transparency of vote tabulation, military deployment (Financial Times, 2026), restrictions on political opposition, the closure of the courts at a critical constitutional moment, and the prosecution of his principal electoral rival, Brian Mundubile, on treason charges. Reuters described the 2026 election as a chaotic vote marked by serious irregularities and noted that Mundubile and his running mate, Makebi Zulu, were imprisoned on treason charges following the election. (Reuters, 2026)
The argument here is not that Hichilema necessarily stole the 2026 election. The available evidence does not establish that claim. Indeed, independent parallel verification by the Christian Churches Monitoring Group suggested that Hichilema probably did win the election (CCMG, 2026). Its parallel vote tabulation estimated Hichilema’s support at approximately 56 per cent, compared with approximately 42 per cent for Mundubile. The more serious democratic problem is therefore not simply who received the most votes. It is whether citizens were able to contest power under institutional conditions sufficiently fair, transparent and accountable to make the election democratically legitimate.
This distinction matters because modern democratic erosion rarely begins with the abolition of elections. It often begins with the gradual manipulation of the institutions surrounding elections: electoral commissions, courts, security agencies, legislation, media environments and the legal treatment of political opponents. This is the terrain of what scholars have described as competitive authoritarianism, in which democratic institutions continue to exist and elections continue to take place, but incumbents increasingly exploit the state to weaken the opposition and reduce the uncertainty of political competition (Cheeseman, 2017; Levitsky & Way, 2010).
Zambia may not yet be a fully authoritarian state. The more precise concern is that its democratic system is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the logic of competitive authoritarianism.
From democratic alternation to institutional erosion
The significance of Zambia’s present crisis becomes clearer when viewed historically. The country’s democratic achievements have never rested exclusively on constitutional design. They have depended on political actors accepting limits on executive power and on institutions retaining sufficient autonomy to restrain those who hold office.
Research on Zambia has repeatedly identified the weakness of these institutional restraints. Rakner (2011) demonstrated how executive dominance and weakly institutionalised political parties have constrained democratic consolidation. Hinfelaar, Rakner and van de Walle (2022) subsequently showed how democratic backsliding during the 2011–2021 period occurred through legal and institutional mechanisms that strengthened executive power, constrained opposition politics and weakened what they call “agencies of restraint”.
This history reveals a fundamental paradox. Zambia’s democratic problem is not simply that politicians refuse to hold elections. It is that political competition has frequently been organised around access to state power rather than around the construction of institutions capable of constraining whoever wins.
That distinction is crucial. A political party may campaign as an agent of democratic change while in opposition and then discover, once in government, that the very institutions it previously criticised can be useful instruments of political control. The incentive structure of presidential politics therefore encourages continuity even when the rhetoric of political change is different.
This is one reason Hichilema’s presidency deserves particular scrutiny. His political history gives him a different relationship to democratic institutions than that of leaders who inherited power without experiencing prolonged opposition. He knew what it meant to operate under an incumbent government. He knew the significance of an independent judiciary, an open civic space and an opposition capable of organising without being treated as a security threat. His 2021 victory was itself evidence that institutionalised electoral alternation could work.
The democratic tragedy would therefore be greater if the institutions that enabled his victory were subsequently weakened under his administration.
Did Hichilema steal the election?
The evidence requires analytical restraint. The Electoral Commission of Zambia declared Hichilema the winner of the 13 August 2026 election with 2,965,326 votes against Brian Mundubile’s 1,856,217. Hichilema was declared president-elect on 18 August (Al Jazeera, 2026).
There are, however, substantial questions about the administration of the election. The European Union Election Observation Mission concluded that voters had a competitive choice but that the election was conducted on an uneven playing field (European Union Election Observation Mission Zambia, 2026). The EU mission reported that the Electoral Commission suspended nationwide counting and announcement on 14 August, 2026 for approximately six hours amid reports of violence against election personnel and alleged ballot-box theft. More importantly, the mission concluded that the quality and transparency of the tabulation process deteriorated significantly following the suspension (Beardsworth, 2026).
The Christian Churches Monitoring Group’s (CCMG) parallel vote tabulation provides an important counterweight to claims that the official result was wholly fabricated. Using a nationally representative sample of approximately 1,500 polling stations, CCMG estimated Hichilema’s vote at 56.0 per cent, with a margin of error of approximately 1.7 percentage points, and Mundubile’s at 42.3 per cent. Its findings therefore placed Hichilema clearly above the 50 per cent threshold (Beardsworth, 2026).
At the same time, CCMG reported discrepancies between official figures and its estimates, including vote additions in 30 constituencies. The existence of such discrepancies does not by itself demonstrate that the presidential result was stolen. But it does demonstrate why electoral legitimacy cannot be reduced to the final percentage announced by an electoral commission (Beardsworth, 2026).
The more defensible conclusion is therefore uncomfortable for both sides: Hichilema probably won the election, but the institutional conditions surrounding that victory were sufficiently problematic to raise serious questions about the quality of Zambia’s democracy. That distinction is essential. A government can win an election and still undermine democracy.
The judiciary and the closing of the democratic exit
The most consequential institutional development occurred after the vote. Mundubile disputed the election result and intended to challenge it through the courts (Associated Press, 2026). Yet Zambia’s superior courts and Constitutional Court were closed on 24 August 2026, the final day for filing a presidential election petition. Reuters reported that the closure prevented effective access to the legal avenue through which the opposition could challenge the election (Reuters, 2026).
This is particularly damaging because constitutional democracy is designed precisely for moments of electoral disagreement. Elections determine who governs; courts determine whether constitutional rules have been followed. If an electoral dispute cannot reach an independent judiciary, political conflict is displaced from constitutional institutions into the streets, police stations and security apparatus.
The closure of the courts therefore matters independently of whether Hichilema actually won. Democratic legitimacy requires not merely that a president receive more votes than his opponent but that the losing side has a credible institutional mechanism through which to challenge the result. Without that mechanism, elections become less an exercise in democratic accountability than a declaration of political finality.
From electoral dispute to treason charges
The subsequent treatment of Brian Mundubile has made this institutional problem even more serious.
Mundubile, who finished second in the presidential election, was formally charged with treason in late August 2026, together with his running mate Makebi Zulu (Associated Press, 2026). His lawyer confirmed the charges to Reuters. The authorities have alleged that the accused were involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the government by unlawful means. The precise allegations must ultimately be tested through judicial proceedings; neither Mundubile nor the other accused should be treated as guilty merely because charges have been filed (Reuters, 2026).
That qualification is essential. Governments have a legitimate responsibility to investigate genuine threats to national security, including attempts to overthrow constitutional government. A treason prosecution cannot be dismissed simply because the accused is an opposition politician.
The democratic question is therefore narrower and more important: is national-security law being applied on the basis of demonstrable evidence and independent judicial process, or is the boundary between political opposition and national-security threat becoming blurred?
The timing is what makes the case so consequential. Mundubile had challenged the presidential result and was seeking a constitutional avenue through which to contest it. The courts were then unavailable at the critical filing deadline. Shortly afterwards, the principal opposition challenger was detained and charged with treason.
Individually, each event may have a legal explanation. Collectively, however, they create a serious institutional concern. The ordinary democratic route for contesting power appears to have narrowed at precisely the moment when the political system most required it.
The appropriate democratic demand is therefore not that the state simply release every person accused of a security offence. It is that the state disclose the evidence, provide meaningful access to counsel, allow an independent court to test the allegations, and ensure a fair and prompt trial. The state does not have to trust its opponents. It has to subject them, and itself, to the same law.
Zambia and Tanzania: a regional authoritarian repertoire
The Mundubile case becomes even more significant when placed alongside developments in Tanzania. There is no established evidence that Zambia copied Tanzania’s policy or that the two governments coordinated their actions. It would therefore be analytically careless to describe the cases as a literal common blueprint.
There is, however, a striking similarity in the political repertoire. In Tanzania, opposition leader Tundu Lissu was arrested in April 2025 and charged with treason after calling for electoral reforms. He subsequently remained in detention while facing a treason trial. His arrest occurred shortly before Tanzania’s principal opposition party, Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA), was excluded from the 2025 election. Reuters reported that Lissu had been charged with treason and that CHADEMA was subsequently disqualified from the electoral process (Reuters, 2025).
The Tanzanian case illustrates a broader mechanism of democratic restriction: opposition politics is reframed as a question of state security, allowing the coercive machinery of the state to become involved in what would ordinarily be political competition.
The emerging parallel with Zambia should therefore be understood as a shared authoritarian repertoire rather than a proven coordinated blueprint.
The sequence is striking: political opposition → confrontation over electoral rules → invocation of national-security offences → detention or prosecution of opposition figures → restriction of the opposition’s ability to compete or challenge political outcomes.
In Tanzania, this sequence was especially consequential because Lissu was a major opposition figure while CHADEMA was subsequently excluded from the electoral contest. In Zambia, Mundubile was the principal challenger in a presidential election and was charged with treason immediately after disputing the result.
The cases are not identical. Tanzania’s political system has a much longer history of dominant-party rule, and the scale of opposition exclusion in the 2025 election was considerably greater. Zambia retains a stronger tradition of competitive alternation. Nevertheless, the similarity in the use of national-security law against leading opposition figures should concern anyone interested in democratic consolidation in southern and eastern Africa.
The danger is not necessarily that every treason charge against an opposition politician is politically fabricated. The danger is that treason becomes normalised as a political language for dealing with serious opposition. Once that happens, the distinction between protecting the state and protecting the incumbent government becomes dangerously thin.
The criminalisation of political contestation
This is where the concept of competitive authoritarianism becomes useful. Competitive authoritarian regimes do not normally abolish opposition altogether. They preserve elections, parties, parliaments and courts because these institutions provide domestic and international legitimacy. What changes is the balance of power surrounding them. The incumbent increasingly determines the institutional conditions under which competition occurs (Cheeseman, 2017; Levitsky & Way, 2010).
The result is a political system in which opposition remains technically legal but progressively more dangerous, expensive or institutionally constrained. This is different from classic dictatorship. It is also different from functioning liberal democracy.
The distinction matters because Zambia’s current trajectory should not be exaggerated. There remains an opposition. Elections remain contested. Civil society continues to operate. Journalists continue to investigate government conduct. International observers remain present. Courts have not disappeared permanently. The political system has not ceased to contain meaningful democratic elements.
But democratic erosion often occurs precisely in this grey zone. Amnesty International’s assessment before the 2026 election documented restrictions on expression, association and peaceful assembly, along with arrests, surveillance and a shrinking civic space (Amnesty International, 2026). Freedom House classified Zambia as “Partly Free” in 2026, citing regular multiparty elections but also significant legal and practical obstacles to opposition competition (Freedom House, 2026).
The cumulative effect is more important than any individual restriction. When the electoral commission becomes controversial, when courts become inaccessible at a decisive constitutional moment, when security forces become increasingly visible in political contexts, when opposition figures are arrested, and when the principal challenger is prosecuted for treason, citizens begin to face a fundamentally different democratic environment. They may still be permitted to vote. But the range of politically meaningful choices available to them is narrowing.
The Hichilema paradox
The most troubling dimension of Zambia’s present trajectory is therefore the Hichilema paradox.
Hichilema spent years as an opposition leader. He understood the frustrations of competing against an incumbent with institutional advantages. His 2021 victory demonstrated that democratic alternation was possible. Yet the government that emerged from that democratic alternation now faces accusations that it is weakening some of the same institutional safeguards that made that alternation possible.
This does not mean that Hichilema is identical to his predecessors. It means that Zambia’s political system may be stronger at replacing presidents than at changing the incentives that presidents face once they acquire power. That is a deeper problem.
Rakner’s work on Zambian parties demonstrates that political parties have historically been weakly institutionalised and frequently dependent on individual leaders (Rakner, 2011). Research on intra-party democracy similarly suggests that many Zambian parties struggle to develop strong internal accountability mechanisms (Rakner & Svåsand, 2004). In such systems, political competition can become personalised: the objective is not simply to strengthen democratic institutions but to defeat the incumbent and occupy the presidency.
The consequence is a revolving door of political elites without a corresponding transformation in the underlying institutional structure.
The opposition leader becomes president. The president inherits the institutions. The institutions become politically useful. And the former reformer gradually acquires an incentive to preserve the same concentration of power that he once opposed. This is how democratic backsliding can occur without a military coup.
Thandika Mkandawire and the question of whether democracy works
Thandika Mkandawire’s work provides an important theoretical corrective to the idea that African states require strong executives and constrained political competition in order to develop.
Mkandawire (2001) argued for the possibility of capable developmental states that are simultaneously democratic, accountable and socially inclusive. His work challenged the assumption that democracy is inherently an obstacle to effective state-building.
This is particularly relevant to Zambia because one of the recurring arguments used to justify executive concentration across Africa is that governments need political stability and institutional control to implement economic reforms.
Hichilema’s administration has pursued debt restructuring, fiscal reform and an investment-oriented economic strategy. Zambia’s improved relations with international financial institutions and investors have strengthened the government’s economic credibility.
But economic performance cannot substitute for institutional legitimacy. A developmental state that becomes less accountable does not necessarily become more effective. Indeed, weakening agencies of restraint can ultimately undermine the predictability and institutional credibility on which long-term development depends.
For Mkandawire, the democratic state was not an obstacle to development; it was capable of being part of its architecture. This matters because the question facing Zambia is not whether it must choose between democracy and development. The more useful question is whether it can build institutions capable of delivering both.
Anna Lekvall and the fallacy of "development first"
Anna Lekvall’s work makes a related argument from the perspective of democratic development. In Development First, Democracy Later?, Lekvall (2013) challenges the assumption that societies must postpone democracy until economic development has been achieved.
The Zambian case illustrates why this sequencing argument remains important. If democratic institutions are treated as luxuries to be enjoyed after economic stability has been secured, then governments can justify restrictions on opposition, civic society and judicial independence as temporary necessities.
But temporary restrictions have a tendency to become institutional habits. The problem is particularly acute in competitive authoritarian systems because incumbents rarely have an incentive to restore constraints voluntarily once those constraints have become politically inconvenient.
The argument for postponing democracy therefore contains a structural contradiction: the stronger the executive becomes, the harder it becomes to persuade that executive to surrender the powers accumulated in the name of development.
Is democracy really working?
The answer depends on what democracy is expected to accomplish. If democracy means simply holding elections, Zambia still qualifies. If democracy means allowing citizens to choose between competing parties, Zambia retains substantial democratic characteristics. If democracy means ensuring that the incumbent can be defeated, Zambia’s history demonstrates that this remains possible.
But if democracy means that political power is constrained by independent institutions, that opposition can operate without being treated as a national-security threat, that courts remain available when electoral disputes arise, and that the state cannot selectively deploy coercive institutions against political competitors, then the 2026 election raises much more serious concerns.
This is why the question “Is democracy really working?” should not be answered by looking only at the ballot box. Democracy is not simply an event that occurs every five years. It is an institutional relationship between rulers and citizens.
An election can be competitive while the broader political environment becomes increasingly coercive. A president can legitimately win a majority while simultaneously weakening the institutions that will constrain his successor. A government can deliver economic reforms while diminishing civic freedoms. A state can remain formally democratic while becoming substantively less liberal and less accountable. This is the central lesson of competitive authoritarianism.
Zambia's democratic future
Zambia is not yet Tanzania, nor is it a conventional authoritarian state. That distinction should be preserved. The country’s democratic history still matters. So does its record of peaceful alternation. Civil society, independent media, opposition parties, churches and professional organisations remain important sources of institutional resistance.
But institutions survive only when political actors are willing to accept constraints that may eventually disadvantage them. That is the real test of Hichilema’s presidency. The question is not whether he can defeat the opposition.
The question is whether he is willing to preserve the institutional conditions under which the opposition can one day defeat him. That is the difference between winning an election and strengthening democracy.
The treason prosecution of Mundubile makes this question particularly urgent. The parallel with Tundu Lissu in Tanzania should not be interpreted as proof of a centrally coordinated regional strategy. It should instead be understood as evidence of a wider and increasingly familiar method of political control in which national-security law enters the arena of electoral competition. In Tanzania, Lissu’s treason prosecution occurred alongside the exclusion of CHADEMA from the electoral process. In Zambia, Mundubile was charged with treason after contesting an election whose judicial challenge had already been obstructed by the closure of the courts (Reuters, 2025).
The difference between legitimate national-security enforcement and political repression therefore rests on institutions: evidence, due process, judicial independence, transparency and equal application of the law.
If those safeguards disappear, treason ceases to function merely as a defence of the constitutional order. It can become an instrument through which the political order protects itself from competition. That is the danger Zambia must avoid.
Conclusion
The deepest irony of Zambia’s current political crisis is that the man who spent years fighting to enter State House now has to demonstrate that he can preserve the democratic institutions that allowed him to enter it.
Hichilema did not need to manufacture a victory in order to weaken democracy. Democratic erosion can occur even when an incumbent genuinely wins an election.
It occurs when electoral administration becomes less transparent, when courts become inaccessible, when security institutions enter political disputes, when civic space contracts, and when leading opposition figures are increasingly treated as security threats rather than political competitors.
Mundubile’s treason prosecution and the earlier prosecution of Tundu Lissu in Tanzania are warning signs of this wider regional pattern. They demonstrate how the language of national security can increasingly intersect with the management of political opposition. Neither case should be prejudged; the allegations must be tested in independent courts. But the democratic burden of proof becomes especially high when criminal proceedings against opposition leaders occur immediately around disputed elections and political transitions.
Mkandawire’s conception of the developmental state reminds us that state capacity and democracy are not natural enemies. Lekvall’s work reminds us that democracy cannot simply be postponed until development has been achieved. Zambia’s own history demonstrates that alternation in power is possible. The challenge now is to ensure that alternation does not become merely a change of political occupants within the same system of executive dominance.
The real measure of Hichilema’s democratic legacy will therefore not be whether he wins again. It will be whether Zambia remains a country in which his successor can defeat him.
A functioning democracy is ultimately a system in which the government accepts the possibility of losing power and institutions are strong enough to make that possibility real.
The state does not have to trust its opponents. It has to trust the law enough to let them compete. And the president who once fought the system must now decide whether his greatest legacy will be to inherit Zambia’s old political blueprint—or finally break it.
References
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