Zambia’s election is crucial, but it’s not a fair fight

IN THE LATEPFPFNGO 1980s Zambians, inspired by the changes sweeping through eastern Europe, demanded the end of their own one-party state. In 1991 Kenneth Kaunda, the country’s founding president, reluctantly agreed to multiparty elections. He lost. But in leaving office willingly, even personally removing the presidential pennant from his car, Kaunda ensured that his country was a trailblazer for democracy. By the end of the decade nearly every country in Africa had gone to the polls. During the commodities boom of the 2000s the economy of the continent’s second-largest copper producer grew by about 7% per year. Though far from perfect, Zambia seemed more likely to become the next Botswana (democratic and middle-income) than the next Zimbabwe (despotic and wretched).How things have changed. Since it took office in 2011 the Patriotic Front () has failed Zambians. In particular, under Edgar Lungu, president since 2015, corruption, human-rights abuses and poverty have all spread. The has increased external debt at least sevenfold, with loans spent on graft-ridden Chinese-built infrastructure. In June Amnesty International reported an “increasingly brutal crackdown” on opponents of the regime. Annual inflation is running at 25%, nearly the highest in two decades, and forcing 40% of Zambians to eat fewer or smaller meals, according to a recent study by a local . Some middle-class Zambians are considering what Zimbabweans have done for decades: fleeing to South Africa.