Zambia heads towards a pivotal election

FOR EDGAR LUNGUNGOPF, Zambia’s president, elections on August 12th would seem to come at an inauspicious time. Over the six years since he took office in 2015, the economy has on average grown at a slower rate than the population. Last year Africa’s second-largest copper producer had its first recession since 1998. Inflation is at its highest level in 19 years. In July food prices were almost a third higher than a year before. In a poll published in May by Afrobarometer, a research group, more than three-quarters of Zambians said economic conditions were bad and that the country was heading in the wrong direction.Yet it is uncertain whether time is up for Mr Lungu (pictured). “The economy will determine how people will vote, but it may not determine the result,” says Laura Miti, the head of the Alliance for Community Action, an based in the capital, Lusaka. Since 2000 roughly three-quarters of incumbent African presidents have won re-election, by hook or by crook. Many use the power of the state to buy off or bully voters. And that is what Mr Lungu’s party, the Patriotic Front (), seems to be doing, to the detriment of a country that was once a trailblazer for African democracy.