How COVID-19 restrictions on rallies are roiling elections in Africa
| Johannesburg
Going into Thursday鈥檚 election, Zambian President Edgar Lungu has drawn from a classic playbook for swinging the vote his way. His government has intimidated opposition candidates, shut down independent media outlets, and purged the electoral roll to favor the ruling party鈥檚 strongholds.
But Mr. Lungu, who has held power since 2015, now has a new tool 鈥� campaign restrictions in the name of protecting Zambians against COVID-19.
Since March 2020, governments around the world have wrestled with the challenge of staging elections in a pandemic. At least 78 countries postponed elections between March 2020 and June 2021, including 14 in Africa, . Others have gone ahead but taken extra precautions, such as limiting the size of political rallies and enforcing social distancing in polling stations.
Why We Wrote This
Holding elections during a pandemic is a challenge, particularly for young democracies in Africa. Restrictions on gatherings aimed at curbing infections can impinge on democratic freedoms.
And that, experts say, is where things get thorny, because the same kinds of measures that protect public health also make it difficult for opposition candidates in particular to get their message to voters, potentially skewing turnout and results. And the line between legitimate concern for public health and politicians trying to swing the vote in their favor can often be a blurry one.聽
鈥淐OVID regulations have been a gift to the world鈥檚 dictators, and one they鈥檝e received with open arms,鈥� says Laura Miti, a civil society activist in Zambia.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where many democracies were young and fragile to begin with, the risk of instability associated with unbalanced elections is especially high. In late 2020, that democracy and human rights protections had deteriorated in more than two dozen African countries since the start of the pandemic, part of a 鈥渃risis for democracy around the world鈥� touched off by COVID-19.
Zambia, a landlocked southern African country of 18 million, was among them. Mr. Lungu banned campaign rallies, a measure that penalized opposition candidates since the president has continued to draw crowds of his supporters to events billed as face mask distribution, sidestepping the ban. 聽聽
鈥淲hat will it benefit you to be holding rallies, but then sacrifice the lives of our citizens and voters to COVID-19 and death?鈥澛燤r. Lungu ; at the same event he announced the blanket ban on election rallies.
Police have since broken up rallies held by Mr. Lungu鈥檚 main challenger, Hakainde Hichilema, using tear gas and rubber bullets.
Crossing a line聽 聽
But while some restrictions on public gathering and movement may be justified to limit the spread of COVID-19, experts say that they have clearly crossed a line into choking the democratic process.
鈥淭he truth is that if this were really about COVID, you鈥檇 have alternative platforms set up for everyone, equally,鈥� says Ms. Miti, who runs a nongovernmental organization in Lusaka called the Alliance for Community Action. 鈥淭he rules wouldn鈥檛 just be applied to one side.鈥�
Similar scenes have played out in other elections in the region since the beginning of the pandemic.
Last year Ethiopia postponed a national election for more than a year, to June 2021, over what it claimed were COVID-19 public health concerns. Many in the opposition disagreed, and one region, Tigray, decided to flout the national government by holding its local elections anyway. That, in turn, helped touch off a conflict between Tigray and the national government that has since escalated into a civil war.
In Uganda, meanwhile, security forces killed more than 50 people last November during protests over the arrest of opposition candidate Bobi Wine for violating COVID-19 protocols on rally size. Mr. Wine lost the election in January to President Yoweri Museveni, who won a sixth term. And during Burundi鈥檚 election last year, the that they quarantine for 14 days, effectively ensuring none were present.
But delaying voting doesn鈥檛 always mean rolling back democracy.
South Africa, for instance, announced in July that it was postponing local government elections set for October, for candidates to mobilize voters, and that turnout might be lower than expected because of COVID-19 concerns, limiting citizens鈥� access to their democracy. Although political parties sparred over the decision, , regardless of their political leanings, according to a local poll.
In Zambia, however, the vote is going ahead on Thursday under COVID-19 restrictions, which observers say could be the deciding factor in swinging the election toward the incumbent. In the last election, in 2015, Mr. Lungu won the poll 鈥� also against Mr. Hichilema 鈥� by a margin of less than 2 percentage points, and found that support for the ruling Patriotic Front has tumbled over the last four years.
But many observers suspect that the ways in which Mr. Lungu has tinkered with the vote 鈥� including coronavirus-related restrictions 鈥� will still be enough to swing the results in his favor.
These restrictions have 鈥渓imited the opposition鈥檚 access to the voters, which in the long run provided advantage to the ruling party,鈥� says Fumba Chama, a Zambian hip-hop artist and human rights activist who goes by the stage name PilAto.
Should no candidate win more than 50% of votes cast this week, a runoff election must be held within 37 days. But the candidates will still face the restrictions on public association and that, say analysts, could be enough to put Mr. Lungu back in for another term.
