Gregory Mthembu-Salter
“Dull. A bit slow. Very slow” is how prominent independent Zambian politician Dipak Patel describes Levy Mwanawasa, Zambia’s ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy’s (MMD) presidential candidate.
Zambia is due to hold general elections in November, but until last week the MMD was without a candidate, after President Frederick Chiluba was forced to abandon attempts to stand for an unconstitutional third term in office.
Mwanawasa’s election as the MMD candidate by the party’s National Executive Committee came as a surprise, since he has not been in active politics for five years and has no public profile. However, his candidacy has strengthened the perception that Chiluba wants to keep a strong political influence. Mwanawasa has no power base within the MMD, while Chiluba was overwhelmingly reelected as party president by MMD delegates at a convention in April.
The convention has proved controversial, since MMD members opposing Chiluba’s third-term bid were forcibly excluded, while pro-third term delegates were deluged with gifts, using funds a subsequent inquiry showed Cabinet ministers had diverted from a road-building project.
Mwanawasa appeals to the MMD elite because his long absence from politics means he is untainted by these corruption stories and, with the weight of the party machine behind him, he can win against a chronically divided opposition. Also in his favour is his ethnic background. The MMD has been dominated for years by northern Bemba people, generating discontent in southern areas. Mwanawasa’s father is a Lamba from the Copperbelt and his mother a Lenje from the south.
Patel says the MMD heavyweights, whom he says previously claimed Mwanawasa had mental problems, believe they can manipulate him. He also claims party chairperson and presidential hopeful Michael Sata is just “going through the motions” in petitioning this week that the National Executive Committee election was conducted irregularly.
Mwanawasa is a lawyer and was solicitor general under former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda. He was sacked after falling out of favour with Kaunda in the late 1980s, and joined forces with Chiluba and other founder members of the MMD. He was appointed vice-president by Chiluba after the party’s trouncing of Kaunda in 1991, but was badly injured later that year in a car accident, which some have said was an assassination attempt. He has since had difficulty concentrating, resulting in the frequent adjournment of his court cases.
Godfrey Miyanda, who now heads an opposition party, stood in as vice-president in 1991 while Mwanawasa was recovering. Once out of hospital Mwanawasa, who is known to believe strongly in traditional medicine, had a sangoma clean his office of any hostile magic that Miyanda might have left behind.
In 1993 Mwanawasa was implicated in a major scandal regarding the transfer of land belonging to the University of Zambia to a trust in which certain Cabinet ministers, including Mwanawasa, were the sole beneficiaries. The scandal escalated after the murder of a lawyer involved in the case, and all the beneficiaries, except Mwanawasa, returned the land. Mwanawasa sold his land and kept the proceeds.
Mwanawasa resigned from government in 1994, citing growing corruption as the reason. However, a well-informed source told the Mail & Guardian that Chiluba manoeuvred Mwanawasa out of office, by tempting him into allegations about Sata, who was then health minister, that he could not substantiate, thus forcing him to resign. Mwanawasa remained MMD vice-president until 1996, when he retreated to a full-time legal practice.
Mwanawasa’s sudden return to politics is problematic for the opposition, which is fragmented, and without a common presidential candidate of its own. Earlier this week Zambia’s main opposition parties said they will form an electoral pact, but are still no closer to agreeing on which of the leaders should take the top job. Should the parties fail to agree on this, it may well turn out that Mwanawasa, whom one former Cabinet colleague recently termed “an old buffoon”, will become Zambia’s next president.
Meanwhile, Patel is due in court on September 11 to answer charges brought by Chiluba of defamation, after he labelled the president a thief. Patel says Chiluba diverted $4-million of state funds intended to buy maize in 1997 for his own purposes. Fred M’membe, the editor of Zambia’s independent newspaper The Post, is being sued over the same allegation.
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