Zambia’s main opposition party on Friday mounted its first challenge to the government after losing general elections on September 28, which it claims were rigged, by insisting it had the authority to clear land deeds.
The Patriotic Front (PF) of veteran opposition leader Michael Sata, who was beaten by President Levy Mwanawasa in the presidential election, said it would exert its authority in some of the major councils it had won.
The party on Friday placed half-page advertisements in state-run newspapers calling upon Zambians ”who have applied for plots … to submit documents relating to the application to the [PF)] secretariat by Friday.”
The advertisement sparked an immediate reaction from the government.
”The city councils have no power to allocate land. All land in the country is vested in the president and not local authorities,” said Mukuka Zimba, a permanent secretary in the lands ministry.
”The councils are just agents of central government in land allocations. They cannot give land without our authority,” said Zimba.
While losing the presidential and parliamentary elections to Mwanawasa and his Movement for Multiparty Democracy, the PF now controls the municipal governments in urban areas such as Lusaka and the Copperbelt region, the country’s industrial heartland.
Its leader Sata, who claimed Mwanawasa ”stole” last Thursday’s ballot, has said he lived up to his election pledge to lower taxes in municipalities won by the Patriotic Front.
While local governments have the power to raise and lower taxes, their fate ultimately lies in the hands of the central government, which can order their dissolution if it can provide legal evidence of malpractice. — Sapa-AFP