If Hichilema wins the August election, he will remove or extend presidential term limits, or change the way the president is elected- Sishuwa Sishuwa

By Dr. Sishuwa Sishuwa

All I do is trying to open people’s eyes to what is happening around them. One day, even those who are today opposed to my efforts may see and understand.

Dr. Sishuwa Sishuwa

If Hichilema wins the August election, he will remove or extend presidential term limits, or change the way the president is elected.  

Last year, Hichilema removed the two five-year term limits from Zambia’s constitution for mayors and councillors on the argument that “good leaders” should “continue if the people want you.” It is not difficult to see how the same argument could be extended to the presidency.  

Before the constitutional change, three (president, mayor, councillor) of the five elective public offices had term limits. Instead of addressing the anomaly on the other two offices that had no term limits (council chairperson and member of parliament), he removed term limits from two of the three offices that had them so that after the election, he can argue for consistency in the law, that it is discriminatory to have term limits on only one elective public office! A few days ago, Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha announced that there will be major constitutional changes  after the election, accusing Zambians of being the ones behind such demands. That is how Bill 7 started.  

Hear me out: Hichilema, who is not a democrat and never ran his party in a democratic manner when he was in opposition for 15 years, is likely to be a wamuyaya president. I have repeatedly raised alarm about this plan from as far back as 2023. See the article on the link below, for instance.  

africanarguments.org/2023/06/zambia…

I warned then and I am warning now that the man is going nowhere. His intentions to stay in power for a very long time were made clear when he set out to destroy the opposition, pack the courts, capture the electoral commission, contain the Catholic Church, and weaken civil society. There are three main reasons behind Hichilema’s desperation to remain in power at all costs. 

The first is the fear of what might happen to his extensive businesses were he to lose power. The president has to date refused to publish his assets and liabilities, which makes it difficult to work out to what extent his policies are benefiting companies in which he has an interest. Once he leaves office, however, a new government can revisit the subject and could seek to charge him with corruption. As we have seen with the previous regime, the corruption of any president or administration only becomes clear when they are out of office.  

The second is that Hichilema wishes to avoid the embarrassment of losing power after just one term for both his own sake and that of his backers. During his decade-and-a-half in opposition, he cultivated close ties with private supporters – local and multinational corporations – who backed his election bid and wish to recoup their investments. This includes prominent domestic and foreign businessmen who aligned with the UPND for financial reasons. They bankrolled Hichilema’s election campaigns and now seek a return on their investment. One five-year term is insufficient to recoup their investment, so they are pushing to keep him in power for as long as possible. 

Another set of local businessmen is made up of Hichilema’s close allies from the 1990s when major state enterprises were dismantled for privatisation. Their reference point is former President Frederick Chiluba (1991-2002), who opened the door of accumulation for them but got side-tracked by a life of fancy suits and shoes. The nationalistic impulses of Chiluba’s successors adversely affected this cohort’s aspirations, but the election of a privatisation-minded leader has thrust the country back into their hands. One can easily find these people, who are working closely with Hichilema under beneficial ownership, in nearly all the economic sectors of the country including energy and insurance.  

Then there are foreign mining and fertiliser companies that helped finance the recent constitutional changes that saw MPs being taken to the Lower Zambezi during the weekend that preceded the voting on the Bill in parliament for “safe keeping”. No wonder Hichilema was to later publicly boast in Choma that he had “dribbled” them in reference to some of the MPs who had thought that they could get the lucrative financial inducements and stay away from parliament on 15 December when the vote on Bill 7 was set to take place. The MPs were only returned to Lusaka on the morning of the vote in parliament and were transported directly to parliament from the airport, which explains why they arrived late on the day. 

I get sad when I hear government officials singing about how they wish to raise mining production to 3 million metric tonnes. For a country that has little stake in the ownership of the mines, this singing is ridiculous. What they should be telling the public is how much revenue they are collecting from the mines compared to those who came before them. But our elected officials can’t do this because they are captured. They are a shameless set of corruptible leaders, who have betrayed Zambia to foreign commercial interests, who pawn off the country for a few trinkets, who accumulate through brazen theft of public resources and massive sale of Zambian land to so-called investors, and who strut around with self-importance when they are nothing but disposable playthings of even bigger global kleptocrats. 

Even the foreign actors who are pushing the Lobito project, which largely remains a paper tiger for now,  would rather have “a stable leadership” in place for a long time, like the case is in Angola and Congo, rather than changes in government, as Zambia tends to peacefully do.  

Third, Hichilema appears to see himself as the leader of Zambians from one half of the country. Many people from Southern, Northwestern, and Western provinces believe they have been historically marginalised by their counterparts from the Eastern and the Bemba-speaking provinces of Northern, Luapula, and Muchinga. As was the case under Lungu, the binary between us and them has been sharply drawn under Hichilema. Zambians from the president’s region head the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and dominate the key ministries, the security services, electoral commission, foreign service, and most posts in the civil service and parastatal bodies.

Hichilema – the first president from his region since independence in 1964 – does not see anything wrong with this, believing he is simply addressing historical imbalances. Fearful that a leader from the other region would reverse the trend were he to lose, the solution is to remain in power for as long as possible and then organise a successor from his region who can consolidate its hold on power. I repeated this point in yesterday’s article, but the eyes of many remain closed.
   x.com/ssishuwa/statu…

I conclude with how I began: All I do is trying to open people’s eyes to what is happening around them. One day, even those who are today opposed to my efforts may see and understand. They may learn that my political commentaries are not motivated by personal, financial or political interest of any kind, and that I am fighting for them, even if they cannot see it. Many of them may not have the freedom, courage or will to fight along or render a helping hand but it saddens me greatly when they try to undermine my little individual efforts because doing so only succeeds in enabling the undemocratic conduct of our elected public leaders and derailing the very progress that we need to secure, for our common good.  

A keen reader of my articles who has followed my political commentary since 2009 sent me the messsge below this morning:   “Sometimes it takes change of govt for people to realise that people that we hated actually meant well. There’s a friend of mine who was a very senior police officer under ECL who now doesn’t miss reading your articles. He was among the first people to be fired by HH. And now he’s full of praises for you. This is a person who would never have read anything coming from you prior to 2021. But it shouldn’t take people this to see sense in their perceived enemies.” 

I received similar messages from MMD supporters starting around 2012 when my criticism of Michael Sata’s leadership increased. Many who had falsely assumed that I was critical of Rupiah Banda’s leadership because I supported the opposition turned around and became some of my biggest supporters. Even MMD leaders and former ministers who had stopped talking to me in the run-up to the September 2011 election came back and suddenly started seeing sense in nearly everything I was writing. Like now, I had not changed in any way. What changed was their perception of me after they or the president they supported lost power.  

The lesson from this experience is clear: What we know about people is only what we think we know about them. It is rarely  the truth. If we knew the truth, our relationship with them would dramatically be different. The other lesson is that when people are eating from a system, anyone with a contrary view is considered an enemy. For many, it is all about  self-interest/preservation. It should not be this way. There must be honour, principles, and convictions in life.