Reflections on donors, opposition and popular will in the 1996 Zambian general elections

This article deals with the Zambian general elections of 18 November 1996, notably the triangular interaction between the incumbent political group - President Chiluba and his Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), the opposition, and the international community. Chiluba and the MMD won the elections with an overwhelming majority, but the opposition did not accept the election results, claiming that the elections had not been free and fair. The article first discusses the election results. Then it looks at the registration procedure and turnout in order to analyse the argument of the opposition that the process of registration had engineered the election results. Finally, it analyses the political struggle leading up to the election, and shows how international involvement and international standards of democracy became enmeshed with Zambian political culture, which is characterized by a drive towards consensus, and therefore has difficulty in accommodating the idea of minority opposition. Notes, ref