Political
Scholar Spotlight: Sishuwa Sishuwa - Part 1
The Elite Africa Project would be nowhere without the work of talented scholars, both those who support the project and those who inspire our work. In this series, the Elite Africa Project interviews scholars about their work across different domains of power and what they think a deeper study of Africa’s elites can add to our understanding of the continent. Here is Part 1 of my interview with Zambian historian Sishuwa Sishuwa.
This is the fifth entry in our Scholar Spotlight series. You may also be interested in our previous interviews with Nwando Achebe, Josias Maririmba, Dickson Eyoh, and Gerald Bareebe.
If I could just ask you first to introduce yourself and say what your background is for the record.
My name is Sishuwa Sishuwa. I am a Zambian historian and Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Previously, I was a Lecturer in African History at the University of Zambia and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute for Democracy, Citizenship, and Public Policy in Africa at the University of Cape Town.
I work on the political history of southern Africa from mid-twentieth century to the present, focusing primarily on Zambia though I am now extending my focus to Malawi and Namibia. My research interests include political leadership, biography, elections, civil society, ethnicity, racialised nationalism, populism, and civil-military relations. A common thread that runs through my scholarship is the location of contemporary political developments in a historical context, showing that the roots of recent democratic politics lie in earlier periods. I am the author of Party Politics and Populism in Zambia (James Currey, 2024) and a recent winner of the prestigious Terence Ranger prize from the Journal of Southern African Studies for my article that examines the complexity of racial politics in Zambia and southern Africa more generally.
I serve on the editorial boards of major African Studies journals such as the Journal of African History, Journal of Southern African Studies, and the South African Historical Journal. I also provide regular analysis on southern African politics to regional and international media including The Mail & Guardian, African Arguments, the BBC, CNN, and Aljazeera. I earned a DPhil in Modern History and an MSc in African Studies, both from the University of Oxford, where I studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
In your view, how do you define elites?
The concept of elite can be defined as a relatively small group of powerful or influential people who hold a disproportionate amount of political power, wealth, privileges, skill, or knowledge in any given society. Such a group is often considered superior, has greater control over key policy decisions, is influential in the decision-making process, and may override the importance of elections and electoral processes.
Your new book uses the life of former Zambian President Michael Sata to speak to the political history of the country. We don’t see as many biographies in the discipline of political science anymore. What are some of the advantages and challenges of this approach: using the story of one individual to tell the story of a society?
Well, the book is both a political history of modern Zambia, which achieved independence from Britain in 1964, and an accurate biography of Michael Sata that illustrates the role of the individual in broader processes of political change. It cuts across both the late-colonial (1953-1964) and post-colonial years and the single-party (1973-1991) and multiparty systems (1964-1972 and since 1991). In doing so, the book challenges the dominant periodisation in Zambian history by drawing significant connections between different historical eras and showing how lessons learnt in one period were replicated in recognisable form in later periods. It also provides new and illuminating insights on understudied themes in African politics. These include the interaction between party politics and populism since the 1950s, the roots of the political strategies that individual politicians employ to mobilise electoral support in contemporary times, the nature and competitiveness of electoral politics in single or dominant party regimes, and the importance of individual political leadership to the success of opposition parties.
There are several advantages of using this approach to tell the wider story. I discuss many in the book but let me highlight two of these here. The first advantage is that examining the life of an individual who straddles historical periods that are generally considered somewhat separate and often studied through snapshot or episodic approaches provides an excellent way of understanding broad continuities and changes over time. Researchers of African politics, for instance, often treat the end of one-party rule in the early 1990s as the termination of one form of politics and the advent of multipartism as a blank slate on which a new style of political engagement followed. Yet, as I show in the book, the reality was far more complicated. These developments were not the supposed turning points that they have been imagined to be in many of the existing studies. The careers of many of Africa’s successful political actors cut across the eras of one-party rule and democratisation. A context-driven individual biography that focuses on the political careers of such individual figures allows us to understand how they have been able to successfully traverse these perceived divides.
The second advantage of using the individual approach is that it complements institutional approaches by facilitating in-depth understanding of the non-institutional factors – such as individual leadership – that have shaped political and economic changes in Africa since independence. For instance, much of the Africanist literature on the dynamics of the one-party states across the continent has sought to examine political change through the prisms of the abstract role of institutions such as trade unions and elections to the exclusion of the concrete role of individual political leaders in these institutions. While a focus on these structural factors sheds significant light on the operations of the one-party state, it ignores the role of individual actors in a political system that was characterised by relatively weak institutions. As I argue in the book, this is a particularly important point considering the prevailing assumption that elections in one-party regimes were insignificant because they did not result in political change. While this interpretation may be true of presidential elections, it was hardly the case at parliamentary level, where, because of a competitive democratic environment, several non-performing lawmakers lost their seats, sometimes to little-known challengers. Institutional analyses have tended to obscure these frequent high turnovers of incumbent candidates, which demonstrate that the one-party state was more complicated than previously understood.
Individual case studies can help explain how competing parliamentary candidates mobilised political support within the constraints of a party-controlled electoral campaign. They can also aid our understanding of the several instances within the one-party state where MPs were able to carve out a constituency of support for themselves or to build patronage support networks in a political system heavily weighted against such practices. What this illustrates is that, although it offers useful insights that contribute to our understanding of political change, the institutional approach of analysis neglects the agency of the individual in those institutions, thereby impoverishing that understanding.
I do not see any specific challenges of using the biographical approach that are not common to other analytical approaches. Its critics often argue that biography tends to glorify the subject of the study, overlooking the weaknesses of the individual. But this problem emanates from how the approach is applied by researchers to explain historical inquiries rather than the methodology itself.
Most populist movements are explicitly framed as anti-elite, but populist leaders around the world have become elite figures themselves and often even have elite background. How should we understand the relationship between populism and elites?
In her review of Party Politics and Populism in Zambia, Antoinette Handley, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, made the astute observation that “It is an irony of populism that despite its inherently anti-elitist message, it spotlights the very elites who wield its tools.” This is so true. Populist leaders come from the ranks of the elite but forge close links with the common or ordinary person to denounce elitism and its impact on keeping the poor in that state and perpetuating economic inequality in society. Populist leaders may be wealthy themselves, as is the case with Donald Trump in the United States, who is a billionaire. A populist politician has to undergo what Frantz Fanon described as ‘class suicide’; that is by denouncing the class to which they belong and embracing the class of the impoverished masses and the underprivileged. A populist does this by articulating the grievances of the common person, showing empathy to their hardships and struggles and claiming to speak for them. They will often denounce elites as privileged and the benefiting group at the expense of the common person, overlooking the reality that they themselves are elite figures. Populism enables elites seeking power to mask their class membership and forge linkages of solidarity with members of other classes.
You have done some work in the past on ethnic nationalism. What do you think is the role of elites in inventing or deploying ethnic identity?
In fact, my most recent work on ethnic nationalism was published in the Canadian Journal of African Studies. The idea of ethnic identity in itself is not controversial. Ethnic groups existed in pre-colonial times. However, elites in the form of colonial government officials, mining companies, and missionaries, invented new ethnic identities. Let me illustrate this point with examples from Zambia, examples that I discuss in greater detail in the book. In the case of Zambia, Daniel Posner has shown, in his book Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2005), that the invention of ethnic identity took several forms.
The first was the reduction in the number of languages from more than fifty to only four major ones – Bemba, Tonga, Chewa/Nyanja, and Lozi – that were promoted by colonial elites as the languages of instruction in schools. The second was the translation of the Bible into these four formal languages by Christian missionaries for purposes of evangelisation across wider geographical areas. The third was the creation of unique ethnic-language group identities on the urban Copperbelt where large number of migrants from Luapula and Northern provinces came to dominate the new mining towns. The fourth was the promotion of colonial stereotypes by colonial officials and mining companies that emphasised special qualities in specific African groups as a way of justifying their employment into the security services, manual labour, or clerical positions. These stereotypes led to ethnic competition for jobs as certain ethnic groups felt entitled to work in particular fields or positions while others, particularly those considered outsiders, sought to remake their identities in ways that elite colonial and mining officials wanted them to be.
In the post-independence era, political elites have appealed to or deployed these broad ethnic-language identities to mobilise political support and overcome competition. Individual leaders who felt excluded from state political power used their membership in these broader language groups to present themselves as spokespersons of these groups, arguing that their ethnic groups were marginalised and did not receive a fair share of the political cake or economic development relative to other groups. Many observers of Zambian politics agree that ethnic identity in Zambia is an invention of the political elite and has been used to position political entrepreneurs with key constituencies, especially co-ethnics. As I demonstrate in my book, Michael Sata exploited these relatively flexible ethnic-language group identities to access employment as a police constable during the colonial period and to mobilise political support in the period after independence. This was notwithstanding the fact that he was not an ethnic Bemba himself. Another political leader, Frederick Chiluba, Zambia’s second president who is yet to attract a scholarly biographical study, also successfully fashioned himself as a Bemba when mobilising political support, yet he was ethnic Lunda – demonstrating the role of elites in inventing or deploying ethnic identity.
How do you think national identities developed during and after colonialism compare with pre-colonial national identities?
The idea of nationalism de-emphasised the importance of ethnic nationalism or ethnic identity. While precolonial national identities were based on ethnic identities or language groups defined by geographic location, a common history, culture and a way of life, nationalism tried to forge a common national identity by ensuring that all ethnic groups subscribe to a nation-state. This preoccupation with building a nation presupposed ethnic and language groups coming together in building a new nation. Nationalist elites such as Kenneth Kaunda in the case of Zambia despised those who championed ethnic identities over national identity as parochial and divisive. They argued Zambia belonged to all who lived in it and ethnic divisions could be overcome by promoting the overarching national identity of being Zambian. The ‘One Zambia, One Nation’ motto was used as a slogan for nation-building. Ironically, this political project by nationalist elites was in direct contrast to the one by colonial authorities who openly championed ethnic divisions and used them in classifying Africans. In the 1920s and 1930s, for example, Africans on the Zambian Copperbelt were housed in what was called ‘Tribal Compounds and these sites had ‘Compound Chiefs’. But class solidarity occasioned by working class struggles for better and improved wages and conditions united the workers and weakened tribal affiliation. Unionism and nationalist parties dealt a blow to ethnic identities and turned Africans into citizens of an independent state, as opposed to tribal subjects of chiefs.
How much power do political parties have in Zambia? In Nigeria, it is said that political parties don’t have ideology and are just empty vehicles for politicians. But you do sometimes see intra-party power struggles in Nigeria and other countries that shape political outcomes.
Political parties wield very little power in Zambia, until they are in government. Once in government, lines between party and state are quickly blurred and in this context party structures can have great influence. State patronage often soon extends to party supporters. In the previous administration (2011-2021), the then ruling Patriotic Front was considered supreme, and the party Secretary General was third in the hierarchy of political importance behind only to the President and Vice President.
Generally, political parties in Zambia are devoid of ideologies or clear policy platforms. They are convenient vehicles to champion the political ambitions of their founders. This scenario is even more pronounced when one considers the fact that intra-party power struggles tend to favour the founder president. Challengers are rarely given space to compete for leadership or power and often the mere expression of intent leads to their expulsion. It is against that background that some parties have been hamstrung to mount credible challenge for power.
The past two decades (2001-2021), for example, has witnessed factionalisation in the main political parties, which has led to their disintegration. For example, the United National Independence Party, the party of Kenneth Kaunda that ruled Zambia from 1964 to 1991, has disappeared from parliament. The Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), which defeated Kaunda and ruled the country until 2011 when it lost power to Michael Sata’s Patriotic Front (PF) party, imploded in 2015 and 2016, and now also has no single MP. After losing power in Zambia’s 2021 election, the PF finds itself factionalised, with one group supported by the government, while the other faction led by former president Edgar Lungu is not recognised and has had difficult to address rallies and field candidates in by-elections. Even if it still has reasonable representation in parliament, the party may not hold together for long and risks withering away like UNIP and MMD before it. Intra-party struggles in Zambia have had important implications for political outcomes such as succession, a subject to which I devote significant attention in the book.
Incumbency is usually a major advantage for African presidents, but in Zambia’s 2021 elections Edgar Lungu lost by a wide margin. How did this happen? What has been the track record of Hakainde Hichilema and UPND since then?
I invite you and readers to read my recent article published in the Journal of Eastern African Studies in which I explain in detail why President Lungu lost the 2021 election to the opposition candidate, Hichilema. While I acknowledge that incumbency is a major advantage for African presidents, it has not always worked. Not in the case of Zambia, which has witnessed three peaceful transfers of power since the end of one-party rule in the early 1990s. There are several context-specific factors that explain why alternation is becoming routine while the power of incumbency is in decline in Zambia. What I did in the journal article I have referred to is to attempt a longitudinal study that takes the previous elections since the transition to multi-party democracy in 1991 as a body in which patterns of incumbency failure can be seen. As a result, I managed to identify five pervasive patterns that seem present in all polls that have resulted in leadership change or turnovers: a struggling economy with a clear blame orientation, a unified opposition, a depoliticised military, a rather impartial electoral commission, and collective memory of incumbent defeat. Of course, the importance of each of these factors varies over time, but collectively they shape election outcomes in decisive ways and make it easier to predict when alternation is likely to occur. Using interviews and newspaper sources, I applied these variables to the 2021 election that resulted in the defeat of President Edgar Lungu and the victory of the opposition candidate. I show that the repeated failure of incumbency advantage in Zambia reflects the institutionalisation of democratic processes, notably embodied in competitive elections, an increasingly independent electoral commission, effective opposition parties that can devise robust campaign strategies, and a military that continues to choose non- intervention whenever an incumbent is defeated. Seen from this perspective, the 2021 transfer of power was not as surprising as it initially seemed.
How has President Hichilema fared since his election? Well, I would say very poorly especially when one assesses the broad policy issues on which he was elected: the promotion of national unity, the resuscitation of the economy expressed to an extent through a significant reduction in cost of living, the restoration of the country’s democracy, the anti-corruption campaign, the development of a professional civil service aided by the appointment of competent professionals to key formal institutions, and the promotion of decentralisation. He has done very well on the last issue, but his promises on the other issues are yet to materialise. If anything, Hichilema is steadily building a coalition of opposition against himself, largely emanating from how he has handled these key issues. For instance, Zambia’s democratic trajectory remains most concerning under Hichilema. To give context, when the country experienced democratic backsliding between 2011 and 2021, the deliberate use of legal mechanisms to weaken opposition parties played a central role. Lawfare has been a constant theme of Zambian politics in the era of multiparty democracy. This use of the law by the executive to achieve partisan goals has historically been aided by structural conditions such as a poorly institutionalised party system and recurrent disregard for the Constitution and other laws by state actors. The defeat of Lungu and his PF in the 2021 election raised prospects for a stronger legal foundation that would address the conditions that enabled the previous government to engage in legal autocracy.
Nearly three years after the election of President Hichilema, the situation has hardly changed. Like his predecessors, Hichilema, faced with the prospects of defeat in the next election scheduled for August 2026 owing to a faltering economy and a country deeply divided on ethnic-regional lines by his actions, has employed lawfare to weaken his political opponents and secure re-election. As I have shown in greater detail elsewhere, the president has devised specific strategies for this latest wave of legal autocratisation using five key institutions: the judiciary, police, parliament, electoral commission and the civil service. As a result of this lack of structural changes to strengthen accountable, democratic governance, Zambia’s democratic institutions remain as susceptible to manipulation by the executive as they were under Lungu. So, despite the euphoria that came with Hichilema’s landslide electoral victory, there is general dissatisfaction with his performance. Whether he improves before the next election remains to be seen.
Check back NEXT WEEK for PART 2 of my interview with Zambian historian Sishuwa Sishuwa.
