Zambia After the Ballot

Tuesday, 8 September 2026

12 pm, Washington D.C.
5pm London / Dakar / Lagos
6pm Lusaka / Paris / Harare
7pm Kampala/Nairobi

Zambia’s 13 August 2026 elections have left the country facing serious questions about the integrity of its democratic process. President Hakainde Hichilema was re-elected with a comfortable official majority, but the election was marred by procedural failures, restrictions on opposition activity and compelling evidence of vote inflation. Because presidential results were also used to allocate proportional-representation seats, this appears to have changed the distribution of seats in parliament.

These concerns have been compounded by what has happened since the election. Opposition leaders have faced arrest and treason charges - often used by authoritarian regimes to sideline political rivals - for which substantive supporting evidence has yet to be publicly provided, while neither the Electoral Commission nor the government has offered a convincing explanation for the irregularities identified.

The key question is therefore whether flawed elections should be given a pass simply because abuses may not have changed who became president - especially when they did affect the legislative result. This matters for Zambia's democratic future and for the region more generally: the undermining of elections across Africa has damaged public confidence in democracy and contributed to growing support for military rule.

In this new episode of the Resistance Bureau, we bring together activists, journalists, election observers and political analysts to consider what Zambia’s election tells us about the country’s democratic trajectory and the struggles to come.

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