HH Calls For “Peaceful, Free and Fair” Elections in Zimbabwe

Zambia President Hakainde Hichilema has expressed his desire that the people of Zimbabwe participate in free, fair and peaceful elections when the country picks its next president on August 23, 2023.

President Hichilema has urged the people and political parties of Zimbabwe to remain peaceful during and after elections.

As president of a neighbouring nation, Mr. Hichilema told media at State House, Lusaka, that “We would like to indicate how concerned we are that elections in our countries, region, continent and the world must remain peaceful, free and fair.”

Mr. Hichilema stressed the importance of democratic and safe elections to Zimbabwe’s special envoy, who was representing current Zimbabwe president Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Zambia’s president added, “So far, the political environment is peaceful, it’s our expectation that it will remain peaceful during the campaign”.

Mnangagwa drew fierce criticism in June, when half of the presidential candidates were disqualified from the election for failing to pay a $20,000 fee to appear as a candidate – 20 times the fee in Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections. The fee, moreover, was denominated in US Dollars, in a month when the Zimbabwean currency depreciated by more than 50% against the US Dollar. The fee was described by one candidate as “exorbitant”, as well as “discriminatory in nature and violat[ing] the section that speaks to non-discrimination in the eyes of the law”.

In response to the increased fees, a spokesperson for main opposition party Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) insisted that “Democracy should never be for sale”. The CCC, led by pastor and lawyer Nelson Chamisa, who narrowly lost the 2018 election, has accused former spy chief Mnangagwa and his ZANU-PF party of implementing election parameters that are “anti-poor and trying to close citizen representatives out”.

On July 26, human rights watchdog Amnesty International flagged “systematic, brutal crackdowns on human rights, including recent restrictions on political opposition gatherings, the violent suppression of protests and the criminalisation of state critics”. Amnesty’s warnings came two weeks after Mr. Mnangagwa signed into law the ‘Patriotic Bill’, described by critics of the government as “criminalising dissent” by, amongst other clauses, authorising the death penalty for those “wilfully damaging the sovereignty and national interest of Zimbabwe”.

Independent polls are forecasting the election either to favour Chamisa and the CCC or to head to a runoff. The special envoy held closed door talks with Mr. Hichilema after the Zambia president’s address to the media.