Book Review By Neo Simutanyi

Published by James Currey, one of the top global presses in African Studies, Sishuwa Sishuwa’s book Party Politics and Populism in Zambia: Michael Sata and Political Change, 1955 – 2014 is an honest, but critical portrayal of one of the significant political figures of Zambian politics in the last 50 years. Few political leaders have been able to break away from a ruling party, form their own and within ten years win power. How did Michael Sata achieve this feat?

Sishuwa acknowledges the fact already advanced by other scholars that Sata utilized a combination of populist mobilization in urban areas and ethno-regional appeals to his ethnic Bemba-speakers from Luapula and Northern Provinces to build a power base. But most importantly, Sata cast himself as a Bemba, when he was Bisa, as it was the only way he could tap into the support of a politically dominant language group in Zambia.

The book uses political biography to study Michael Sata’s political career spanning almost 60 years. Sishuwa makes a passionate plea for the adoption of political biography as a methodology of studying individual agency in African politics. The central argument of the book is that populism in Africa emerged during the late-colonial period of the 1950s and early 1960s not in the era of multiparty politics and that Sata’s populist political strategies were learnt during his experience as trade unionist and later as junior political official in the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in the early 1960s. Sishuwa argues that Sata’s experiences as a successful trade union leader, and later as a successful political leader in UNIP, where he rose to the position of District Governor for Lusaka and in the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) where he held the strategic position of National Secretary, were crucial in organizing the Patriotic Front (PF) from a pedestrian political organization that only managed 3% of the votes in 2001 to a serious political opposition five years later with 29% of the vote and 46 MPs.

The book is arranged in five chapters. After a very useful introduction, chapter one deals with Sata’s early life, his education, employment on the Copperbelt as a constable in the colonial police and his trade union activities. Chapter two discusses Sata experience mobilizing urban dwellers in Lusaka, his early political activities in UNIP and how he mobilized various constituencies as member of parliament, district governor and later minister of state. Chapter three discusses how Sata constructed a power base in the MMD. Chapter four traces the succession battles in the MMD, the formation of PF and how Sata sets out to build an alternative power base. Chapter five analyses the strategies Sata employed to win power, having failed to defeat the MMD in 2006. The strategies, which included building a broader coalition, larger than his ethnic Bemba ethnic core and urban provinces of Lusaka and the Copperbelt, may have helped him win power in September 2011. And this is followed by the conclusion.

Sishuwa’s arguments are well supported with detailed empirical evidence. Sata is presented as an ordinary person whose “straight-talking and sheer rudeness to those in authority resonated with the disillusioned that had taken root in urban areas strung by the harshest years of the economic crisis” (p.166). He provides a background to his attitude towards former president Levy Mwanawasa which forced him to resign as Vice-President in 1994. Sata is quoted as saying that: “I don’t believe that Levy [Mwanawasa] resigned in 1994 on account that Chiluba was shielding corruption. The issue is [that] …Levy was very frustrated. Personally, I paid little attention to Levy because he was not my appointing authority and he was no more competent in terms of Government work than I was. So, when he gave me instructions as vice-President, half of the time, I did not implement those instructions. I just looked at them. When I was working in UNIP as Governor, I was appointed by the President. And to me, a Prime Minister – who was an equivalent of Vice-President – was very irrelevant. So my attitude did not start with Levy Mwanawasa.” (p.167).

Sishuwa goes on to show that Sata’s insubordination towards Mwanawasa was not limited to his time in the MMD, but he continued to display the same rudeness even as an opposition leader. For example, while other opposition leaders gave deference to the office of the president, as part of self-imposed decency, Sata was “unsparing, publicly berating the President as a ‘cabbage’, called him a ‘typical liar’, ‘whose brain and mouth do not coordinate,’ and ‘whose intellect and rationality’ is the lowest among all presidents in Africa.” (p.167).

In a typical populist fashion, Sata used public rallies to maximum effect. Sishuwa argues that, “Sata’s considerable charisma was responsible for large crowds at the rallies and his message of lower taxes, more jobs and money in your pockets resonated well with the unemployed, workers and the poor. With a ready wit, he had something to say about everything and anything. Never at a loss for words, his language was colourful, appealing, discursive, and entertaining. He possessed an effortless command of illuminating and hilarious metaphors and projected a sense of boundless energy that would not permit him to be inactive for long.” (p.168).

Sata’s huge rallies was a subject of debate in the national media during his opposition days. There were doubts as to whether the huge attendance did not involve busing supporters to attend the rallies or whether there were inducements offered to them. The author does not interrogate the large attendance at these rallies or how Sata raised campaign funds. The role played by a Bemba-speaking cultural organization, the Kola Foundation, in mobilizing campaign funds for Sata, receives no mention. Other sources of funds allegedly came from foreign sources. One prominent issue was the funding he allegedly received from Taiwan in 2006 against a promise to recognize that country if elected.

While the book focuses on the role of the individual, it also discusses the extent to which formal institutions constrained or shaped individual agency in a relatively non-institutional political environment. The book presents Sata as a successful political strategist and grassroots mobiliser who almost single-handedly transformed the PF into an electoral machine that delivered him to State House, after a decade in opposition. But Sishuwa also tackles themes of party politics from the late colonial, immediate post-colonial, the one-party state and the multiparty era and briefly discusses Sata’s personality and leadership traits. These are extremely revealing.

Quoting the work of Miles Larmer, he correctly observes that the nature of contemporary political parties in Zambia bear a legacy from the late colonial era. Larmer asserts that: “Many nationalist parties existed primarily as electioneering vehicles, rather than as institutions capable of debating and agreeing policies. Leaders were frequently not held to account for the positions they adopted or adapted for particular purposes.” (p.7). In discussing Sata’s personality, Sishuwa argues that Sata was “manipulative, opportunistic and had violent traits” (p.164). He also acknowledges that he was kind of dictatorial, which he may have acquired from his brief stint in the colonial police and in the positions he held in the one-party state. The point that really needed greater discussion is the impact Sata had on the PF. The author leaves this open-ended by not discussing the rebellion he received from some of his members and officials on account of his allegedly dictatorial tendencies. For example, one of his MPs, Saviour Chishimba, resigned in 2008 as he could not stand Sata’s authoritarian tendencies in running the PF.

Indeed, though Sishuwa relegates discussions of institutions as having less explanatory power in the rise to power of populist leaders, he acknowledges that political parties in Zambia are weak and poorly institutionalized. However, he does not discuss the PF itself in terms of its organizational capacities. There is no doubt that the PF was Sata’s electioneering machine formed and designed to deliver the votes for him to become president. Sishuwa concludes that: “It is inconceivable to think of the PF mobilizing voters and emerging as a credible political force without the personality and populist strategy of Sata.” (p.196). In other words, the mobilization strategies of opposition parties and the nature of political campaigning are related to individual political leadership. But this conclusion does not discount the importance of the institutionalist argument, as the individual political leader impacts the behaviour of the institution in this case, the PF. Sata and the PF were inseparable variables, as Kenneth Kaunda was to UNIP during the one-party era.

Sata actually admired the one-party state and while in power tried to replicate some of the practices of the one-party state machine. For example, he declared that the PF was supreme to all state organs and the PF secretary general was number three in the hierarchy of importance. The PF constitution bears resemblance to that of UNIP. It gives unfettered power to the party president, who appoints the central committee and little or no internal democracy exists. On Sata’s death, the PF was plunged into untold chaos and the leadership succession that followed clearly showed that Sata was the PF, without him the centre could no longer hold.

The book makes two important contributions to our understanding of party politics and elections in Africa. First, a political party needs a power base and political mobilization should be targeted to key constituencies or power bases of national leaders based on innovative strategies of relevant campaign messages that relate to their felt needs. Second, identification with one’s ethno-regional group and mobilizing such groups should not be stigmatized, but should be accepted as a normal way of building support bases. It therefore, distances itself from the scholarship that characterize political parties as tribal or ethnic-based, because they draw a disproportionate share of their electoral support from the ethno-regional bases of their leaders. But to win power, leaders should go further, by ensuring that they build broader coalitions with other ethno-regional groups as Sata realized in his 2011 campaign. The success of the current ruling party, the United Party for National Development (UPND), in the 2021 elections, therefore supports Sishuwa’s conclusion, as the party maintained a solid power base throughout its 23 years in opposition.

The book is written in a readable form and can appeal to both specialist and general readers. As well as establishing the author as one of the leading authorities on Zambian politics, it covers considerable material on Zambian political history, political parties, party politics, succession and elections covering the period from late colonial to the present time. It could be an important primer for budding politicians who want to learn something about political mobilization and individual agency. The book should be essential reading for students of African history, political science and political sociology at universities. It is also highly recommended to anyone who wants to learn about Zambian party politics since the late colonial period.

Sishuwa Sishuwa, Party Politics and Populism in Zambia: Michael Sata, 1955 – 2014, Oxford: James Currey, 2024. 227 pages. £70 hardback.