The Zambia election held on 13 August has cleared its first major hurdle — a broadly calm polling day with efficient staff and transparent counting, according to the European Union’s observer mission — but the mission’s preliminary verdict on the weeks leading up to it is considerably more pointed. In a detailed preliminary statement delivered in Lusaka, the EU Election Observation Mission said the Zambia election offered voters a genuinely competitive choice, while also concluding that restrictions on campaigning, heavily biased state media coverage and newly enacted cyber laws combined to tilt the playing field in the ruling party’s favour.
Chief Observer Michael McNamara, an Irish member of the European Parliament, put it plainly: election day itself went smoothly, with polling staff efficiently managing voting at the stations the mission observed, but “the broader electoral process took place in an environment that limited fundamental freedoms.” Reinhold Lopatka, who led the accompanying European Parliament delegation and fully endorsed the mission’s findings, added that “despite the lack of equity in the campaign, which led to distrust,” all political leaders should ensure their supporters avoid violence and pursue any disputes through established legal channels.
That call for restraint reflects genuine tension on the ground. President Hakainde Hichilema, seeking a second term after his 2021 victory over Edgar Lungu, took an early and substantial lead as constituency results came in, but stopped short of declaring victory, urging Zambians on social media to “remain peaceful, patient and patriotic as we await the official outcome.” His main challenger, Brian Mundubile of the National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity, running under the Tonse-Pamodzi Alliance banner, claimed victory based on his party’s own parallel vote tabulation and alleged irregularities including missing result forms and military personnel controlling tallying centres in Mufulira — claims that have not been independently verified.
The Electoral Commission of Zambia suspended vote counting for roughly six hours on 14 August, citing violence against polling staff and the theft of marked ballots in some areas, a pause the EU EOM’s statement described as disproportionate given that only a small fraction of the country’s more than 13,500 polling stations were affected.
The EU EOM’s detailed findings trace the roots of this election’s tensions back to the legal groundwork laid before a single vote was cast. Constitutional amendments enacted in December 2025 and finalised as late as 15 May 2026 — barely three months before polling — nearly doubled the size of Zambia’s National Assembly, created 70 new constituencies through a delimitation exercise the mission described as lacking transparency, and introduced a new mixed-member system allocating 40 reserved seats by presidential vote share. Analysts at the Institute for Security Studies have separately noted that the redrawn boundaries disproportionately favoured areas aligned with Hichilema’s ruling United Party for National Development, though they caution that determining whether deliberate gerrymandering occurred requires seat-by-seat analysis rather than aggregate numbers alone.
The EU EOM was more direct on one point: constitutionally mandated laws governing political party financing and campaign finance were never enacted at all, a gap it said undermined transparency and accountability throughout the race.
Media coverage compounded the imbalance the mission documented. Monitoring ten outlets between mid-July and election day, EU EOM observers found that Zambia’s state broadcaster gave the ruling party roughly 96 percent of election-related airtime on television and over 90 percent on radio, with Mundubile receiving a fraction of one percent of TV news coverage and no direct speech time at all during the entire monitoring period. Zambia’s Cyber Security Act and Cyber Crimes Act, both enacted in 2025, added another layer of pressure: the mission linked the laws directly to growing self-censorship among journalists and social media users, citing the July detention of Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation journalist McPherson Mukuka, held for two weeks under the Cyber Crimes Act.
Civil society monitors have documented a broader pattern of similar cases stretching back to January, when opposition MP Miles Sampa was arrested and charged under the same legislation over social media posts alleging irregularities at a by-election polling station.
For African democracies more broadly, Zambia’s election carries weight beyond its own borders. The country has been held up as one of the continent’s clearer recent examples of peaceful democratic transition, having changed governing party through the ballot box on multiple occasions since multiparty politics returned in 1991 — most recently when Hichilema himself defeated an incumbent in 2021. A close, contested outcome accompanied by credible international concerns about fairness, even alongside a peaceful and well-administered polling day, is precisely the scenario regional bodies like SADC and the African Union watch most closely, both for what it signals about Zambia’s institutional resilience and for the precedent it sets ahead of a string of elections elsewhere on the continent in the coming years.
The mission noted that AU and SADC observer missions were present alongside the EU’s, and that all sides publicly called for restraint as tallying continued — a rare moment of alignment between government, opposition and international observers on at least one point, even as they diverge sharply on the fairness of the process that produced the count. Afrikeye’s Politics desk will continue tracking how the final tabulation and any post-election petitions unfold.
What happens next matters more than what has already happened. The EU EOM’s statement is explicitly preliminary: tabulation of results and the adjudication of any petitions remain unfinished, and the mission has committed to publishing a full final report, with detailed recommendations for electoral reform, within two months of the process concluding. McNamara was direct about what would determine public confidence from here: disaggregated results data, published at the level of individual polling stations, alongside strict adherence to established legal procedures.
Readers following developments across Southern Africa can find related coverage on Afrikeye’s homepage, while those tracking regional mobility and travel advisories tied to political developments can check Afrikeye’s travel desk. Whether Zambia’s electoral institutions deliver that transparency in the coming days — and whether Hichilema’s early lead holds through a full count that both camps are watching closely — will determine whether this election is remembered chiefly for its competitiveness, or for the uneven conditions the EU EOM says shaped it.
