For democracy to work in Zambia, it must be taken in context. Frederick Chiluba, second Republican President of the Republic of Zambia, has argued in his book, Democracy: the Challenge of Change, thus:

“The word democracy is indeed confused and so confusing that different countries lack a commonly accepted theoretical or practical understanding. At its simplest democracy has often been defined as rule by the people (from the Greek demos Kratos) yet the so called one party participatory [democracy] incorporated features, which went against this. Ordinary people were disenfranchised, and power and privilege were concentrated in the hands of the ruling party.”

The confusion on the term democracy is brought by the fact that different places or nations have different views of governance. This is even compounded further by the distinctive ideological and historic positions of these nations. In Zambia, the term is confusing because the people entrusted with the mandate to safeguard democracy confuse it. For all good reasons, democracy needs redefinition for Zambia.

Democracy is a human institution. Human institutions, like democracy, are not easily defined. For years, differences have loomed on the correct definition of democracy. The way the term may be defined in Africa, may not be the same as in Europe, Russia or the United States of America. The US definition of democracy, that is, representative government, comes much closer to the original concept as propounded by the Greeks. To the Greeks, the best form of government was not democracy, rather, aristocracy or the rule by the best. Plato suspected the notion of democracy as rule by the people. In The Republic he argues that, in fact, democracy allows people to follow their passions with no definitive order resulting in the tyranny of the majority. And this is supported, historically, by the fact that, even in Greece itself, democracy did not function perfectly. In Athens, the democratic assembly was usually dominated by a single powerful, charismatic individual. This individual often dominated the assembly because of his presence or oratorical skills rather than his individual worth.

Dr. Chiluba is perfectly correct when he suggests that democracy in Zambia needs redefinition. In the context of the original concept, that is, democracy as the rule by the people, the Greek democracies were not representative governments, they were governments run by the free, male citizens of the city-state or the polis. Government made legislative and other decisions on a referendum basis. Slaves, foreigners, and women were all disbarred from the democratic process. But the Greeks were ardent experimenters; they tried every kind of government. They tried monarchy (rule by kings or queens), oligarchy (rule by the few), timocracy (rule by the wealthy), aristocracy (rule by the best), tyranny (rule by a tyrant), and also democracy (rule by the people or demos.) It makes perfect sense to assume that when the Greeks mentioned democracy, people meant the elites, nobilities, the wealthy and slave-owners. The people did not refer to the common majority in the community.

Redefining democracy in Zambia ought to happen at two fronts. At the first front, Zambian democracy should be distinguished from the Greek’s and Europeans’ concepts of democracy. In Zambia the concept of people emanates from Abantu or humans, all humans irrespective of colour, age, gender, class, orientation or background. In Zambia, democracy should not be the rule by the elites or the wealthy on behalf of the majority. The kind of democracy that prevailed in Europe has very limited use in Zambia either. Democracy is rule by the people - the people, meaning by all of the people equally, not by some people disproportionally - and requires that the people create law, or at least that they choose a few people to create law for them. Before the Magna Carta of England in 1215 AD, kings rather than parliament made laws. The king could tax the people without parliament’s permission until the Petition of Rights was enacted in 1628. The English-style democracy, though, did not empower the people, per say, to be considered truly democratic.

The concept of democracy continued to be prevalent in Europe with the philosophies of John Locke, an Englishman, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher. Locke’s book, Two Treatises which was published in 1690, stated that under what Locke called the "social contract," the government's job was to protect "natural rights", which included "the right to life, liberty, and the ownership of property." Rousseau expanded on this idea with his book, The Social Contract, in 1762. But even here the people still referred to the privileged few, and slaves and women were excluded from the democratic process.

At the second front, Zambian democracy should be distinguished from the one-party participatory democracy of the Second Republic. Chiluba’s argument for a redefinition of democracy in Zambia is based on a pre-victory deportment. Before the MMD came to power in 1991 a one party, so-called participatory democracy under Kenneth Kaunda’s United Nation’s Independence Party (UNIP), dominated politics in Zambia. UNIP and Dr. Kaunda had ruled Zambia for over 27 years and all the time claiming Zambia was a democracy. Yet under such a system, as Chiluba has observed, “The government became almost totally subservient to the party. Parliament was said to exist as a conveyor belt merely to legislate, and not to question or deliberate the decisions made by the party’s national council and central committee.” Consequently, the people lost the freedom to participate.

The Zambian people gave MMD and Chiluba power to rule them. The dominant phrase then was ‘multiparty democracy.’ Later after nine years of MMD rule the people of Zambia had become disgruntled again. Many were disappointed claiming multipartism as it applied to Zambia was another form of “uninstitutionised” one party system.
During the tripartite elections in Zambia on December 27, 2001, eleven political candidates stood for the position of republican president. Again, looking at it from a bird’s eye view, it looked like fantastic democratic development for Zambia. Yet, critical analysis will show that it was actually MMD split and standing for repositioning. Two thirds of the eleven political parties standing were off-shoots of the MMD and of UNIP. Thus the question of the redefinition of democracy in Zambia does arise. The so-called democrats of Zambia have confused the term, many times suiting it to their own agendas.

Tidjane Thiam has observed thus: “Too many African governments pay only lip service to democracy, which is often limited to simply holding regular elections (the main yardstick used by the outside world to assess progress in Africa).” Nothing could be far from this truth. Most African governments have used the term democracy amiss, usually in their quest to woo donor support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank. Democracy literary defined and applied anywhere including Zambia, works!

If the people entrusted with governing in Zambia adhere to the inherent nature of the Zambian social character, democracy can work with relatively few problems. I believe this is true for two reasons. In the first place, Zambia is by nature democratic. Long ago, even before the emergency of modernism, Zambians gathered at the insaakas to moot on issues of common interest. Elders in the village never reached conclusions in their homes but only at the insaaka. It was important then to only arrive at decisions after a comprehensive debate on issues. Thus democracy was applied although not yet defined.

Experience, finally, has proven that only democracy is workable in Zambia. Nations where coups-d’états have taken place cannot boast of stable governments. The concept of military takeovers in Africa is not only foreign but has been mostly perpetrated by outsiders who find fertile areas for the supply of weapons and arsenal experimentation. Good examples in recent years have been Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan where thousands of innocent people have been needlessly killed.

In order to establish a properly functioning democracy in Zambia, a new look Zambian leadership should emerge. A leadership weaned from the legacy of slavery and colonial mentality. These leaders must communicate effectively, research extensively and work very hard.

In Zambia, we cannot see economic development without the freedoms of information and speech. A girl in the village must be told that someone is denying her primary education because scarce public resources are being spent on university education in the cities, for example. Such information has the potential to awaken countless voiceless children with no access to education.

The other thing, which this new and liberalized Zambian leadership must do, is to adopt and implement comprehensive strategies for poverty alleviation with explicit targets for access to health, education, safe water, roads, energy and telecommunications. Education helps to enlarge the definition of human rights even beyond villages or tribal groupings. Education will enable young Zambians to be aware of their environment and beyond. Only when Zambians are thoroughly educated will they be able to refuse certain ideas and concepts. Zambians will then learn to understand that they are equal with everybody else and are entitled to a good life, good health, good environment, and good education, and to a decent burial!

Although democracy was born in Europe it did not crow, walk or run there. Democracy found its wings to fly with in the New World. The American Revolution is an important event in the history of democracy. America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776 was the first step in America’s pursuit of democracy. In this great document, written by Thomas Jefferson, many ideas are taken from Locke and Rousseau.

From Locke, Jefferson borrowed the idea that all men are created equal, and he altered the right to life, liberty and property to "the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Perhaps no better defense of democracy exists than Thomas Jefferson's. It was his belief that majority rule is not perfect, but it is the best form of government. To Jefferson, all alternatives to democracy were worse. Minority governments are bad; but rule by one person is worse. Requiring unanimous consent to pass laws is not practical, since universal agreement on an issue is extremely rare, and government would become paralyzed on controversial issues. Many conservatives and libertarians try to get around this by advocating constitutionalism or the protection of every individual's rights by a constitution.

This led to the birth of constitutional democracy, in which the constitution became the highest law of the land. Constitutional democracy demands that government is vested in three branches, namely the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.

Abraham Lincoln’s notion of democracy is what I find very material and relevant to Zambia. Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people…” (Emphasis added). The people of Lincoln and the people of ancient Greece and Europe in the Middle-Ages are different. Lincoln (1809-1865) propounded a democratic philosophy that is pure, unadulterated and respectful of all humanity, embroidering the fabrics of Ubuntu so perfectly well with the rhythms of sound humanness. To demonstrate that his people included all peoples, on January 1, 1863, he gave the Emancipation Proclamation that declared free all slaves within the Confederacy. The 15th Amendment, article 1 of the United States Constitution states: "The right... to vote shall not be denied or abridged... on account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude." (The "previous condition of servitude" meant that states couldn't deny the right to vote to those who had been slaves).

This is the kind of democracy that is necessary to Zambia, a democracy where people mean us, everybody, and not just a few. This is the democracy that is of the people, by the people, for the people. It is not a kind where the people means them, as in the royal we (for when royalty says we, it means them or they!) A true democratic government is the rule by the best and the most qualified; elected by the people, to rule on behalf of the people, for the people’s well-being!