Michael Sata: Portrait of a Populist

Reginald Ntomba

Description

Sata was a giant figure in Zambia's political landscape for over thirty years. Reginald Ntomba argues that 'how Sata became president is as thought-provoking a story as what he did with the power he had spent decades fighting for'. He explores the political journey of Michael Sata from councillor to president of Zambia, relating Sata's policies and approaches to theories of populism. In opposition Sata promised the electorate more money in their pockets. In power he tried to improve the lives of the poor and underprivileged, and to develop the country through huge infrastructure projects. But he incurred massive debts, ran a chaotic government and refused others in politics the freedoms he had enjoyed. His term in office was cut short by sickness and finally his death. 

Chapter 1: The Age of Populism

Chapter 2: Arrival of The Conqueror

Chapter 3: Called, But Not Chosen

Chapter 4: Plotting from Bauleni

Chapter 5: Another Time, Another Beginning

Chapter 6: From Conductor to Driver

Chapter 7: Gunning for the Top

Chapter 8: The Man and his Act 

Chapter 9: A Time to Govern

Chapter 10: Lunatics and Street Economists

Chapter 11: On Foreign Turf

Chapter 12: Sweeping Zambia Clean

Chapter 13: Shredding Our Democracy

Chapter 14: Ubulwele bwa Mfumu

Chapter 15: A Place in History

Sujets

• World
• Michael Sata
• Politics of Zambia
• African people
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• African

Informations

• Publié par: Gadsden Publishers
• Date de parution: 17 décembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9789982241298
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 17 Mo

Extrait

Michael Sata
Portrait of a Populist
REGINALD NTOMBAGadsden Publishers
P.O. Box 32581, Lusaka, Zambia
Copyright © Reginald Ntomba, 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrievable system or transmitted in any form by any means without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Cover photograph: Mackson Wasamunu
ISBN 978-9982-24-124-3
iiTABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface ............................................................................................ iv
Chapter 1: The Age of Populism .................................................... 1
Chapter 2: Arrival of The Conqueror ............................................. 7
Chapter 3: Called, But Not Chosen .............................................. 13
Chapter 4: Plotting from Bauleni ................................................. 33
Chapter 5: Another Time, Another Beginning ............................. 57
Chapter 6: From Conductor to Driver .......................................... 69
Chapter 7: Gunning for the Top ................................................... 79
Chapter 8: The Man and his Act 93
Chapter 9: A Time to Govern ..................................................... 101
Chapter 10: Lunatics and Street Economists.............................. 113
Chapter 11: On Foreign Turf ...................................................... 137
Chapter 12: Sweeping Zambia Clean ......................................... 145
Chapter 13: Shredding Our Democracy ..................................... 153
Chapter 14: Ubulwele bwa Mfumu ............................................ 163
Chapter 15: A Place in History ................................................... 171
Acknowledgements .................................................................... 174
Appendix 1 .................................................................................. 175
Appendix 2 192
iiiPreface
Of the six presidents Zambia had had at the time of writing, only
Michael Sata set out to become one. The rest were simply happy
accidents — men who got lucky and were dealt a good hand by Fate.
Kenneth Kaunda was the so-called compromise candidate among
the freedom fghters. With Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula abandoned
for being too liberal, not militant enough and fraternising with the
enemy — and with the rest of the freedom fghters deferring to
Kaunda — the slot was his for the taking.
Frederick Chiluba found himself at the right place at the right
time. From his trade union base, he had been a consistent critic
of UNIP, but his becoming president may have had nothing to do
with a long-held ambition. It seems not even being Simon Mwansa
Kapwepwe’s apprentice in the 1970s gave him the courage to take
the deep plunge into politics until a pro-democracy movement in
1990 created agitation that he later exploited, using his trade union
popularity. How he belatedly arrived at Garden House Hotel (despite
having been contacted much earlier to join the organisers), sat in the
carpark, and outfoxed the convenors at a later convention is a story
that has been well documented elsewhere by others, including Mbita
Chitala, the co-convenor of the historical meeting.
After unsuccessfully challenging Chiluba for the party leadership
in December 1995, Levy Mwanawasa retreated to his chambers.
Chiluba roped in his former vice president after Zambians ferociously
opposed his third term ambitions. Had Chiluba gotten his way, there
would have been no Mwanawasa presidency.
Mwanawasa’s need to win the Eastern Province is what brought
a retired Rupiah Banda into the equation. Being appointed vice
president was his reward for helping swing the Eastern block to
MMD in the 2006 general election. As fate would have it, Banda
held the instruments of power at Mwanawasa’s death. Using the
power of incumbency, he won the intra-party battle and triumphed at
the national election by a razor-thin margin.
ivMichael Sata’s successor, Edgar Lungu, was another lucky
fellow. Using the often highly contested claim that he was Sata’s
anointed one, his supporters coalesced into a group that appeared
more concerned than others with the rescue of Sata’s political estate.
Lungu was thrust to the top by a militant brigade that used very
unconventional means to fght of plans to install anyone else. How
Lungu became president is a story in great need of objective analysis.
Sata did not emerge from the unknown to become president.
From the day he entered the lowest stratum of politics, he was a man
on a mission. Gracing the political scene for three decades, his was
not a meteoric rise, but a journey shaped by determination, setbacks,
opportunism, miscalculations and brutality brewed and perfected in
the school of hard knocks. He was a thoroughly baked graduate of
cut throat and hardball politics.
How Sata became president is as thought-provoking a story as
what he did with the power he had spent decades fghting for. He
was largely untameable, given to impulses, grufness, vulgarity, and
rash decisions that arose from his massive ego. The confation of the
personal and the organisational was a direct result of his character.
What such an individual would do with the enormous state power
that African presidents enjoy was something Zambians did not have
to imagine any more but witnessed daily for the three years he was
at the helm.
Of his thirty years in politics, he spent a third of them fghting
to be president. Having risen from councillor to cabinet minister, he
believed he had just arrived on the banks of Jordan and the promised
land was visible. Failing to succeed Chiluba was only a temporary
setback. He reinvented himself, formed a party and captured the
presidency a decade later. The same power he fought so hard to get
overwhelmed him. He seemed not to have known what to do with
it when he eventually got it. He failed to translate his victory into
efective governance. But it should be borne in mind that Sata’s
achievements were limited by his short stay in power. I think it is
vonly fair that we discuss his presidency in relation to the relatively
short time he spent in ofce.
What follows here is a portrait of a man, pieced together from
extensive archival and library research as well as interviews with
people who knew him: former classmates, friends, relatives, political
colleagues and others who loved and loathed him in equal measure.
I visited his birthplace in Mpika in an efort to gain a deeper
understanding of a man whose political career has been subject
to several interpretations. I have also drawn on what I knew and
witnessed of Michael Sata—the politician, the populist, the president.
All these form the basis of my analysis and the conclusions I
have drawn about him. While I am grateful to the many people I
consulted and interviewed, the interpretations and conclusions are
mine alone.
Reginald Ntomba
Lusaka, Zambia
August 2021
vi1
THE AGE OF POPULISM
Michael Sata, Zambia’s ffth president was one of many populist
thheavyweights: Donald Trump, the 45 president of the United States,
Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, Nigel Farage, leader of
the Brexit Party in Britain, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National
Rally Party in France, Italy’s former deputy prime minister Matteo
Salvini, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, Brazil’s president
Jair Bolsonaro, Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro, Philippine’s
Rodrigo Duterte, Hungary’s Victor Orban, Indonesia’s Joko Widodo
and South Africa’s Julius Malema. All over the world, populists are
reshaping and redefning their political landscapes, rewriting political
narratives and turning the masses against establishment politics.
stWhat the world has witnessed in the second decade of the 21
century is just another wave of populism. From the late 1990s into the
early 2000s, Latin America saw a phenomenal rise of leftist populists
inspired by the Bolivarian Revolution championed by Hugo Chavez
who swept to power in Venezuela at the close of the last century.
A charismatic frebrand who relentlessly bashed the West and used
his country’s deep oil wells to lift millions from poverty, Chavez
became the godfather of the region.
As Trump arrived in Washington to “drain the swamp”, across
the Atlantic, several right-wingers in European capitals were on the
ofensive, using globalisation and migration as their master pitch. In
South Africa, Malema’s threat to go to war in defence of the poor
was growing louder.
Aided by the power of digital media platforms which drive
instant communication, there is no limit to what populists can do to
enlist popular support. Wherever they are found and whatever their
background and motivation, populists have common characteristics.
1Portrait of a Populist
First, to gain prominence, they identify themes, however
provocative, to endear themselves to the masses. Trump picked
on immigrants, despite being married to one. Johnson rode on
the back of the Brexit pandemonium to which he contributed as a
‘Leave’ campaigner. Taking a cue from his mentor Chavez, Maduro
condemns capitalism and blames all his problems on Washington.
Bolsonaro unashamedly supports torture and expresses admiration
for the brutal military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to
1985. Without batting an eyelid, Duterte champions the extrajudicial
killing of drug trafckers by fring squads. Malema bashes “white
monopoly capital” and promises to nationalise private enterprise.
Second, playing the ‘pro-poor’ card, populists invariably brand
the ruling class as being out of touch with ‘real people’— which is
not always untrue. Depending on the shade of populism they adopt,
they almost always stand in defence of the poor, a constituency they
know is likely to listen. If they came from a poor family themselves,
the more efective their message to the underprivileged. In Brazil,
Lula used his backg