Falls and Elections

First to the Falls: taking advantage of the work slow down due to the Zambian elections, my friend Michele and I decided to go to Livingstone last weekend to see Victoria Falls. I had been there several times before, but always between late June and early August, when the water level is high or medium. This is now the end of the dry season so the falls are amazingly low! The pictures here compare our visit on November 1st to a visit I took with a school group in early July 2007. Two are taken from similar positions near a footbridge, and the other two look over similar points on the falls. Occaisionally the water is so high that people report seeing elephants get washed over, but Michele and I were able to walk out quite a ways on the dry top of the falls!

Now to the elections: In late August the president of Zambia, Levy Mwanawasa, died due to a stroke he suffered in June. After a period of national mourning, heavy campaigning began for someone to complete his term. The two front-runners were Rupiah Banda, the acting president, and Michael Sata, Mwanawasa’s main challenger from the 2006 elections. Banda is a rather “vanilla” character, who hoped to keep going with Mwanwasa’s efforts to reduce corruption and gradually improve life for impoverished Zambians. Sata is a more energetic character, with a reputation for making rash statements that can offend (even if there is some truth in them). His campaign emphasized significant change, not unlike Obama. However, I wondered how realistic the changes he promised were. For example, he promised “no more ZESCO blackouts”, which seem like a rather tall order in a country with regular electricity load shedding, which has been predicted to continue until 2010!

Like in the 2006 elections, Sata had strong support with the urban poor. He won handily in Lusaka, but wasn’t able to hold his lead as the rural votes came in. He had made threats of staging protests if he lost, and assumed that the loss would be due to election rigging. There have been concerns expressed about voting irregularities, but the official non-governmental observers felt that the elections were free and fair.

While many Lusaka locals felt disempowered by the results of their elections, most Zambians I know had followed the US elections very closely and were quite pleased with the outcome. They congratulated me as I was reveling in the victory, and they also have high hopes for what Obama will do for US foreign relations in general, and for Africa in particular. I only worry that people will be disappointed that Obama’s presidency won’t result in fast change. While Banda was inaugurated within hours of the votes being finalized, I have had to explain to many people that Obama won’t take office until January. And when he does he will sure have his hands full!