Media have traditionally relied on a mix of advertising and subscription revenue to keep the lights on – and to produce a mix of high-quality, thoughtful, well researched, compelling news, information, educational, and other content that is necessary in a modern democracy. The internet has disrupted those revenue streams. And while some media outlets have shored themselves up on other sources of support – grants, government transfers and licensing fees, wealthy patrons, or the like – such funding is both the exception and de minimis in the overall operation of our media ecosystem.

Trust in media institutions has declined more or less apace with trust in every other kind of major institution in public life. Or perhaps it is more correct, as Ashutosh Bhagwat observes in his contribution to this project, to say that trust has declined in the types of media institutions, the proverbial Walter Cronkites, that dominated “the media” during the twentieth-century period when modern American ideals around free speech and journalistic value were still taking form.

BETWEEN 2001 and 2011, the governing Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), under the party and national presidencies of Levy Mwanawasa (2002–2008) and Rupiah Banda (2009–2011), and the opposition Patriotic Front (PF) led by Michael Sata dominated Zambian politics. Mwanawasa was sworn in as president on 2 January 2002 after a narrow win against Anderson Mazoka of the opposition United Party for National Development (UPND). He polled 28.69 per cent of the total vote, defeating Mazoka, who obtained 27.76 per cent, and nine other presidential candidates, including Sata who gained only 3 per cent. Of the total 150 seats in parliament, the MMD won 69, followed by the UPND (49), United National Independence Party (UNIP) (13), Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) (12), and Heritage Party (HP) (4). Like Ben Mwila's Zambia Republican Party (ZRP), Sata's PF obtained only one seat. This tally is striking since, five years later in the 2006 general elections, Sata only lost to Mwanawasa, who polled 42.98 per cent, by a 13.61 per cent margin. The PF captured forty-three seats in parliament and rose to become the largest parliamentary opposition, dislodging the UPND.

After President Mwanawasa died in office, a presidential by-election was held in October 2008, and despite having insufficient time and financial resources to mount a credible and effective campaign, Sata lost narrowly by 2 per cent to the MMD candidate, Banda, who gained 40 per cent of the total vote. In September 2011, during the country's general and presidential elections, Sata, making a fourth try for the presidency, secured the seat with 42.24 per cent of the total ballot, defeating the incumbent Banda, who got 35.63 per cent. In this election, Sata's PF did strikingly well, winning sixty seats in parliament, the most of any rival political party. Although parties do tend to be younger in Africa than in many other parts of the world, the PF's rise from 3 to 42 per cent of the popular vote over a ten-year-period is unusual. It is this remarkable rise of an opposition party and a leader's efforts to build it that I explore in this and the next chapter. The present chapter examines Sata's rise from 2001 to 2006. The subsequent period, 2006 to 2011, is covered in the following chapter.

THE PRE-EMINENT political force in Zambian society from independence in 1964 to 1991 was the United National Independence Party (UNIP) led by its founder, President Kenneth Kaunda. UNIP's dominance of national politics was first highlighted in two competitive multi-party elections: one at the close of the colonial period in January 1964 when the party won an outright majority, and the other in 1968 when it increased its support across the country. UNIP consolidated its political hegemony in December 1972 when Kaunda declared Zambia a one-party state. This declaration ushered in a second and longer phase of UNIP's formal grip on power that ended only in 1991 when a popular uprising, spearheaded by a newly formed opposition party named the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), saw the reintroduction of multi-party politics and the subsequent defeat of Kaunda and his nationalist movement.

It should not be assumed that the one-party state was monolithic. General elections, which were competitive especially at parliamentary level, were held in 1973, 1978, 1983, and 1988. The first two of these have been the subject of detailed research by scholars of Zambian political history. The latter two, in contrast, have not, and are important because they took place after UNIP removed the unpopular restriction that had previously limited the number of candidates who could run for election to the National Assembly to three per constituency. In instances where there were more than three prospective candidates in a constituency, primary elections were held to determine the finalists. Although prospective candidates still had to apply to the party's Central Committee for adoption, the abolition of the primary elections paved the way for greater voter choice and more open electoral contests. Studying electoral contests in this greatly altered political environment can yield significant insights into our understanding of the workings of one-party participatory democracy.

Moreover, the 1983 and 1988 elections are of particular interest to this chapter because they occurred after Sata, who went on to become one of the key political actors in the one-party state until its demise, made his formal entry into Zambian mainstream politics in 1981. He ran for parliamentary office in both elections, defeating nine other contestants including an incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) in the first election before being re-elected five years later.

THE PERIOD between 1953 and 1964, generally described by researchers working on Zambia as the late-colonial era, was dominated by the rapid expansion of the colonial state and the push for better wages on the industrial Copperbelt. It also witnessed the intensification of the drive towards independence, led initially by the African National Congress (ANC) and later by the United National Independence Party (UNIP). This phase of Zambian history is important because it coincides with Michael Sata's migration from Northern Province to the Copperbelt, where he began work as a constable in the colonial police – a role that put him in direct conflict with African nationalists – before joining the trade union movement on the eve of independence in 1964.

In trekking to the Copperbelt, Sata followed well-trodden labour migration routes that had been established in the 1920s. By the 1950s, thousands of Africans had travelled between Northern Province and the Copperbelt and back again. Thus, at this time, Sata was one body in a great human tide. As well as being the economic powerhouse of the country, the Copperbelt also represented a training ground for political education for many Africans. A variety of prominent figures who were actively involved in the labour movement during the terminal stages of colonial rule subsequently took up leading political roles in the post-independence era. Despite the striking continuities between these eras, including the individual actors whose careers cut across these divides, few studies on Zambian history bridge the late-colonial and post-colonial periods. Most historical works take 1964 as either the end point or the start point. This may be due to researchers seeing the date of Zambia's achievement of formal independence as a historical demarcation that needs no additional justification. By drawing such a divide, however, they miss the connections in the subjects and interactions of relationships that cut across the transition, and the result is the production of a chopped-up national history that fails to capture narratives of continuity, such as how late-colonial influences manifest in the politics of the post-colonial period.

A FEW weeks before Zambia's 2001 election, the then 65-year-old Sata rejected growing calls for him to leave active politics to younger people. Featuring on Radio Phoenix's Let the People Talk, a popular weekly programme that enjoys nationwide listenership, the leader of the recently formed opposition PF party insisted that he would do so only ‘after serving as Republican president in State House. I am exiting politics from State House.’ His inauguration as President of Zambia a decade later, on 23 September 2011, represented the fulfilment of that ambition, one that started almost half a century earlier. Sata's strategy for gaining power, and the specific pledges he made to win votes, offer some criteria that can be used to assess not just how he attempted to deliver on his campaign promises but also the relationship between populism and political change in Zambian history.

Sata's Achievements and Legacy

It is a hard task to assess the legacy of Sata since he died in office on 28 October 2014, barely three years after his inauguration. In a sense, Sata's long road to the presidency involved almost his entire life. By the time he became president, he was an old man and, for much of his presidency, he was seriously unwell. His untimely demise prevents a definitive judgement about whether he would ever have fulfilled his many pre-election promises, but there are strong indications he would not have done so. For instance, once in office, Sata reversed his stance on the constitution, arguing that ‘Zambia does not need a new constitution but only amendments to its existing one’. He also reversed his position on decentralisation. Having campaigned on a promise to use the Barotseland Agreement as a template for devolution, President Sata argued that implementing the Agreement would lead to the break-up of Zambia. These U-turns suggest that he never had a genuine commitment to honour his promises and that he adopted the ideas merely to win votes. Having spent much time in the opposition criticising the poor working conditions in Chinese-owned enterprises, Sata in power became an ardent supporter of Chinese businesses in Zambia.

ON 23 September 2011, Michael Sata, leader of the opposition Patriotic Front (PF) party, was inaugurated as the fifth elected President of Zambia since independence from Britain in 1964. This followed his victory against incumbent Rupiah Banda of the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). After a decade in opposition, and at the fourth attempt, Sata, 74, overcame strong competition from Banda, 75, and nine other opposition presidential contenders. He obtained 42 per cent of the vote, ahead of the sitting president, who polled 35.6 per cent. In the early hours of the same day, soon after being declared winner, Sata addressed the media: ‘How do I receive this victory? Well, this is the beginning of a long journey.’ In fact, it was the exact opposite. At the formation of the PF ten years earlier, Sata had indicated a single-minded focus on becoming President of Zambia, a focus that could be traced back to his days in the grassroots structures of the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in the early 1960s. ‘I am coming from grassroots politics to rule’, he said in October 2001. ‘I will retire from politics after being President [of Zambia] in State House.’ In this sense, his generally unexpected victory in the 2011 election was not the beginning of a long journey, but the end of one.

This book explores that historical journey, which began before the achievement of independence and therefore cuts across many supposed divides in Zambian political history, such as the colonial, post-colonial, one-party state, and multi-party eras. In this way, the book addresses a major gap in contemporary academic accounts of Zambian history, which tends to get segmented into different periods and to downplay the importance of individual leaders in the broader processes of political change. It demonstrates that the successful process of political mobilisation and the history of individual leadership that led Sata to victory in the 2011 election had deep roots. The leadership that he provided, the grievances that he articulated and played on, the policy appeals around which he rallied support and the language with which he expressed those appeals, the constituencies he targ1eted and mobilised, and the nature and style of his political strategy, all had their origins in much earlier phases of Zambian history, starting from the late-colonial period.

HALFWAY INTO the official count of the 2006 election results, with most votes from Lusaka, Copperbelt, and the Bemba-speaking Luapula and Northern provinces already tallied, Sata declared himself winner of the presidential election. Notwithstanding that results from the remaining five provinces were yet to be counted, the opposition Patriotic Front (PF) leader went on to announce that ‘I have won the presidential race by 55 per cent followed by President [Levy] Mwanawasa at 25 per cent’. So confident of victory was Sata that he moved to instruct the Cabinet Office to shift his inauguration from the Supreme Court grounds, the traditional venue, to the 30,000-seater Independence Stadium in order to allow the maximum number of his supporters to attend the ceremony. He then went on to direct that Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe should be invited to the inauguration ceremony as the guest of honour.

Sata's actions elicited strong criticism from the ruling party, whose campaign chief, Vernon Mwaanga, described them as ‘premature’. Mwaanga argued that Sata's strongholds ‘do not represent the total results of the elections for the whole country’. As shown in the previous chapter, the results from the Electoral Commission of Zambia, which saw Mwanawasa of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) the declared winner, demonstrated how hasty Sata's declaration was. Mwaanga's rebuke of Sata also highlighted the PF leader's limited understanding of the Zambian political landscape. In effect, the MMD campaign chairperson was making the point that, to secure the national presidency, a candidate needed to win their main electoral constituencies comfortably and perform well in the strongholds of their opponents. This was a consideration that Sata's campaign strategy had overlooked until then.

This chapter, building on the preceding one, explores the strategies of electoral mobilisation that Sata employed between 2006 and 2011 to establish a national constituency as a response to his electoral defeat. It demonstrates that during this period, Sata managed to achieve his objective by targeting and appealing to non-Bemba ethnic groups through specific policy messages, such as decentralisation, which found an echo in several constituencies of the Lozi-speaking Western Province.