August 25, 2026
Introduction and Election Outcome
Zambia held its general elections on 13th August
2026. At presidential level, President Hakainde Hichilema (HH) was seeking his
second term in office and was facing 13 other challengers. Brian Mundubile a
former provincial minister under former President Lungu, was the main
challenger. To be elected president, a candidate needs to garner more than 50
percent of the vote, without which a runoff election is required to be held
within 37 days of the declaration of results.
Following the election, the Electoral Commission
of Zambia on 18th August 2026 declared HH as the winner, having received 60.5
percent of the votes while Mundubile received 37.9 percent. The possibility of
HH winning was largely expected and not surprising. The opposition was
fragmented and had little time to mobilise, and only managed to gain traction
about three months before the election. Opinion polls were also unanimous that
the incumbent was likely to be re-elected.
For example, an opinion poll by the Zambia Election Research Network (ZERN)
and the University of Cape Town’s Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and
Public Policy in Africa (IDCPPA) published in March 2026 indicates that 55
percent of respondents would vote for the president, 32 percent were undecided
and only 13 percent would vote for an opposition candidate.[1]
Concerns about the election
Mundubile disputed the election outcome and held
that the election was rigged, and has subsequently indicated that he may
challenge the election in court. At the time of writing, no petition had been
filed yet. However, the law allows 7 days from the date of declaration of results within which to file the petition.
Since there is no petition already filed, it is yet to be seen the nature of
concerns the opposition would rely on to give fresh to the allegations of
rigging. However, independent analysts have scrutinised the results and found
some anomalies. For example, political scientists, Nic Cheeseman and Nicole
Beardsworth, in an article entitled “Zambia’s election was flawed and may need
to be rerun” published by The African Report on 18th August 2026 raised
concern about 27 (out of 226) constituencies in the country, where the results
for the HH appeared inflated. The article estimates that HH was anomalously
allocated between 350,000 and 500,000 votes in these constituencies.
Considering that the official results show that HH got 1.1 million more votes
than Mundubile, factoring in the discrepancies would not obliterate HH’s
victory. As Cheeseman and Beardsworth have noted, the identified discrepancies do not
demonstrate that Mundubile would have won the election. This, however, does not entail that the
discrepancies should be trivialised. There is need for Electoral Commission of
Zambia (ECZ) to explain to the country what happened and make public key
documents for the people to understand the challenges, in hope of improving the
electoral system.
Should the Election Stand?
Considering concerns about discrepancies in some constituencies, should the election stand? Is there sufficient cause for
the election to be nullified and re-run? What is the Zambian legal standard on
this matter? Before responding, it is important to highlight the finding of the
Christian Churches Monitoring Group (CCMG), the largest and most systematic
election observation group in the 2026 Zambian election. CCMG employed the
process and results verification for transparency (PRVT) popularly known as
parallel vote tabulation (PVT) methodology and deployed 1,500 stationary
observers to a nationally representative sample of polling stations in every
province, district and constituency on election day. On 20th August 2026, CCMG
published its “Independent Assessment of the Accuracy of the Official Results
for the 2026 Presidential Election” containing its findings. CCMG found that HH
received 56 percent of the votes (as opposed to the officially announced 60
percent) while Mundubile got 42 percent (as opposed to the 38 percent
officially announced). Based on this, CCMG concluded that HH got the requisite
more than 50 percent votes, “thus clearing the threshold for a run-off election.”
CCMG, also validated the finding by Cheeseman and Beardworth that votes were
added in 30 constituencies (out of 226) which artificially raised the vote
share for the President from 56 percent to 60 percent.
Given this situation what potentially is the legal
consequence? Considering that there is no perfect election anywhere on earth,
judges in common law jurisdictions have evolved standards for determining when
the anomalies are serious enough to have affected the result to lead to
nullification and a rerun of the election. In the case of Zambia, the standard
followed was elaborated by the Supreme Court in the judgment that followed the
2001 presidential election petition (Mazoka v Mwanawasa). In the case, the
Supreme Court agreed with the petitioners that there were some shortcomings in
the way the election was run. However, the Supreme Court held that it could not
interfere with the
result of the election because, taking into account the national character of
the presidential election “where the whole country formed a single electoral
college,” it could not be said that the proven “defects were such that the
majority of the voters were prevented from electing the candidate whom they
preferred”. According to the Court, the petitioners were supposed to prove that
the flaws “seriously affected the result” to such an extent that it could no
longer be viewed as the true reflection of the majority of the voters. To demonstrate this, the petitioners should
have proved “electoral malpractices and violations of the electoral laws in at
least a majority of the constituencies”.
Given this
jurisprudence and the fact that the discrepancies noted above do not push HH’s
votes to below 50 percent, a nullification of the election may not be legally
tenable. To invalidate the election, it would require a demonstration that the
noted discrepancies affect the outcome in a manner that takes away his majority
lead.
Dr. O’Brien Kaaba is a lecturer in law at the University of Zambia and a senior research fellow at the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research (SAIPAR).
[1] Nicole Beardsworth,
Mundia Kabinga, Jeremy Seekings and Michael Wahman, “Main Findings from the
Zambia Election Research Network Round 1 Survey” IDCPPA Working Paper March 2026, 1