SANF 06 No 77
Zambian elections on 28 September are on course but for lack of women representation, which is down from five years ago.
Just 103 women are contesting against 606 men for the 150 parliamentary seats available, according to figures from the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ).
This represents 15 percent women representation in the polls. Unless all women candidates are elected, which is unlikely, the proportion will be lower when the final results are announced.
In the 2001 presidential and parliamentary elections, 198 women contested for legislative seats and only 19 women (10 percent) were elected. Another two women were appointed by the president who is allowed by the constitution to appoint eight members of parliament on presidential discretion.
This translated to about 13.67 percent women in the National Assembly.
President Levy Mwanawasa’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) is fielding the largest number of women parliamentary candidates at 21, representing 14 percent of the available seats.
The alliance involving the Patriotic Front (PF) and United Liberal Party has 13 women candidates compared to 137 men.
The United Democratic Alliance (UDA) is fielding 14 women candidates while the Heritage Party (HP) – led by former vice-president, Godfrey Miyanda – has 10 women vying for legislative seats.
The National Democratic Focus (NDF) is fielding seven women. The All People’s Congress Party has three women candidates while the Reform Party has two.
A total of 24 women are contesting as independent candidates.
There are no women presidential candidates in 2006 compared to two in 2001 when a total of 11 political leaders contested for State House.
Four men – PF’s Michael Sata, UDA’s Hikainde Hichilema, Miyanda of HP, and lawyer Ken Ngondo – are contesting against Mwanawasa.
At the local government level, only 387 women are contesting out of 3,708 candidates for council seats.
Women movements are unhappy about the low representation.
The Non-Governmental Coordinating Council (NGOCC) described the level of women representation as “very low and disappointing”. NGOCC is an umbrella body of several gender-based organisations.
Lucy Muyoyeta, chairperson of NGOCC, said the scenario was “disappointing because political parties had indicated that they would demonstrate affirmative action by ensuring that they adopted more than 30 percent women parliamentary candidates.”
A national census conducted in August 2000 showed that out of a population of 10.3 million, 51 percent are women.
The total number of women candidates for council, parliamentary and presidential elections is below the African Union (AU) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) target of 50 percent female representation in political decision-making by 2015.
The low female representation comes against a background of the 1997 SADC Declaration on Gender and Development in which member states committed to progressively increase the number of women in decision-making to 30 percent by 2005.
The 30 percent target was later revised in line with an AU commitment to increase female representation in decision-making positions to 50 percent by 2015.
This year’s SADC summit held in Lesotho endorsed the process of drafting a SADC Gender Protocol and directed the SADC Secretariat to ensure wide consultations with member states.
This will speed up activities towards the consideration of the protocol, which is to be presented to the next summit, to be held in Zambia in 2007.
The protocol is expected to effectively upgrade decisions on equitable representation into binding policy.
The SADC Gender Consultative Conference in December 2005 defined a regional gender implementation plan for five years and outlined a series of activities to be undertaken from 2006 to facilitate the adoption and signing of the SADC Protocol on Gender in 2007.
