{"id":240925,"date":"2026-08-12T07:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T05:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/zambia-vote-to-test-hichilemas-economic-record\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T07:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T05:59:10","slug":"zambia-vote-to-test-hichilemas-economic-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/zambia-vote-to-test-hichilemas-economic-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Zambia Vote to Test Hichilema&#8217;s Economic Record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"32\"><em>Zambians vote Thursday in a closely watched presidential election that will test whether recent economic gains can offset frustration over the high cost of living in one of Africa&#8217;s most stable democracies.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"32\">Incumbent Hakainde Hichilema faces Brian Mundubile, a former ally of late president Edgar Lungu, who surged to the front of a fragmented opposition after being backed by a coalition of rival parties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"32\">Up to 8.7 million voters &#8211; a majority of them women &#8211; will decide whether Hichilema&#8217;s economic&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202608110117.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Zambia\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/zambia\/\">Zambia<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zambians vote Thursday in a closely watched presidential election that will test whether recent economic gains can offset frustration over the high cost of living in one of Africa&#8217;s most stable democracies. Incumbent Hakainde Hichilema faces Brian Mundubile, a former ally of late president Edgar Lungu, who surged to the front of a fragmented opposition [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[825],"tags":[258,256,3576,7379,257,5267,254,6596,8588,4709,881],"class_list":["post-240925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zambia","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-economic","tag-hichilemas","tag-news","tag-record","tag-south-africa-today","tag-test","tag-vote","tag-zambia","tag-zambia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}