{"id":241625,"date":"2026-08-20T20:15:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T18:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/zambias-messy-election-allafrica-com\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T20:15:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T18:15:26","slug":"zambias-messy-election-allafrica-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/zambias-messy-election-allafrica-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Zambia&#8217;s Messy Election &#8211; allAfrica.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"8\"><em>What to make of Zambia&#8217;s 2026 general elections?<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"100\">Zambia&#8217;s 2026 general elections are unlikely to leave many citizens feeling particularly confident in their democracy. That&#8217;s a shame, because in 2021, the commitment of Zambian citizens served as a bright spot in dark times for democracy advocates around the world. With grassroots organizing and impressive youth mobilization, Zambians pushed back on increasing authoritarianism to demand political change in the form of a victory for Hakainde&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202608190631.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>What to make of Zambia&#8217;s 2026 general elections? Zambia&#8217;s 2026 general elections are unlikely to leave many citizens feeling particularly confident in their democracy. That&#8217;s a shame, because in 2021, the commitment of Zambian citizens served as a bright spot in dark times for democracy advocates around the world. With grassroots organizing and impressive youth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":241626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00671421:c73f630e6e564be669cd6a070bba1d5d:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[825],"tags":[258,256,42655,3119,19771,257,254,881,8982],"class_list":["post-241625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zambia","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-allafrica-com","tag-election","tag-messy","tag-news","tag-south-africa-today","tag-zambia-news","tag-zambias"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00671421:c73f630e6e564be669cd6a070bba1d5d:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241625","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=241625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}