Democracy and Governance Success Stories
 Constituency Offices Bring Power of Government Back to the People
USAID/Zambia’s Democracy and Governance program tackles its objective,
“Government is Held More Accountable” from three tracks: legal
reforms to prevent corruption in the public sector; civil society demand
for accountable government; and parliamentary reforms to strengthen its
role as watchdog and representative of the people..
Edith Moono is one of the 83,352 constituents in the rural Dundumwenzi
region of Zambia’s Southern Province. Like most people in Dundumwenzi,
Moono used to know little about Zambian Parliament.
“I just though Parliament did work for people in Lusaka since Parliament
meets in Lusaka,” Moono says.
Knowledge of Parliament is increasing in Dundumwenzi, thanks to the local
constituency office, created by Pact Zambia’s Parliamentary Reform
Project (PRP). PRP stage II is a joint effort of the Zambian National
Assembly, USAID/Zambia and four other donors. The National Assembly’s
Parliamentary Reforms and Modernisation Committee (PRMC) selected Dundumwenzi
as one of nine locations for constituency offices during the pilot phase
of the program in 2003. Members of Parliament (MPs) from the selected
offices represent a variety of political parties, and John Bosely, Pact’s
Senior Advisor for PRP, emphasizes that the offices were created for non-partisan
purposes.
“The offices weren’t set up to help MPs campaign,”
Bosely says. “The goal is to allow constituents to have increased
contact with government and increase the power sharing between Parliament
and the people.”
PRMC members were responsible for hiring constituency office staff, again
to ensure that staffers were hired on the basis of their qualifications,
not their party affiliation. Edith Moono was hired as the Dundumwenzi
office assistant. She keeps records of schools, clubs and other organizations
in the community, and also maintains a log book where constituents come
to sign and record questions and comments for their MP. The MP also writes
his responses in the log book. More than three hundred constituents visited
the Dundumwenzi office in June 2004.
Emmerson Mudenda is the MP for Dundumwenzi. When Parliament is not in
session, Mudenda works in the constituency office on Tuesday and Thursdays
and spends the rest of the week traveling throughout his constituency.
He says he is impressed with the positive response his constituents have
had to the office and says the office makes it easier for him to respond
to local needs and bring those needs before Parliament. Recently several
local residents visited the office to complain about wild animals killing
their domestic livestock. Mudenda is now working with Parliament and a
wild life conservation agency to compensate residents for their lost livestock
and create a contingency plan to alleviate the problem in the future.
The Dundumwenzi constituency office has also become a focal point for
other community activities. The office served as the distribution center
for a shipment of rice in March 2004. According to Moono, the centralized
location meant that the allocation of the food could be regulated, ensuring
that all constituents benefited. Moono also keeps a collection of newspapers
in the office library, which helps people in this rural village, 75 kilometers
from the closest town, stay informed of news throughout the country. Moono
says the constituency office has created an increased demand for news
of Parliamentary activities. “I’ve seen a change in the people,”
she says. “People were in the dark before but now they know that
what Parliament discusses is for them.”
Because of the success of this nine-office pilot, twenty new constituency
offices will be opened in 2005, providing constituent services to many
more people across the country, and more opportunities for MPs to represent
and learn about their constituents.
Zambian Women
Making Strides Toward Gender Equality in Politics
The 1991 elections represented a turning point for governance in Zambia,
as the country embraced the inception of a multi-party democracy. The
multi-party system created an opportunity to increase public debate in
the political arena; now a new generation of Zambian leaders has taken
on this challenge. The push towards an inclusive democracy has been supported
by Pact Zambia and USAID through Pact’s Increase Public Debate (IPD)
project. IPD became Pact’s main activity in 2001. The project awards
grants to 37 membership organizations that mobilize policy and public
sector debates. Among the Pact funded organizations is the Zambia National
Women’s Lobby Group (ZNWLG).
Chipo Lungu became ZNWLG’s Executive Director in 2001. Her first
assignment was to use ZNWLG’s Pact grant to increase the number
of female candidates running for office in local and national elections.
Both Pact and Lungu agreed that increasing female participation in government
was a crucial facet of a representative democracy.
“Women bring a humane face to politics,” Lungu says. “They
see issues that men don’t worry about.”
Among those issues is food security at the household level and investment
in health care. These and other concerns were included in the Zambia Women’s
Manifesto, a 45-page document produced by ZNWLG, and published with the
help of Pact. The Manifesto was an opportunity for women, regardless of
political party, to come together and collaborate on issues that impact
Zambian women. The Manifesto received positive feedback, including from
many male politicians who told Lungu, “We didn’t realize all
this. You’re really making sense!”
ZNWLG used the success of the Manifesto to recruit strong female political
candidates for the 2001 election. They advertised for interested women
on radio, television and billboards, and the response was tremendous;
198 women campaigned for seats in Parliament and 800 women ran for local
counselor positions. 19 women won Parliamentary seats and 64 women won
counselor races. Among the successful Parliamentary candidates was Patricia
Nawa. Nawa has been a member of ZNWLG since its inception and credits
the organization not only with her successful bid for Parliament but also
in her victory in the 1999 Lusaka mayoral race, when she became the capital
city’s first female mayor. She says ZNWLG helps provide women with
the resources they need to make positive inroads in Zambian politics.
“We’ve given men 40 years to run this country and you see
the economic condition we’re in,” Nawa says. “Women
are very dedicated politicians and we deserve a chance too.”
Nawa and other victorious women from the 2001 elections continue to work
with ZNWLG. The organization created a resource desk to assist female
MPs with research so they can speak confidently before the legislature.
These women also serve as role models and mentors for branches of ZNWLG
that have been set up at Zambian universities to encourage young women
to get involved in politics.
Chipo Lungu says ZNWLG is already formulating their election strategies
to increase female participation and representation in the 2006 elections.
Patricia Nawa plans to introduce a motion urging Parliament to adopt the
recommendation of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) which
has set a target of 30 percent female representation in national politics.
“I would love to leave gender equality a positive topic in Parliament,”
Nawa says. “I want to help create an environment that will allow
young women coming up after us to feel comfortable in politics.”
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