Zambia’s Electoral Commission lifted a nationwide freeze on vote counting on Friday evening, hours after it had halted the process across the country over reports of violence against poll staff and the theft of marked ballots. The reversal opened the door to the first official results from Wednesday’s election, though the presidential race remains unsettled, with opposition leader Brian Mundubile claiming victory on the strength of his party’s own count and President Hakainde Hichilema stopping short of a formal declaration.
Why the count stopped
ECZ Chairperson Mwangala Zaloumis announced the suspension on Thursday, saying the Commission had noted violence targeted at polling staff and, in some districts, the theft of marked ballot papers from ballot boxes. She invoked Section 67(3) of the Electoral Process Act No. 35 of 2016, which allows counting and the announcement of results to be paused where the security of the process is at risk.
The blanket, nationwide scope of the pause, rather than a narrower halt limited to the affected districts, drew immediate criticism. The Law Association of Zambia said in a statement signed by its president, Arnold Kaluba, that a nationwide suspension needed a clear legal and factual basis and urged the Commission to resume counting wherever the process remained safe. Civil society groups made a similar appeal, warning that an open-ended, countrywide freeze risked feeding the very uncertainty it was meant to prevent.
Lifted within hours
By Friday evening, Zaloumis said the security threat had been “contained” and that measures were in place to let counting continue. The Commission said the first batch of official results would go out at 22:00 that evening, and set itself a target of announcing full results by the end of the weekend.
ECZ Chief Electoral Officer Brown Kasaro has said constituency figures must arrive with the prescribed supporting documents, and that any batch with discrepancies is sent back for verification before it is added to the national tally. That process, rather than the pace of claims on social media, is what determines when a result becomes official.
Two camps, one unresolved outcome
Mundubile, leader of the National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity, says his party’s parallel voter tabulation, built from results collected at polling stations and totalling centres nationwide, shows him ahead. He has called on the ECZ to preserve every ballot box and results form, protect the chain of custody, and publish figures polling station by polling station so they can be checked against the original paperwork. He has also pointed to specific allegations, including reports of military personnel at tallying centres in Mufulira and claims that officials in North-Western Province were told to stop issuing results forms.
Hichilema has not made a competing declaration. In a statement after Wednesday’s vote, he said his camp continued to receive “encouraging results” and reports of peace across the country, and urged Zambians to stay patient while the Commission finishes its work. The UPND’s national management committee struck the same note, saying only the ECZ has the constitutional mandate to announce a winner.
Under the Constitution, the ECZ is the sole body empowered to declare the presidential result. Every other figure in circulation, whichever campaign it comes from, is a claim rather than a declaration.
What the unofficial numbers show, and their limits
With official counting paused for part of Friday, informal constituency tallies continued to circulate on WhatsApp and social media, compiled by party agents, journalists and members of the public from results posted at individual polling stations. Figures shared for a handful of constituencies, including Dongwe in North-Western Province, Feira in Lusaka Province, Kundabwika in Northern Province and Chisamba in Central Province, showed a mixed picture: Hichilema ahead in three of the four, Mundubile leading in Feira, and a combined tally across all four narrowly favouring Hichilema.
None of that has been confirmed by the ECZ, and the Commission’s own results portal showed no constituencies formally declared at the time of writing. Numbers built this way can be useful early indicators, but they are assembled outside the Commission’s verification chain and are vulnerable to transcription errors, selective sharing and outright fabrication. The Commission itself has repeatedly urged the public to rely only on figures it has officially released.
What it means for the economy
A contested, drawn-out results process carries its own economic cost, separate from who eventually wins. Uncertainty over the outcome tends to weigh on the kwacha and on short-term investor positioning, and a previous piece on this site argued that the market’s post-election optimism depends on a credible, orderly transition rather than the identity of the winner alone. A results process that stretches on, or that produces rival declarations, risks eroding exactly the confidence a rally of that kind is built on.
For now, the practical test is whether the ECZ can move from Friday’s restart to a verified national result without another interruption. Businesses and investors watching the process have the same interest as voters: a count that is finished, not just announced.
What happens next
The Commission has set itself a target of completing the announcement of results by the end of the weekend. Whether that holds will depend on how quickly constituency figures, with their supporting documents, clear verification, and on whether the security conditions that triggered Thursday’s suspension stay contained. The Zambian Economist will continue to report confirmed ECZ figures as they are released, and will flag clearly whenever a number in circulation has not yet been verified by the Commission.
Related coverage
- ECZ Suspends Vote Counting Nationwide After Reports of Violence and Ballot Theft
- LAZ Challenges Legality of ECZ’s Nationwide Vote-Counting Suspension
- Zambia’s Post-Election Rally Is Economically Sound
- ECZ Launches National Election Results Centre at Mulungushi Ahead of Thursday’s Vote
- Civil Society Deploys Over 600 Election Monitors Nationwide Ahead of Thursday’s Polls
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