About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


35 Hastings Const. L.Q. 761 (2007-2008)
Presidential Power in Comparative Perspective: The Puzzling Persistence of Imperial Presidency in Post-Authoritarian Africa

handle is hein.journals/hascq35 and id is 781 raw text is: Presidential Power in Comparative Perspective: The Puzzling Persistence of Imperial Presidency in Post-Authoritarian Africa by H. KWASI PREMPEH* In December 1991, the president of the southern African state of Zambia, on behalf of the nation, declared his country a Christian Nation.1 Remarkably, President Frederick Chiluba made this declaration without consulting his cabinet, party, or the national legislature.2 A self-described evangelical Christian, President Chiluba simply imposed his own religious preferences on his entire nation, ignoring the fact that Zambia has been a secular state since its founding in 1964 and remains a culturally and religiously pluralistic society. Against the objections of influential sections of the Zambian polity and society, including well-established Christian congregations, the president stood by his declaration and, in fact, succeeded in 1996 in getting it memorialized in the form of a Christian Nation clause inserted in the preamble to the country's amended Constitution, where it still sits today. What is significant about this story is that the Zambian president's declaration was not the act of some notorious African dictator whose word had always been law. To the contrary, . Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law. J.D., Yale Law School. I would like to thank Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare, University of Florida (Gainesville), for his helpful comments on a draft of this article and Eliot Dorazio, Seton Hall Law School Class of 2009, for outstanding research assistance. Research for this article was supported by the Seton Hall Law School Faculty Development Fund. 1. The full text of the speech by Zambian President Frederick Chiluba containing the Christian Nation declaration is reproduced in THE NATIONS CALLED: THEOLOGY OF THE NATIONS AND THEIR REDEMPTION (Pieter Bos ed., 2002). 2. GERO ERDMANN & NEO SIMUTANYI, TRANSITION IN ZAMBIA: THE HYBRIDIZATION OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC 13 (2003). 3. ZAMBIA CONST. (Constitution Act 1991) (as amended in 1995). [761]