I never thought I would be happy to announce that a 74 year old man has won an election. Especially not one who is a populist who lashes out against anyone, supports Mugabe and also wants to throw out Chinese investors. But still when opposition leader Michael Sata was formally declared the winner of the Zambian Presidential Election of 2011 I cheered with the Zambians. When southern hemisphere now enters into spring, democracy in Zambia is in full bloom.

Did you miss it? Maybe it's not too strange. Sadly enough international media has not covered the Zambian election at all. The election drama that went on this week in Zambia was overshadowed by other international events, such as Palestine's quest for statehood and fears of a world recession. But for us who followed the election drama on social media it was truly exciting.

On Tuesday evening, September 20, the five million registered Zambians (ok, not all of them voted), had spoken. At that time no one knew for a fact what they collectively had said. And Zambia was nervously waiting for the election results to come in. The following morning official results were dropping in from different areas in Zambia, giving the opposition leader Sata a head start. That was all normal since MMD normally wins the most remote areas of Zambia. But what wasn't normal was the sudden halt of official results from the Election commission of Zambia. On September 21, everything just turned alarmingly silent.

One of the main reasons for this silence was the fact that the High Court Judge Jane Kabuka had officially silenced the media: "(Media) are hereby restrained from printing, publishing, running or carrying speculative stories on the tripartite election results held on 20th September 2011 or announcing election results before official results have been made by the electoral commission of Zambia".

While the Electoral Commission said nothing and media were effectively gagged, events started to turn ugly in Zambia. It was clear that the actual silence caused more tensions on the ground. Reports on riots and unrest in Kitwe, Ndola, Lusaka and elsewhere were coming in fast. People were killed and businesses looted. Schools were closed and people worried all over Zambia. The pressure was mounting and many wondered if MMD was trying to fix the election results.

Freelance ICT journalist Brenda Zulu, who works for Bantuwatch, an independent crowd sourcing election monitoring project, told me that their monitoring site stopped working. This came at a time when they were most needed. The technicians don't know why, but Brenda believes Bantuwatch was blocked. She doesn't know by whom. She also relays that social media activists were monitored and sometimes threatened by people saying they were MMD officials.

Still people kept on posting messages on social media and text messages. Sometimes these were inciting to violence, but most of the time the short reports were just trying to fill in the void that the electoral commission had created. Finally, just after midnight on September 24, Sanday KC posted, from Hong Kong!, to the twitter hash tags #Bantuwatch and #zambianelections: "Chief Justice Ernest Sakala declares Micheal Chilufya Sata as duly elected President of the Republic of Zambia". Later on Riannas_World wrote "riots turned into parties across Zambia". The waiting was over.

The political party the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, MMD, that was formed in the beginning of 1990's, with the objective to push Zambia into multiparty democracy, has finally lost an election. President Rupiah Banda, who has gracefully accepted the defeat, has stepped down.

With MMD out of power Zambia is now taking the lead in Africa, a region where political leaders very, very seldom (or ever) lose an election. I don't think most people in Zambia actually voted for Sata or the PF, but rather for change. This is something Sata must remember as he takes office later on today.

Hopefully this will be an end to the mentality that flourish among the Zambian elite and which became evident by the embassy documents published by Wikileaks. In a report from the US Embassy in Lusaka, dated January 25, 2010, the following was said: "In August 2009, the government passed an NGO bill that could be used to silence organizations that are deemed not be operating in the "national interest." These and other actions demonstrate the GRZ's lack of commitment to freedom of speech and expression when it does not serve the GRZ's purposes. On many occasions, GRZ representatives have told the Ambassador and Emboffs that Zambia's young, fragile democracy cannot be exposed to unfettered freedoms that countries like the United States enjoy."

The issue is if the leaders are mature enough to embrace democracy, not the people. When the leaders are able to deal with people expressing different opinions, accepting young people who don't automatically bow to them, and when the politicians fear what the people think instead of the opposite, then freedom of speech and democracy will have won. But until then we will have to support people who are unfortunate enough to have leaders that are immature.