Kaunda, Kenneth

Kaunda, Kenneth 1924-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The decolonization decade of the 1960s in Africa produced not only a bevy of territorial successor states, but a crowd of would-be “fathers” of new countries. Most remembered, perhaps, are Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) of Ghana, Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) of Tanzania, and Félix Houphouët-Boigny (1905–1993) of Côte d’Ivoire. In the same class, but perhaps less memorable for indiscernible reasons, is Kenneth David Kaunda, who was prime minister and first president of Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) in Central Africa. Kaunda stayed in office for twenty-seven years, peacefully handing over power to an elected successor in 1991. With his country prey to the powerful and white supremacist neighbor, South Africa, painfully dependent on the one major natural resource, copper, and threatened by ethnic strife, Kaunda proved unable to transcend his country’s underdevelopment and vulnerability to division, nevertheless accomplishing the daunting feats of maintaining independence and national integration.

Similar to other emergent civic leaders of his generation, Kaunda was educated in mission schools (his father was a missionary), became a teacher, served on a local council, and plunged into nationalist politics. In 1950 he was secretary of his branch of the Northern Rhodesia African Congress; by 1953 he was secretary-general of the African National Congress (ANC). He served a brief term in prison for a political offense, visited Britain as a guest of the anticolonialist Labour Party, and broke with the ANC in 1958. The politics of the era was dominated by the Southern Rhodesian whites and the British government’s attempt to form a Central African Federation. Resistance to federation resulted in another prison term for Kaunda and then to the formation of the United National Independence Party (UNIP) that delivered independence in 1964 to an ultimately unfederated Northern Rhodesia.

Kaunda’s leadership received popular approval, achieving renewal every five years—in 1988 with 95 percent of the vote—until an ignominious defeat in 1991 in an internationally observed contest. In keeping with the political trend of the era, Zambia banned opposition parties in 1968, became a one-party state in 1972, and declared an official ideology called Zambia Humanism, which reflected the “African socialist” fad of the times, as represented by Nkrumah’s Consciencism and Nyerere’s Ujamaa. Like these two well-known African figures, Kaunda published an autobiography (1962), a volume of speeches (1966), and a guide to his own thinking, Humanism in Zambia and a Guide to Its Implementation (1968).

Kaunda’s successor, Frederick Chiluba, treated the country’s founder-president rather shabbily in the postelection period, first attempting to deport him as a “noncitizen” (Kaunda’s father was born in Malawi), then getting the country’s constitution amended to prevent Kaunda from entering the elections of 1996. After accusations of sponsoring a failed coup attempt in 1997, Kaunda retired from politics, devoted himself to good works and his passion for ballroom dancing, and assumed the post of African president-in-residence at Boston University (2002–2004).

Kaunda’s achievements ultimately remain mixed. His writings come across as more diffuse than his contemporaries Nkrumah and Nyerere, although no one doubts Kaunda’s personal integrity. His efforts to negotiate with South African president John Vorster (1915–1983) exposed him to charges of naiveté, although Kaunda was steadfast in providing sanctuary to the (South African) African National Congress in its exile. While avoiding a successful coup—characteristic of West African states in the 1960s and 1970s—Kaunda continually faced sectional and ethnic tensions in the country, despite single-party rule in the 1970s.

As to economic development, Zambia lurched through several programs of rural development and stateled strategies, piling up huge international debts. With copper and cobalt providing 95 percent of the country’s foreign exchange, dramatic drops in international prices from the mid-1970s caused great economic pain, stirring massive opposition among mineworkers, whose union formed the basis of political opposition that ultimately produced the person who ousted Kaunda, Frederick Chiluba.

Kaunda sought help from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the 1980s. One immediate consequence was the fateful maize-meal riots on Zambia’s Copperbelt in December 1986. The Zambian government backtracked; the World Bank and Western governments withheld funds; and inflation, black markets, and internal unrest all ensued. The June 1990 university student protests led to more riots, an announced coup, dancing in the streets, Kaunda contradicting himself on a referendum, and finally a restoration of multiparty government. By 1991 the major opposition party, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, swept parliamentary voting and retired Kaunda as president with less than 20 percent of the ballots. Kaunda’s message to his successor included a final contribution to democratic government: “Well, congratulations, you have won… I stand ready to assist you, if you should need my services. For the time being, God bless and goodbye.”

SEE ALSO African National Congress; Anticolonial Movements; Decolonization; Developing Countries; Labour Party (Britain); Liberation Movements; Neocolonialism; Nkrumah, Kwame; Nyerere, Julius; Socialism, African

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kaunda, Kenneth. 1962. Zambia Shall be Free: An Autobiography. London: Heinemann.

Kaunda, Kenneth D. 1968. Humanism in Zambia and a Guide to Its Implementation. Lusaka: Zambia Information Services.

Legum, Colin, ed. 1966. Zambia, Independence and Beyond: The Speeches of Kenneth Kaunda. London: Nelson.

Macpherson, Fergus. 1974. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia: The Times and the Man. Lusaka, Zambia: Oxford University Press.

Harvey Glickman