Kenneth David Kaunda, commonly known as
KK (born
April 28,
1924) served as the first
President of Zambia, from
1964 to
1991.
Early life In April 1949 Kaunda returned to Lubwa to become part-time teacher, but resigned in 1951. In that year he became Organising Secretary of the
Northern Rhodesian African National Congress for Northern Province, which included at that time Luapula Province. On
11 November 1953 he moved to Lusaka to take up the post of Secretary General of the ANC, under the presidency of
Harry Nkumbula. The combined efforts of Kaunda and Nkumbula were unsuccessful in mobilizing African people against the White-dominated
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In 1955 Kaunda and Nkumbula were imprisoned for two months (with hard labour) for distributing "subversive" literature. Such imprisonment and other forms of harassment were normal rites of passage for African nationalist leaders. The experience of imprisonment had a radicalizing impact on Kaunda. The two leaders drifted apart as Nkumbula became increasingly influenced by white liberals and was seen as being willing to compromise on the issue of Black
majority rule. Nkumbula's allegedly autocratic leadership of the ANC eventually resulted in a split. Kaunda broke from the ANC and formed the
Zambian African National Congress (ZANC) in October
1958. ZANC was banned in March
1959. In June Kaunda was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, which he spent first in Lusaka, then in Salisbury (Harare).
While Kaunda was in prison,
Mainza Chona and other nationalists broke away from the ANC and, in October 1959, Chona became the first president of the
United National Independence Party (UNIP), the successor to ZANC. However, Chona did not see himself as the party's main founder. When Kaunda was released from prison in January 1960 he was elected President of UNIP. In July 1961 Kaunda organized a
civil disobedience campaign in Northern Province, the so called Cha-cha-cha campaign, which consisted of burning schools and blocking roads. Kaunda ran as a UNIP candidate during the
1962 elections. This resulted in a UNIP–ANC Coalition Government, with Kaunda as Minister of Local Government and Social Welfare. In January 1964 UNIP won the General Election under the new Constitution beating the ANC under Nkumbula. Kaunda was appointed
Prime Minister. On
24 October 1964 he became the first President of independent Zambia.
Simon Kapwepwe was appointed as the first Vice President.
Presidency At independence Zambia had just 109 university graduates and less than 0.5% of the population was estimated to have completed primary education. The nation's educational system was one of the most poorly developed in all of Britain's former colonies. Because of this, Zambia had to invest heavily in education at all levels. Kaunda instituted a policy where all children, irrespective of their parents' ability to pay, were given
free exercise books, pens and pencils. The parents' main responsibility was to buy uniforms, pay a token "school fee" and ensure that the children attended school. This approach meant that the best pupils were promoted to achieve their best results, all the way from primary school to university level. Not every child could go to secondary school, for example, but those who did were well educated.
The
University of Zambia was opened in Lusaka in 1966, after Zambians all over the country had been encouraged to donate whatever they could afford towards its construction. Kaunda was appointed Chancellor and officiated at the first graduation ceremony in 1969. The main campus was situated on the Great East Road, while the medical campus was located at Ridgeway near the University Teaching Hospital. In 1979 another campus was established at the Zambia Institute of Technology in Kitwe. In 1988 the Kitwe campus was upgraded and renamed the
Copperbelt University, offering business studies, industrial studies and environmental studies. The University of Zambia offers courses in agriculture, education, engineering, humanities and social sciences, law, medicine, mining, natural sciences, and veterinary medicine. The basic program is four years long, although engineering and medical courses are five and seven years long, respectively.
Other tertiary-level institutions established during Kaunda's era were vocationally focused and fell under the aegis of the Department of Technical Education and Vocational Training. They include the Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts and Commerce and the Natural Resources Development College (both in Lusaka), the Northern Technical College at Ndola, the Livingstone Trades Training Institute in Livingstone, and teacher-training colleges.
Educational policies At independence Kaunda received a country with an economy that was completely under the control of foreigners. For example, the
British South Africa Company (BSAC, originally setup by the British imperialist
Cecil Rhodes) retained commercial assets and mineral rights that it claimed it acquired from a concession signed with the Litunga of Bulozi in 1890 (the Lochner Concession). Only by threatening to expropriate it, on the eve of independence, did Kaunda manage to get the BSAC to assign its mineral rights to the incoming Zambian government. During the Federation, Northern Rhodesia's copper revenues were siphoned off by White Southern Rhodesians, since they were the dominant group in the polity. In their view, Southern Rhodesia was well-suited to providing managerial and administrative skills, Northern Rhodesia would provide the copper revenues, and Nyasaland would provide the labour., Kaunda was forced to make a major policy shift: he announced the intention to partially privatize the parastatals. However, these changes came too late to prevent his fall from power, which was largely the result of the economic troubles.
Economic policies In
1964 there was the Lumpa Uprising in Northern Zambia, four months before independence. Kaunda had a state of emergency declared which was not repealed until his fall from power. The state of emergency gave Kaunda absolute power. The Lumpa Church was destroyed and banned. It was a major source of opposition because it refused to allow church members to participate in politics which went against the 100% participation wanted by UNIP. This created a lot of animosity between the two groups and violence that began on a small scale escalated into a small civil war in which more than a thousand people were killed. The crisis was brought about by a combination of complacency on the part of the Colonial administration and UNIP intransigence. Kaunda tried to mediate the differences between the Church, local authorities and UNIP party members but was eventually unable to control party cadres in the North.
Becoming increasingly intolerant of opposition, Kaunda banned all parties except UNIP, following violence during the
1968 elections. In
1972, he made Zambia a
one-party state, probably because he was worried by
Simon Kapwepwe's decision to leave UNIP and found a rival party, the
United Progressive Party, which Kaunda immediately banned. Next, he appointed the Chona Commission, which was set up under the chairmanship of Mainza Chona in February 1972. Its task was to make recommendations for the constitution of a 'one-party participatory democracy' (i.e. a one-party state). The Commission's terms of reference did not permit it to discuss the pros and cons of Kaunda's decision. The sole surviving opposition party, the ANC, boycotted the Commission and unsuccessfully challenged the constitutional change in the courts. The Chona report was based on four months of public hearings and was submitted in October 1972. It was widely regarded as a 'liberal' document. Finally, Kaunda neutralised Nkumbula by getting him to wind-up the ANC, join UNIP and sign a document called the Choma Declaration on 27 June 1973. The ANC ceased to exist after the dissolution of parliament in October 1973. Allegedly Kaunda "bought off" Nkumbula by offering him an emerald mine.
With no more opposition against him, Kaunda allowed the creation of a
personality cult. He developed a national ideology, called Zambian Humanism. This was based on what he considered basic African values: mutual aid, trust and loyalty to the community. Similar forms of
African Socialism were introduced inter alia in Ghana by
Kwame Nkrumah ("Consciencism") and Tanzania by
Julius Nyerere ("Ujamaa"). To elaborate his ideology, Kaunda published several books:
Humanism in Zambia and a Guide to its Implementation, Parts 1, 2 and 3. Other publications on Zambian Humanism are:
Fundamentals of Zambian Humanism, by Timothy Kandeke;
Zambian Humanism, religion and social morality, by Cleve Dillion-Malone S.J. and
Zambian Humanism: some major spiritual and economic challenges, by Justin B. Zulu.
One-Party State and "African Socialism" Although it was Kaunda's nationalization of the copper mining industry in the late 1960s that led to increased economic problems, matters were made worse by his economic and logistical support for the Black
freedom fighters in the region:
South Africa, the
Portuguese colonies of
Portuguese West Africa (now
Angola)and
Portuguese East Africa (now
Mozambique) and
Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe). Kaunda tried to solve the conflict in Southern Africa between the White minority governments of Rhodesia, South Africa and Angola and Mozambique and the African freedom fighters by mediation and boycotts.
On
25-
26 August 1976, Kaunda met with the
Prime Minister of South Africa,
B.J. Vorster at
Victoria Falls and again on
30 April 1982 with Prime Minister,
Pieter Willem Botha on the
Botswana border to discuss the political situation in
South West Africa and
South Africa. However, he did not manage to get serious concessions from the South African government. Kaunda was criticised in the African press for talking to representatives of the apartheid regime.
Freedom fighters During his early presidency he was an outspoken supporter of the anti-apartheid movement and opposed
Ian Smith's white minority rule in Rhodesia. Kaunda allowed several African liberation fronts such as
ZAPU and
ZANU of Rhodesia and
African National Congress to set headquarters in Zambia. Former ANC president
Oliver Tambo spent a significant proportion of his 30 year exile living and working in
Zambia.. Kaunda served as chairman of the
OAU from 1970 to 1973.
Foreign policy After promulgation of the Second Republic, following
Mainza Chona's recommendations for the constitution of a "
one-party participatory democracy", Kaunda's leadership took on more autocratic characteristics. He personally appointed the Central Committee of UNIP, although the process was given a veneer of legitimacy by being "approved" by a National Congress of the party. In theory, Kaunda's nominations could be discarded by Congress, but in practice they were always accepted without modification. The argument used was that "the President knows the people who can work well with him, so if we modify the nominations we will end up with a less effective team". In turn, the Central Committee nominated a sole candidate for the post of President of the party. Of course, since the members of the Central Committee had been nominated by him, Kaunda was always the sole presidential candidate.
After that charade, the rest of the Zambian population was given the opportunity to express approval or disapproval of the sole candidate's nomination by voting either "Yes" or "No". Since the presidential "election" was always accompanied by parliamentary elections, there was great pressure placed on parliamentary candidates to "campaign" for the president's "Yes" vote, in addition to their own campaigns. Parastatals companies (which were controlled through ZIMCO -
Zambia Industrial and Mining Corporation) were also under pressure to "campaign" for Kaunda by buying advertising space in the two national newspapers (Times of Zambia and Zambia Daily Mail) exhorting the electorate to give the president a "massive 'Yes' vote".
The parliamentary elections were also controlled by Kaunda: the names of candidates had to be submitted to UNIP's Central Committee, which then selected three people to stand for any particular constituency. Anyone could be vetoed without the Central Committee giving any reason, since UNIP was supreme and its decisions were unchallengeable. Using these methods, Kaunda kept any enemies at bay by ensuring that they never got into political power.
This was the tactic he used when he saw off Nkumbula and Kapwepwe's challenges to his sole candidacy for the 1978 UNIP elections. On that occasion, the UNIP's constitution was "amended" overnight to bring in rules that invalidated the two challengers' nominations: Kapwepwe was told he could not stand because only people who had been members for five years could be nominated to the presidency (he had only rejoined UNIP three years before); Nkumbula was outmaneuvered by introducing a new rule that said each candidate needed the signatures of 200 delegates from
each province to back his candidacy. A third candidate called Chiluwe was beaten up by the UNIP Youth Wing, so that he was in no state to submit his nomination.
UNIP and Kaunda's autocracy during the Second Republic Eventually, however, economic troubles and increasing international pressure to bring more democracy to Africa forced Kaunda to change the rules that kept him in power. People who had been afraid to criticise him were now emboldened to challenge his competence. His close friend
Julius Nyerere had stepped down from the republican presidency in Tanzania in 1985 and was quietly encouraging Kaunda to follow suit. Pressure for a return to multiparty politics increased and Kaunda voluntarily yielded and called for multiparty elections in 1991, in which the
Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) won. Kaunda left office with the inauguration of MMD leader
Frederick Chiluba as president on
November 2,
1991.
Post presidency "Kaunda, Kenneth."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
URL:http://search.eb.com/eb/article-3849 Accessed May 19, 2006. Fergus Macpherson, Kenneth Kaunda: The Times and the Man (1974)
Richard Hall,
The High Price of Principles: Kaunda and the White South (1969) David C. Mulford, Zambia: The Politics of Independence, 1957–1964 (1967)
At Ipenburg, 'All Good Men.' The Development of Lubwa Mission, Chinsali, Zambia, 1905-1967 (1992)
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