Towards the end of 2023, the fully open access and free to download Zambia Journal of Social Science published an edited collection of nine articles investigating and reflecting on the life and legacy of former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda. Here, one of the collection’s editors Duncan Money introduces the body of work. The contributions are wide ranging, from those that deal directly with anti-colonial struggle – including an exploration of some of the tensions and failures within Zambia’s liberation movements – to those interrogating Kaunda’s postcolonial politics and governance, to a remarkable series of interviews with Kaunda and those close to him, which offer a fascinating glimpse into his daily life and habits.
By Duncan Money
The death of Zambia’s President Kenneth Kaunda on 17 June 2021 marked the end of era. Kaunda, known widely as KK, was the last of the generation of anti-colonial leaders who fought for independence in the 1950s and 1960s, and one of the best known.
Kaunda’s momentous life, his central role in events across the region and his legacy invites investigation and reflection, and we sought to provide this with an edited collection of nine articles published in the Zambia Journal of Social Science. These articles and an introduction to them by the editors – Marja Hinfelaar, Mary Mbewe and myself – are all free to read and download (as with all papers published by this Zambian journal).
Anti-colonialism and nationalism are perhaps inevitably the key themes of these articles. Kaunda is best remembered now as a symbol of the struggle against colonialism across Southern Africa. The specifics, however, are recalled less readily and there was a poignant moment at one of his last major public speeches, at the funeral of Nelson Mandela.
Kaunda was a consummate showman. You can see this in the footage: Rising slowly from his seat, a man of 89 years, grasping a walking stick, he pauses, and then runs towards the stage. There, he sought to rouse the crowd with his trademark song ‘Tiyende Padmozi’, until, at the chorus, “his listeners did not dutifully sing along, as they had in the past.” Kaunda paused, “Ah, you have forgotten,” he admonished them gently.
Kaunda had outlived almost his entire political generation, his audience was gone.
Three articles in our collection deal directly with the anti-colonial struggle: those by Kaluba Jickson Chama, Chris Saunders and Jeff Schauer. Chama’s article deals with the earliest period on this collection, looking at the emergence of anti-colonial nationalism in rural Luapula in the 1950s and the politics of food. He notes though that the new independent government continued colonial agricultural policies, pointing to a tension between nationalist parties and their intended constituents.
Zambia paid a price for its commitment to the liberation of Southern Africa. The country was bombed both by Rhodesian and Portuguese forces and targeted with sabotage attacks. Schauer’s article looks at how Zambia armed itself in the face of aggression, securing arms from Britain. Such a military deal so soon after independence prompted accusations of neo-colonialism against Kaunda, but Schauer argued Zambia’s government used this to buy time and subsequently broadened its suppliers of arms beyond the former colonial power. Kaunda aimed to make “neocolonial relationships manageable, useful, and impermanent.”
Saunders looks into some of the tensions and failures within the liberation movements based in Zambia, the kind of details that are now overlooked in the memory of Kaunda as the iconic champion of liberation. Saunder’s focuses on Kaunda’s role in Namibia’s long struggle for independence and his relationship with the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO). Key disagreements between them included Kaunda’s 1969 proposal for a peaceful approach to Namibia’s transition, which led to the curtailment of SWAPO’s military operations from Zambia.
The other articles in the collection focus more on developments within Zambia.
One crucial and now much neglected topic is Kaunda’s development of what became Zambia’s governing ideology under the one-party state: humanism. Edward Mboyonga’s article on higher education takes seriously humanism as an ideology that aimed at decolonising society in Zambia. Mboyonga locates the establishment of Zambia’s first university in 1966 within the public good discourse, where the benefits of higher education did not only accrue to the individual, but to the society as well. Yet there was a tension between the professed egalitarianism of humanism and academic freedom, and Kaunda intervened to remove academics deemed critical of the government from the new institution.
Contradictions in the way Kaunda governed emerge too in Alexander Caramento and Agatha Siwale-Mulenga’s article on emerald mining, which raises questions about whether this supposed governing ideology of humanism was ever really followed. The establishment of an emerald industry is a good example of how the state implemented economic policy in ways that were contradictory to its stated aims. Though Kaunda spoke sympathetically about small scale miners, his policies for emerald mining entrenched dependence on foreign investment by partnering with a British firm and effectively criminalised artisanal mining. This has long-term consequences for the sector.
State ownership of Zambia’s economy was a relatively brief episode. Kaunda’s economic policies were rapidly and comprehensively reversed after he was ousted in the 1991 elections. Michael Gubser questions whether the structural adjustment that followed was inevitable, as is often assumed. Gubser goes back to the debates in the final years of Kaunda’s rule among intellectuals and activists about how to fix the country’s failing economy. Economic liberalisation was not the only or even the dominant idea in these debates, and Zambians imagined other possible futures for themselves in a moment of great political change. At the same time, there was a marked intellectual shift towards free-market economics, something exemplified by the one-time editor of the Journal of African Marxists Mbita Chitala becoming an advocate of structural adjustment as Deputy Finance Minister.
Kaunda’s economic policy and legacy are well-known. His close interest in wildlife conservation is less so. Chikondi Thole, Thomas Kweku Taylor and Thor Larsen examine Kaunda’s role in promoting tourism and conservation in South Luangwa, which he declared a national park in 1971 and where he took regular working holidays. Kaunda’s role in South Luangwa also provides insights into political life in the one-party state. Conservation was an area personally important to Kaunda and so he often bypassed state institutions to implement policy and used his personal connections with overseas donors to finance it.
The final two articles in the collection tackle the question of legacy.
Meldad L. Chama and Beatrice Kapanda Simataa argue that official memorialisation marginalised discontent and opposition to Kaunda. It is easy to forget that Kaunda was forced to abandon the one-party state in the face of mass protests and lost the subsequent 1991 election in a landslide. The mourning period, they argue, involved “forgetting and choosing what to remember about KK.” Indeed, those who remember Kaunda for his resolute opposition to apartheid may wish to forget his serenading North Korea’s Kim Il Sung with a variation of his famous call and response: ‘One Korea, One Nation!’
The final article by Victoria Phiri Chitungu is different. Other articles focus on Kaunda as a public figure and a symbol, and Kaunda as a real-life human being can sometimes disappear in this perspective. Chitungu and her team conducted a remarkable series of interviews with Kaunda and those close to him, and through them we get a glimpse into Kaunda’s personal life: the food he ate, the songs he sang, how he slept, and his family relationships. These interviews will become an important source for future work on Kaunda and his legacy.
Duncan Money is a freelance historian and his work focuses on Southern Africa and the mining industry.
Featured images: A portrait of Kenneth Kaunda, March 1983, and photos in the text. Wikimedia Commons
Not sure really about the accuracy of the assertions that Kaunda being “Africa’s Last Anti-Colonial Leader”, since Sam Nujoma is still very much around although he had significantly aged.
It is controversial sometimes when we reflect on pre colonial period