Autocratic champion of African independence left mixed legacy
Kenneth Kaunda, who has died aged 97, was a symbol of African liberation who led Zambia to freedom from British rule and served as its first president, maintaining a loose grip on the country for 27 years before presiding over multiparty elections that forced him from power.
Even after he left office in 1991 following a crushing election defeat, Kaunda was a revered figure for many Zambians, who knew him as ‘‘K.K’’. He had campaigned for black liberation while crisscrossing the countryside in the 1950s and ’60s, then emerged as a leader of Africa’s first generation of post-colonial leaders while calling for an end to white-minority rule on the continent.
‘‘People were fed up with him by the end, but now there’s a great deal of nostalgia for his leadership, particularly the way he was seen as a unifier,’’ said Scott Taylor, director of the African studies programme at Georgetown University. ‘‘A lot of the country today seems to be more divided, regionally or ethnically. People look back on Kaunda as living up to his slogan: ‘One Zambia, one nation.’ ’’
As president, Kaunda led a patchwork country of more than 70 ethnic groups and eight million people (the population has since more than doubled), maintaining stability even as conflict raged in nearby countries such as Angola and Zimbabwe. Delivering speeches about the challenges facing the continent, he sometimes wept into his white linen handkerchief, clutched in his left hand.
In part, Kaunda enforced Zambian unity by fostering a cult of personality and presiding over nearly two decades of one-party rule. Political opposition was outlawed, although he was never known for the brutality that characterised the regimes of leaders such as Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now known as Congo) or Hastings Banda of Malawi.
Kenneth David Kaunda was born in the Zambian town of Chinsali, then part of Northern Rhodesia. Both his parents were schoolteachers – his father was also a Presbyterian preacher from Nyasaland, now Malawi – and Kaunda followed them into the profession before moving near the copper mines, where he founded a welfare office and farmers’ co-operative.
By the late 1940s, he was increasingly involved in the black liberation movement, and helped organise a political group, the Zambian African National Congress. His independence activities landed him in prison for several months. After being released in
1960, he formed a new party, the UNIP, and renewed his campaign of civil disobedience, modelled after Mahatma Gandhi’s independence effort in India.
He became prime minister in 1964, shortly before the protectorate gained full independence from Britain and consolidated power in 1972, banning other political parties, he said, as an effort to keep order.
Ateetotaller and avid ballroom dancer, he espoused what he called a humanist political philosophy, which mixed socialism with soaring rhetoric about the importance of community. His government nationalised the copper mines that fuelled Zambia’s economy, sought to expand manufacturing and agriculture, and subsidised healthcare, education and the cost of food. Yet when copper prices fell in the early 1970s, the economy collapsed.
As copper prices continued to plunge, Kaunda struggled to tame rampant inflation. In 1990 he faced growing criticism after a World Bank programme forced him to raise the price of cornmeal, a staple food, prompting riots in which dozens were killed. He endured an abortive military coup before agreeing to legalise opposition parties and schedule multiparty elections.
By then, he had acquired a reputation as a respected if somewhat eccentric statesman. He chaired the Organisation of African Unity, backed efforts to end apartheid in South Africa and welcomed members of the banned African National Congress to Lusaka, which emerged as a base for nationalist leaders from across the region.
With urban discontent on the rise and prodemocracy movements budding across Africa, Kaunda was swept out of office in 1991.
After the votes were counted, Kaunda appeared on national television to congratulate his opponent and accept the results. ‘‘The true lesson of democracy is to accept the verdict of the people,’’ he said.
After leaving office, Kaunda appeared poised to run for president in 1996. But his successor, Chiluba, blocked his candidacy in the courts, and in 1997 he was wounded while travelling to a political rally, struck by a gunman’s bullet that grazed his forehead.
His wife of more than six decades, the former Betty Banda, died in 2012. Kaunda disclosed in 1987 that one of his sons had died of Aids, a taboo subject across much of the continent, and later started a foundation to combat the disease. Another son, a rising politician named Wezi Kaunda, was killed by four gunmen in 1999, in what Kaunda’s security chief said was an assassination.
Defending his record as president, Kaunda often cited Zambian stability as his greatest achievement.
‘‘The true lesson of democracy is to accept the verdict of the people.’’
Kenneth Kaunda