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Home , Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda

Background to his struggle

In most African countries the fight for independence has been against European colonial powers. It was never so simple in . Although the people wanted to end colonialism, they also had to look to Britain sometimes for protection against closer political opponents. These were the white settler politicians. The people were often disappointed when they expected Britain to stand up for them against the settlers. After all, the settlers were also white.

That is just one of the many difficulties which faced in his struggle. Others were caused by Zambia’s wealth and her geographical position in Africa. A glance at the map reveals the country’s importance in Africa below the equator. It is exactly in the middle of the southern half of the continent. The borders of Zambia touch those of , , , Southern , Bechuanaland, , the Congo - and even the Caprivi Strip, administered by South Africa.

Of course, such borders do not mean anything important in terms of people, the African people. Seventy or eighty years ago the colonial powers were ‘scrambling for Africa’. The lines then drawn on the heart of Africa only showed what territory the Europeans had managed to win for themselves.

Kenneth Kaunda was born quite close to Zambia’s border with Tanganyika, at a place called Chinsali. During the partition of Africa, decided on the line he would like to see divide ‘his part’ - the Rhodesia’s - from the territory claimed by the Germans. Rhodes was advancing from the south. The Germans were in what is now Tanganyika. So Rhodes drew his line from the southern end of Lake Tanganyika to the northern end of Lake Nyasa. Just south of this line he marked in two towns, which he called Abercorn and Fife. These were named after dukes closely related to the British royal family. Rhodes thought that Queen Victoria’s ministers would never give up territory including places named after the dukes. He was right.

The shape of Zambia is strange, something like that of a butterfly. It is almost divided in the middle by a piece of the Congo known as the Pedicle. This juts across from the west to within 120 miles of Mozambique on the east.

Zambia is a big country; for instance, it is about three times the size of , although its population is much less. Except for one tiny part, Zambia is quite poor, because much of it is either underpopulated or not good for farming. But the small part - seventy-five miles long and twenty-five miles wide - makes all the difference. In fact, it makes Zambia the rjchest country in the whole of East and Central Africa.

This part is the . It has been like a magnet drawing people from north, south, east and west. Kaunda worked on the Copperbelt as a young teacher, in 1947. His time there did much to affect his thinking. On the Copperbelt he met bitter racial discrimination, and it aroused in him an anger to win back the dignity of his people in their own land.

The Copperbelt has an output of metal worth £120,000,000 a year. There is enough of the copper ore beneath the red soil to provide wealth at this rate for another 100 years. The underground rock is rich with copper. It is a great prize. So around this small area, close to the borders of the Congo, the long political struggle in Central Africa has been waged.

Without the Copperbelt there would have been no Federation between , and . This federation, headed by Sir , slowed down the political progress of the African people. Before it was founded in 1953, and ever afterwards, the torch- bearers of Independence - men like Kenneth Kaunda and many others - bitterly opposed Federation. Yet, if the African boundaries had been drawn a little differently, the Copperbelt might have been part of Katanga. Indeed, eighty years ago, Lamba chiefs in what is now the Copperbelt paid tribute to a more powerful ruler in today’s Congo territory. The settlers of Southern Rhodesia would not have wanted to federate with Northern Rhodesia just for its 290,000 square miles of bushland. Nor was it out of sympathy for the African people there. Southern Rhodesia badly needed the wealth of the Copperbelt, as well as the markets Northern Rhodesia could offer, for its expanding factories around Bulawayo and Salisbury.

It was sometimes suggested by Salisbury’s politicians that the Copperbelt should stay in alliance with Southern Rhodesia, together with a strip along the railway line to take the copper out. Sir Edgar Whitehead, the former Southern Rhodesia prime minister, even pulled this scheme out of his hat as late as 1962. Naturally enough the Southern Rhodesian idea never impressed Zambia’s people. They pointed out that white colonialism had created the country in its present shape and economic pattern. They saw no justice in allowing Southern Rhodesia to take the heart of Zambia and hand the Africans back the corpse.

Zambia has now marched to and its future is its own. Yet it went along this road more slowly than neighbours such as Tanganyika. The reason is that the ‘copper Federation’ was not pulled apart until 31st December 1963. Up to that date Northern Rhodesia could still be regarded as the furthest advance of South African political influence into Africa. The white minority was never more than one-fortieth of Zambia’s population, but it managed for half a century to remain dominant and half of the whites came from South Africa.

In towns like it was quite normal to hear people talking to each other in Afrikaans, the language of Dr Verwoerd. Just before the last war a Colonial Office investigator said that help was needed for a large community of poverty- stricken Afrikaners in and around Lusaka; they could speak no English, he added. Such people thought of Northern Rhodesia as being just a province of their homeland, and they acted accordingly in their dealings with other races. Almost all the lines of communication that Zambia has today are with the South. Railways and main roads lead that way across the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. Sir Roy Welensky, who has Afrikaans blood, talked in February 1962 of his ‘very good friends’ in South Africa.

So colonial Northern Rhodesia was washed by the South African high tide of white domination. Now the tide has rolled back, and an independent Zambia will be instead a bridge-head for spreading African self-rule. With its wealth and geographical position the country must inevitably affect the futures of Southern Rhodesia, South Africa and the Portuguese colonies to west and east.

Many people, including his own supporters, were baffled in February 1964 when Kaunda offered to exchange ambassadors with Verwoerd. Yet although the offer was rejected, Kaunda still thinks it was worth trying a path of goodwill into the heartland of racialism.

In his own country Zambia’s first premier has retained his faith in the goal of a non-racial society, despite years of rebuffs and insults. He believes his government can demonstrate the reality of co- operation between white and black, whereas Federation failed because never did the promises blossom into serious actions. Regrettably, much time has been lost: in 1962 there was not a single African apprentice on the copper mines, though there were more than 250 white apprentices. Some of Kaunda’s followers said they would rather see Northern Rhodesia without a Copperbelt than suffer such continuing insults. But the UNIP president worked on, gradually converting the mining companies to a new view of their future. It is a future in which one day soon the African people will not merely be the hewers of rock underground, but also the managers and the metallurgists.

Kaunda has made constant efforts to persuade Europeans who would like to stay in Zambia under a black government that fear is unnecessary. White fear was played on for years by the United Federal Party, so to abate it has been a slow task. Yet nearly a third of white voters supported UNIP in , in contrast to about a thirtieth in October 1962.

Kaunda insists that there must be no ‘colour bar in reverse’ in an independent Zambia. He says, ‘Our country can give a home to anyone who wants to live in it, whatever their race, as long as they accept that the majority must rule and that all people are born equal.’

When Kaunda went in 1962 to address the , accompanying him were an Indian supporter of his party, T. D. Desai, and a distinguished European, Sir Stewart Gore- Browne, who has lived in Bembaland for forty years.

A year before, on a visit to Washington to meet the late President Kennedy, Kaunda had made an important declaration of his beliefs. Its closing paragraphs are worth reviving even now ‘The basic thoughts that guide me, I must admit, are nationalistic, but they accept the various elements that make up the country of Zambia and of the inter-dependence of these various elements on each other.

‘If I read the temper of my people correctly, they are ready to accept their common lot and are prepared to go forward accepting a common discipline and a common destiny for all our people.

‘The acceptance of this unity will allow my people to respect the rights of all other peoples in the world and will lead to a policy of mutual respect, complete trust, and permanent harmony.’

Such ideas, expressed during the most desperate days in the fight for independence, show an unusual moderation and humanity. However, events have proved that it would be a mistake to think Kenneth Kaunda lacked toughness and determination. Onward to Independence

The result of Northern Rhodesia’s second election in fifteen months was obvious even before the votes were cast on 20th and 21st January 1964. In a third of the seventy-five constituencies UNIP candidates were unopposed. Elsewhere the Congress was in dire confusion. It had suddenly re- united with the breakaway People’s Democratic Congress, so that in several constituencies ANC and PDC men were in opposition, thus splitting the anti-UNIP vote. On the main roll Kenneth Kaunda could rely on more than fifty victories, guaranteeing a comfortable majority in the Assembly of seventy-five.

Once again, interest centred on the behaviour of the white voters, who were concentrated in ten reserved constituencies. The President’s ambition has always been to prove that Zambia can become a truly non-racial society, with a harmony which Federation failed to provide. So he devoted himself to putting the case of UNIP to the white minority, despite the doubts of some party officials with painful memories of the humiliation in October 1962. However, Kaunda’s task was easier in 1964 because much of the old hostility had vanished and the mirage of ‘Federal protection’ for non- Africans no longer existed to confuse the public. Most important, UNIP had been in office for a year and shown itself responsible and tolerant.

In the reserved seats UNIP was able to field some notable candidates. These included Sir John Moffat, the former Liberal Party president; Richard Sampson, twice mayor of Lusaka; E. C. Cousins, an ANC minister who had switched to UNIP; V. D. Mistry, who had been nominated to the 1959-62 Legco; and Anthony Mitchley, a lawyer, formerly prominent in the UFP. Although UNIP disapproved of the reserved seats, men like these were generally fitted to belong in the new Assembly. Asked what would happen if the NPP still captured all the ten reserved seats, Kenneth Kaunda said: 'It would put me in a very difficult position. Our people could have only one interpretation of such a rejection: that their hand of friendship to the European has again been scorned.

Yet what might have happened can never be known, because on the very eve of the polling came the army mutiny in Tanganyika - hard on the heels of the revolt in . The shock to Zambia’s non-Africans was tremendous, for in their minds and Kenneth Kaunda were closely linked. For years the two leaders have been intimate friends, nationalists cast in the same mould.

Inevitably the NPP won the ten seats under such circumstances, but Kaunda had no cause for disappointment. Almost a third of the country’s Europeans had voted for his party and less than 400 votes would have given UNIP victory in four of the reserved seats. In fifteen months white support for the party had increased tenfold. In the words of David Mulford, an American political scientist who had made an on-the-spot study of the election: ‘Though excuses are certainly not needed, it is virtually certain that events in Zanzibar and Tanganyika over the past two weeks robbed UNIP of decisive European votes.

On the main rol! results were much as expected. UNIP won fifty-five out of a possible sixty-five seats, although it failed to make any impression on the Congress strongholds in the Southern and Central Provinces. One notable gain was at on the Copperbelt, where trade unionist John Chisata scored a tense win by 11,676 to 8,742 over ANC’s Berrings Lombe. Only three months earlier Congress had swept the board at Mufulira in the municipal elections. Kenneth Kaunda stood in Mkushi and was returned un-opposed.

On 23rd January 1964 the thirty-nine-year-old mission¬ary’s son from Lubwa was sworn in as Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia, together with the thirteen Cabinet Ministers whose names he had earlier handed to the Gover¬nor. He said simply of this momentous day: Tower to me is a means of service. My mother always taught me that “when pride cometh, then cometh shame”, and one of my early teachers used to say to me: “You must try to leave the earth a better place than you found it.” I want to see equality of opportunity, and if 1 can go down to my grave knowing this has been achieved, I shall be a very happy man.

As premier, Kenneth Kaunda moved into the vast office on the first floor of the Lusaka Secretariat which for a generation had been the headquarters of a succession of colonial Chief Secretaries. Doubtless he was struck by the irony of sitting at the very desk where former white administrators had studied secret security reports about him, and where state¬ments denouncing him had been written. Yet, if he was tempted to make capital of this, he resisted the temptation. Instead he gave his Ministers an immediate, practical message: ‘We must prove ourselves by hard work.

Kaunda had always foreseen that power would impose a severe challenge. As early as he had said: ‘To¬day the people complain to the Government about their conditions. One day we shall be the Government.’ Now the time had come when scores of thousands of loyal workers for UNIP impatiently wanted results from their leaders. Most of all there was the vast army of jobless. Although Kaunda was at pains to point out that ‘Zambia will not be built in a day’ and problems such as unemployment and poverty could only be erased by long-term development, his Cabinet was in constant session hammering out emergency programmes.

Then on 20th March, he was able to announce that the Government accepted with enthusiasm the principles of a major United Nations plan for Zambian progress. A report, by an international team of experts, laid down priorities for development between 1965 and 1970 - with an estimated capital expenditure of £450,000,000. Of this, £140,000,000 would be spent by the Government. It was bold enough to fit the national mood. ‘This plan will act as the thermometer of our progress,’ declared the prime minister.

The challenge of the future had been accepted. Kenneth Kaunda had taken on his shoulders the task of leading Zambia’s people to prosperity in the dignity of independence.

At the Marlborough House conference in May, Britain readily granted the constitutional changes which would create a new Republic in the heart of Central Africa. President Kaunda summed up his feelings with the words:‘

‘There is no bitterness in our minds, we offer the hand of friendship to all men whether they have been our political friends or opponents. When we embarked on this struggle for independence many years ago, our origins were humble but our heads were high. We realised the struggle might be long.

‘When we look back along the path which led to this conference room today we cannot entirely forget - but we can forgive - the days of our imprisonment, the occasions when many of us were subjected to personal indignities and hardships because of our political ideas. These unhappy memories served only to broaden our minds, just as fruitful labour builds the body. We have no place for bitterness in our minds or our actions.

Kaunda the Pan-Africanist

Early in February 1962, Kenneth Kaunda received in what he regarded as one of the greatest honours so far bestowed on him by fellow Africans. He was elected chairman of PAFMECSA, the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East, Central and Southern Africa, in succession to Kenya’s . With Julius Nyerere, Mboya had been one of the movement’s founders, at a meeting in 1958. PAFMECSA has been branded as ‘an extremely loose grouping’ of political parties from Ethiopia to the Cape. Kaunda would not challenge this description, and after the creation of the Organisation for African Unity felt, like President Nyerere, that PAFMECSA had served its purpose and should be dissolved.

Yet in the service of PAFMECSA in particular, and Pan- Africanism in general, he travelled many thousands of miles through the continent during the two years following his election. So fervent have been his convictions that in September 1962 he made an almost suicidal secret trip to Elisabeth ville, to urge Moise Tshombe to abandon secession. In , he flew at two hours’ notice to , Nairobi and in an effort to save the scheme from collapsing.

On the continent’s political rocks many hopes are dashed, but Kenneth Kaunda has never lost his faith in complete African unity; he has always seen regional alliances as a step towards this goal. Addressing the Leopoldville conference of PAFMECSA in , he sharply rejected accusations that the association was designed as a ‘third block’ alongside the former Casablanca and Monrovia groupings. Kaunda stressed: ‘PAFMECSA is an administrative set-up under the umbrella of the All African Peoples Conference.

The President was speaking less than three weeks after the formation of Zambia’s coalition government; he expressed his gratitude to other African countries for exerting their influence to end white rule in his homeland, following the emergency PAFMECSA conference at Mbeya, Tanganyika, the previous May.

In 1954, one of the first Pan-African conferences ever arranged in East and Central Africa was planned for Lusaka. Kenneth Kaunda, then secretary-general of Congress, was assisted in the organisation of the conference by the Reverend Michael Scott. Delegates were invited from Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, South Africa and elsewhere. Kaunda corres¬ponded over the details with South Africa’s ANC secretary- general, Walter Sisulu, whose life-long struggle against has ended in tragedy. Hopes for the conference were high - until the newly-created Federal Government took crushing action. All the African delegates were banned from entering the Federation and the conference collapsed. The only visitor against whom Welensky could not take preven¬tive measures was U Hlang, a Burmese representative at the United Nations.

Kaunda’s connections with the All African Peoples Conference go back to December 1958, when he attended the first meeting of the organisation in Accra. The Zambia African National Congress had only just been formed, and he was among the lesser-known of the 300 delegates - along with such men as and . The Conference was a great inspiration to Kaunda; it endorsed his belief in non-violence and also resolved: ‘This Conference condemns the Central African Federation and all its discriminatory laws and practices.’ Britain was called on by AAPC to dissolve the Federation. The young freedom fighter received many assurances from the others delegates that his people were not alone in their struggle, which was to take five arduous years Kenneth Kaunda gives this view of Pan-Africanism: ‘It is not so very different from . Instead of love for one’s country, it is love of the whole continent. It embraces the whole of Africa. Of course, it can be a force for good or evil. Like all tools, it is dangerous if misused.

‘I cannot see why certain people shout about Pan- Africanism. I believe we can achieve much more quickly the unity of purpose that Europe has been struggling towards since the days of Napoleon. For that, we can thank the scientific achievements of Europe. Faster communications have made the African countries much closer together.

To the President, the efforts to forge closer links among independent African States are of constant concern. Yet he also has responsibilities more urgent and perplexing than those facing any other Pan-Africanist leader. Zambia is the only African State touching the four white-dominated countries of Southern Africa: Mozambique, Angola, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. Kenneth Kaunda is at the forward bridgehead of an international movement to change the ‘old order’ in an area of 1,719,000 square miles - which is bigger than the Indian sub-continent.

On Zambia’s southern border is the precious ‘gateway to freedom’ - a gap fifty yards wide where Bechuanaland touches the Zambezi. To this point come the refugees from South Africa and South- West Africa, to be ferried across the river to Zambia. Within shouting distance in the Caprivi Strip are the South African border guards. Such a situation is fraught with the risk of‘ international incidents’ and Kenneth Kaunda has shown he is fully aware of this. While he says very frankly that ‘the entire conscience of the world is shocked by the Verwoerd regime’, he also realises that Zambia must use to the end every means of persuasion in dealing with her southern neighbours.

He says: ‘It is our intention to help Angolans, Mozambiquans, Southern Rhodesians and South Africans by establishing a training centre for future administrators, future officers in the field of agriculture, because we believe this would be a very constructive contribution to the future development of these countries. If they find themselves completely unequipped for the tasks that lie ahead of them, they might be faced with serious problems inside these countries.

A first step towards such a scheme was taken in April 1964, with the President’s full support, when it was announced that British, American and Scandinavian organisations were to open an £130,000 farm training centre and secondary school at Mkushi, for South African refugees entering from Bechuanaland. Kenneth Kaunda has declared: ‘I do not intend to encourage armed uprisings in South Africa and other white- ruled countries such as the Portuguese territories. Until the freedom struggle is won, we have a very constructive role to play.’ He clings to his hope that the pressure of world opinion through the United Nations can ultimately ‘bring Southern Africa to its senses’ without wholesale destruction and bloodshed.

President Kaunda reacted angrily to suggestions in September 1963 that South Africa might be allowed to take over the High Commission territories of Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Basutoland. He said that Zambia would never accept an abdication of authority by Britain, unless this was followed immediately by the ‘total handover of power to the indigenous people themselves’. Any surrender of the High Commission territories to South Africa would be resisted by ‘all means at our disposal’. He added determinedly: ‘No matter what the price.’ On 15th April 1964, Zambia celebrated Africa Day as a public holiday for the first time. At first the holiday was given the title of Africa Freedom Day, but the President said in his message to the nation: ‘There is the question of consolidating independence in our independent states by bringing joy and happiness to the millions of people in these countries, and this can only be done by bringing to an end humanity’s main enemies - hunger, disease, ignorance and poverty. So today we celebrate Africa Day.’ Africa would not be truly free until these destroyers of happiness were overcome.

In his message Kenneth Kaunda referred to his position as chairman of PAFMECSA and pointed to the challenge of the countries in Southern Africa which had not yet attained majority rule. ‘We must not end the day of 15th April without rededicating ourselves to the important task that lies ahead.’ Kaunda realises that the inevitable confrontation of white power around the Zambian borders will shortly present his Pan-African idealism with its most severe test. The world will be watching him.