Background to His Struggle

Background to his struggle In most African countries the fight for independence has been against European colonial powers. It was never so simple in Zambia. 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 Kenneth Kaunda 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 Tanganyika, Malawi, Mozambique, Southern Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, Angola, 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, Cecil Rhodes 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 Ghana, 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 Copperbelt. 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 Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. This federation, headed by Sir Roy Welensky, 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 freedom 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 Lusaka 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 January 1964, 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 United Nations, 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.

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