Kenneth Kaunda
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Image:Kenneth Kaunda headshot.jpg Kenneth David Kaunda, commonly known as KK (born April 28, 1924) was the first President of Zambia (1964–1991).
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Early life
Kenneth Kaunda was the youngest of eight children. He was born at the Lubwa Mission in Chinsali, Northern Province of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. His father was the Reverend David Kaunda, an ordained Church of Scotland missionary and teacher, who was born in Malawi and had moved to Chinsali to work at Lubwa Mission.
He attended Munali Training Centre in Lusaka (August 1941–1943).
He was a teacher at the Upper Primary School and Boarding Master at Lubwa and then Headmaster at Lubwa from 1943 to 1945. He left Lubwa for Lusaka to become an instructor in the army, but was dismissed. He was for a time working at the Salisbury and Bindura Mine. In early 1948 he became a teacher in Mufulira for the United Missions to the Copperbelt (UMCB). He was then assistant at an African Welfare Centre and Boarding Master of a Mine School in Mufulira. In this period he was leading a Pathfinder Scout Group and was Choirmaster at a Church of Central Africa Congregation. He was also for a time Vice-Secretary of the Nchanga Branch of Congress.
Independence Struggle
In April 1949 he 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. He broke from the ANC and formed the Zambian African National Congress (ZANC) in 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).
On his release in January 1960 he was elected President of the newly formed United National Independence Party (UNIP), which replaced ZANC. In July 1961 he organized a civil disobedience campaign in Northern Province, the so called Cha-cha-cha campaign, 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 out the ANC under Harry 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
In the same year Kaunda had to deal with the controversial Lumpa Church led by Alice Lenshina in the Northern Province (active against secular authority both in colonial times and in the newly independent Zambia). He was severely admonished for sending in Zambian para-military police in which over 700 people died. The riots brought Kaunda to proclaim a state of emergency that was to be kept till 1991.
Becoming increasingly intolerant of opposition, Kaunda banned all parties except the 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 the UNIP and found a rival party, the United Progressive Party, which was readily banned. Kaunda called Zambia a one-party participating democracy and elaborated an ideology he called Humanism, based on what he considered the basic African values: mutual aid, trust and loyalty to the community. Kaunda's nationalization of the copper mining industry in the late 1960's early led to increased economic problems. This was partly augmented by his economic and logistic support of insurgencies in South Africa, the Portuguese colonies of Portuguese West Africa (now Angola)and Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); but it mainly resulted from the decline of the price of copper in the 1970s (augmented by Zambian copper requiring heavy transportation costs to market). In Zambia this was worsened by the lack of continuous qualified technical assistance in the mines, with a consequent productivity decline and, after nationalization of the mines, a re-prioritization of money away from the mines into other areas (and growing corruption by the country's leadership class).
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 the Prime Minister, Pieter Willem Botha on the Botswana border to discuss the political situation in South West Africa and South Africa. Kaunda was criticised in the African press for meeting with representatives of the Apartheid regime.
His policies made Zambia increasingly dependent on revenues from copper exports. By the mid-1980s, Kaunda's government had lost a great deal of public support due to wide-spread corruption and an economic downturn. Pressure for a return to multiparty politics increased and Kaunda volunatrily 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.
Foreign policy
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[1]. Joshua Nkomo the leader of ZAPU also stationed a military base in Zambia. In retaliation the white minority governments of Rhodesia and South Africa frequently led espionage and bombing attacks in Zambia. Herbert Chitepo, prominent ZANU leader, was killed in a car bomb in Lusaka in 1975. The struggle in both Rhodesia and South Africa and its offshoot wars in Namibia, Angola and Mozambique placed a huge economic burden on Zambia as these were the country's main trading partners. As a response to the economic pressure Kaunda, negotiated the TAZARA, a railway linking landlocked Zambia to Tanzania's port of Dar-es-Salaam. Once completed, this was till 1975 the only route for bulk trade which did not pass for white-controlled territories. This precarious situation lasted more than twenty years, up until the end of apartheid in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 the first country he visited was Zambia on 27th February [2].
During the cold war years Kaunda was a strong supporter of the Non Aligned Movement. He had frequent but cordial differences with President Reagan whom he met 1983[3] and Margaret Thatcher [4] mainly over what he saw as the West's blind eye to apartheid. He always maintained warm relations with the People's Republic of China who had provided assistance on many projects in Zambia including TAZARA.
In the late 1980s prior the first Gulf War Kaunda developed a friendship with Saddam Hussein with whom he struck various agreements to supply oil to Zambia. During the events that led to the Gulf War, Saddam became increasingly isolated.
In August 1989 Farzad Bazoft was arrested in Iraq for alleged espionage. He was accompanied by a British nurse, Daphne Parish who was arrested as well. Bazoft was an Iranian born British freelance journalist who was about to expose Saddam's gassing of the Kurds. Bazoft was later tried, sentenced to death and executed. Parish was sentenced to 15 years in prison. However in 1990 just as the gulf war was about to break out Kaunda successfully managed to negotiate the release of Parish with Saddam.[5]
Kaunda served as chairman of the OAU from 1970 to 1973.
Post presidency
Chiluba later attempted to deport Kaunda on the ground that he was a Malawian. Chiluba had the constitution amended, barring citizens with foreign parentage from standing for the presidency, to prevent Kaunda from contesting the next elections in 1996, and Kaunda retired from politics after he was accused of involvement in a failed 1997 coup attempt.
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External links
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