Kayode Komolafe
The body of the first president of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, will be buried today in a private ceremony at the presidential cemetery in Lusaka.
Kaunda died on June 17 at the age of 97. He was Zambia’s president for 27 years. A major thread running through the tributes paid Kaunda’s memory is that the man fondly called KK by admirers around the world was one of the last giants of African liberation struggle.
Kaunda was essentially a devotee of pan-Africanism.
Five days ago, the government of President Edgar Lungu honoured the memory of Kaunda with a state funeral at the National Heroes Stadium in Lusaka, the Zambian capital.
There was a 21-gun salute. This was apart from the 21 days of morning earlier declared in the country with the national flag flying at half-mast.
Despite COVID-19 ravaging parts of Africa, almost a dozen presidents and heads of government attended the state funeral. The African presidents acknowledged the roles Kaunda not only in the history of Zambia, but also celebrated his impact in Africa
Among the dignitaries was South African President Cyril Ramaphosa who said: “Kaunda was the last surviving leader of the generation who lit the path to Africa’s freedom from colonial misrule.” According to Ramaphosa, South Africa would “never be able to pay back the debt that we owe” Kaunda.”
It would be remembered that eight years ago Kaunda’s presence was conspicuous at the funeral of Nelson Mandela . Both African leaders shared a passion of total commitment to the cause of freedom and justice.
In the heyday of the liberation struggle, there was a political and ideological bond between Kaunda’s United National Independence Party (UNIP) and South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), the oldest party on the continent. Despite the poor economic status of Zambia, the country made enormous sacrifices for the cause of freedom in southern Africa. It was a lesson that a poor country could still make itself historically relevant given a leadership acting with an organising principle. The liberation fighters found succour and solidarity in Zambia. The apartheid government of South Africa attacked Zambia as the racist regime sought to intimidate the weaker country. The strength of Zambia under Kaunda was more moral and poltical than it was in military terms. It was on this basis that Kaunda was involved in the struggle. There was a spill-over of the armed struggle against colonial powers and apartheid regime in south Africa to the landlocked Zambia. Yet, Kaunda remained undaunted. His head was bloodied; but it remained unbowed.
In fact, despite the security threats Kaunda gloriously hosted the 1979 Commonwealth Conference that partly paved the way for the independence of Rhodesia which became the independent Zimbabwe in 1980.
Little surprise, therefore, that in a similar tone of veneration, Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, said of Kaunda: “We are marking what is truly the end of an era on our continent… the last of the great freedom fighters, the philosopher king”.
Mourners waived white handkerchiefs to the tunes of dirges for the man called “Africa’s Ghandi.” In the fight for freedom, like the Indian leader and sage, Mahatma Gandhi, Kaunda employed peaceful means. From a young age and armed only with his trademark white handkerchief, Kaunda, a catholic, fought for national independence of Zambia as he stood against racial injustice in southern Africa.
Kaunda was a decent politician.
He was the first president on the African continent to be defeated in a multi-party elections. He accepted defeat and elected to retire with grace in 1991. He told his opponent who won the election: “My brother, you have won convincingly and I accept the people’s decision.”
Besides, Kaunda pursued the cause of freedom not only with his head, but also with his heart. He shed tears on many occasions in his political career. He was a deeply emotional activist and politician. Nigerians of older generation would probably recall the following anecdote that could illustrate this aspect of Kaunda’s political personality.
Former Head of State General Murtala Mohammed made a statement on January 11, 1976 at the meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the precursor of African Union (AU), in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia . The historical relevance of that speech entitled “Africa Has Come of Age” still resonates today on the continent. On the agenda was the recognition of the Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) after years of the fight for independence. A week before the meeting, American President Gerald Ford had sent a letter to the Nigerian Head of State through the United Sates Ambassador in Lagos, Donald Easum. And the famous American Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was making diplomatic rounds to African countries to influence the decision of African leaders. America and apartheid South Africa preferred the opponents of the left-wing MPLA namely the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) to be in charge of Angola. Mohammed ’s speech was initially to be delivered by his deputy, General Olusegun Obasanjo, who was the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters. But on going through the draft, Mohammed changed his mind.
He knew when to seize the historical moment. Mohammed decided to address the OAU meeting himself. As he rehearsed the speech while donning his military uniform he reportedly gave instructions that his boots be specially polished for that outing.
Mohammed told the meeting inter alia: “… Africa has Come of age. It is no longer under the orbit of any extra continental power. It should no longer take orders from any country, however powerful. The fortunes of Africa are in our hands to make or mar. For too long have we been kicked around: for too long have we been treated like adolescents who cannot discern their interests and act accordingly. For too long has it been presumed that the African needs outside ‘experts’ to tell him who are his friends and who are his enemies. The time has come when we should make it clear that we can decide for ourselves; that we know our own interests and how to protect those interest; that we are capable of resolving African problems without presumptuous lessons in ideological dangers which, more often than not, have no relevance for us, nor for the problem at hand.”
On that occasion Kaunda was elated. He reportedly shed some tears of joy, saying that he felt fulfilled that an African leader could be so audacious to denounce neo-colonialism and imperialism in explicit terms as Mohammed did at the meeting. Mohammed was assassinated about a month later. The rest, as they say, is history.
The anti- imperialist mood of 45 years ago has been upended on the continent. The ferment against neo-colonialism has virtually expired. At the time of Kaunda’s death, African heads of state are routinely summoned to western capitals allegedly to discuss the economic development of the continent in partnership with western powers. Meanwhile, no one invites the leaders of the Asian tigers in a continental group to his country to discuss economic partnerships. Africa is, perhaps, the only continent in which presidents are assembled in another continent to discuss African problems. In the African public sphere, words such as imperialism and neo-colonialism have disappeared even at the rhetorical level. Yet the reality of neo-colonial influence is palpable in the political economy of virtually every African country.
Since Kaunda’s demise western commentators have passed verdicts on his political career with a neo-colonialist tinge. For instance, in some cynical quarters his historical contributions to the cause of freedom on the continent have been ignored while attention has been focussed almost exclusively on the severe difficulties that bedevilled the Zambian economy in the 1970s and 1980s. With the fall in the prices of commodities and poor human resource development, there were social convulsions on the streets of Zambia.
The country that depended on exports of copper country became increasingly indebted.
Food riots broke out episodically. Despite Kaunda’s stance against neo-colonialism, he eventually turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1987 for a loan. But then the welfarist instinct made him reject some of the IMF neo-liberal economic prescriptions.
Although Kaunda was imbued with enormous idealism and a solid vision of development for his country, he was overwhelmed by the contradictions of neo-colonial Africa. Hence his philosophy of “Zambian Humanism” (a mixture of socialist convictions and Christian faith without intellectual rigour) became an object of derision by the petty- bourgeois and even some left-wing assessors of his legacy.
Yes, it’ s a historical fact that Kaunda stayed for too long in power from independence in 1964 to 1991. He was swept out of power by the wave of democratisation on the continent following the Fall of Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. It was also a grave mistake of his political career that he initially resisted the movement for multi-party democracy led by the trade unionist, Fredrick Chiluba, who eventually succeeded him as president.
Those who took over power in Zambia after the first multiparty elections moved to humiliate Kaunda. After being president for 27 years, his opponents uncharitably questioned his
Zambian nationality. Kaunda’s mother was a Malawian.
The freedom of the author of the popular book, Zambia Shall Be Free, was put in jeopardy. The book published in the Heinemann African Writers Series, is both an autography of Kaunda and a story of the anti-colonial struggle in Zambia.
Unfortunately, the exit of Kaunda from the African stage coincides with this period of tragic decline in pan-Africanist vision. The generation of Kaunda found the purpose of their politics in the broad African context. Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah wrote about an all African government decades before the Europeans agreed on a union. When in the 1930s and 1940s , Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was already an inspirer to others on the continent in the struggle for independence, he was not called Zik of Nigeria; he was known as Zik of Africa. Even more recently, after Thabo Mbeki succeeded Mandela as the president of South Africa he promoted the idea of “African Renaissance.” Tragically, under the watch of one of Mbeki’s successors, President Cyril Ramaphosa, scores of Nigerians and other Africans have been killed in a barbaric upsurge of xenophobia in South Africa. And these killings of Africans in South Africa have been shamelessly rationalised by those who feign ignorance of the fact that blacks in South Africa enjoyed the solidarity of the Kaundas of Africa while they were victims of racist oppression. Whereas the generation of Kaunda dreamt of African unity, some of the present generation of African progressives now think of liberation in ethnic and clannish terms. Worse still, in some cases the continent is saddled with leaderships with provincial orientations. The wars of the 1960s and 1970s supported by Kaunda were fought by national liberation heroes with a clear pan-Africanist perspective. Today the threats of wars are from ethnic war lords with a very backward outlook. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda was a negation of the African unity that Kaunda and his generation envisioned while fighting for independence.
Kaunda, the eight child of his parents who were teachers, lived and fought as a pan-Africanist. That tribute to his memory will endure beyond the present.
May the tribe of KK increase in Africa.
