History of Zambia

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The history of Zambia encompasses developments in the territory of the Republic of Zambia from prehistory to the present.

Prehistoric times

A skull find in Kabwe (" Kabwe 1 ") attests to an early human settlement around 300,000 to 120,000 BC. BC as well as the later prehistoric paintings on the Kifubwa rock near Solwezi as they can be found up to Lilongwe and suggest a settlement by San . This settlement area of ​​the San seems to have been geographically bounded to the north by the Lunda wave and the southern Tanzanian highlands . Their heartland was apparently always Zimbabwe , the areas north and south of it belonged to the migration periphery. Apparently they fed on fruits, nuts and roots, but also on hunted game. There seem to have been major differences in development.

Around the birth of Christ, a population of predominantly hunters and gatherers in Zambia was ousted by more intensive nomads with cattle, who were presumably also San. The ancient rock carvings found in Zambia are nowhere near as differentiated as those in Zimbabwe.

Early days

In the vicinity of Kalundu Mound near Kalomo there are remains of a settlement of the "Dambwa group" from the 9th-12th centuries. Century, the first arable farmers in this region, who assimilated the hunters and gatherers of the "Kalundu group".

From the 7th century in the north-west of Zambia there are settlements of people who knew the use of iron and were thus able to colonize the Zambezi Spring area and the area south of it for the first time. The archaeological site of Ingombe Ilede at the mouth of the Lusitu River in the Zambezi near Siavonga , in the part flooded by the Kariba reservoir, offers artifacts of textiles that are believed to have come from India, bells that were made in West Africa, copper bars, gold that is believed to be in Munhumutapa was mined, ceramics, the tradition of which was named after the site, and pottery of a higher quality than anywhere else in Zambia before 1500. It is assumed that there was trade through Munhumutapa, a trade axis from north to south. Ingombe Ilede reached its heyday between 1300 and 1500. The finds are in the Livingstone Museum .

Around 800 the first Bantu-speaking peoples, presumably ancestors of the Tonga , reached northernmost parts of Zambia from the Congo Basin. With this immigration, the northern border of the San settlement area shifted to the south for the first time. These immigrants were arable farmers and cattle herders. Complex superimpositions of drawings in caves in northeastern Zambia show that immigrants took them over as sanctuaries. Much speaks in favor of a slow infiltration of the Bantu into Zambian territory.

Almost at the same time as the copper production in Munhumutapa, the first copper mining can be proven around 1000 in the Zambian town of Kansanshi . There are copper bars from this early period that may have been used as currency. However, copper mining only experienced its heyday in the period between the 16th and 19th centuries, when copper mining in Munhumutapa long ended. So far, cross-connections cannot be derived either in technology or in the way of settlement.

From 1000 onwards, the first Swahili traders from the Indian Ocean reached the east of Zambia, one by one and one by one. Their trading interests include slaves, copper, gold, and ivory. The oldest Swahili trading centers can be found on Zambian territory where outposts and settlements of Munhumutapa such as Zumbo have long been found . This trade with the Arab-Asiatic region evidently developed in this area from Inhambane , long before it took a new, completely independent approach from the north from Zanzibar.

Pottery from around 1200 can be found on the Batoka Plateau in South Zambia, the samples of which are still used today. Since similar pottery - called the Luangwa tradition - was also found in northern, eastern and central Zambia, as well as in Malawi and Mozambique , which only differ in the patterns, different waves of immigration are assumed, which is on Bantu, specifically on Chewa and Bemba , would refer. This immigration assumes the existence of the Kingdom of Baluba .

Some graves from the 14th century can be found near Kalomo , in which the dead were buried with ornaments made of sea shells and exotic glass.

The period from 1400 to 1800 is largely in the dark, but it was the time of the highest copper production in Kansanshi. Trade routes to the Indian Ocean existed, but the buyers of the copper are unknown.

The immigration of Bantu-speaking peoples

Luangwa River Valley

From 1450 the first waves of Bantu-speaking tribes and ethnic groups settled in what is now Zambia. However, their greatest immigration took place between the late 17th and early 19th centuries. The Chewa and the Bemba , tribal groups that could not have been very large, were among the first waves of immigration . Presumably they moved up the Luapula valley in small groups , over the Muchinga Mountains and down the Luangwa valley , from where they reached the area on the opposite bank of today's Tete am Zambezi , where they settled from 1480. Around 1600 the kingdom of Lunda also existed in the Luapula floodplains on Lake Mweru .

At the same time, there were the first Portuguese settlements in Zumbo and Petauke from 1600 , followed by Arab trading centers (also for the slave trade ), which in turn had used Munhumutapa settlements. It is not certain whether they were actually Arab traders. The Portuguese came across Swahili- speaking traders and rulers.

In 1835, in the course of the Mfecane, a wave of Nguni settlements from South Africa reached eastern Zambia, the Dedza Mountains and the highlands of the Viphya Mountains from the southeast . They are followed by the south from 1838 Kololo , the back wandering the West Zambia in Barotseebene reached and there the Kingdom of the Lozi reasons.

At this time the San had evidently already been pushed south towards the upper reaches of the Zambezi and in any case reduced to a (presumably secondary) wild life.

Further contacts with Europeans and British colonialism

Map of Rhodesia (1911)
Cecil Rhodes
Flag of Northern Rhodesia 1939–1954

In 1851 David Livingstone first reached today's Zambia, in 1855 he was the first European to see the Victoria Falls and in 1873 the Bangweulus Marshes . The first mission station was established in 1884 by François Coillard in Sesheke in the Kingdom of Barotse .

In 1888 the Briton Cecil Rhodes acquired mining rights from local rulers. In 1890 the area became part of Rhodesia named after Rhodes . The British interest in the country was based on the raw materials found, especially the copper ore deposits. There was no noteworthy colonial political competition with Portugal , Belgium or France , and the first Chancellors of the German Empire in 1871, Bismarck and Caprivi , explicitly did not oppose this.

In 1902, the first copper mine in Luanshya was put into operation. This was followed by a slow development of the Copperbelt with infrastructure from the 1930s onwards . In 1909 the railway line from Livingstone to Ndola was completed. The area gained a strong momentum, especially since the Zambezi Valley with its steep gorges proved to be an insurmountable geographical barrier that stood in the way of any political unity in Rhodesia. In 1923 today's Zambia became “ Northern Rhodesia ” under the British Protectorate and was thus independent. The development of the Copperbelt since the early 1930s with the boom in copper production has now increased on a large scale.

In 1918 the German East African colonial force (" Schutztruppe ") under Major General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck was militarily forced out of what was then German East Africa to the north-east of what would later become Zambia, where it capitulated as part of the armistice at the end of the First World War. Otherwise, however, European conflicts in present-day Zambia remained an insignificant episode.

Instead, the confrontation between the British and black Africans increased. In 1930 the first strike of the miners took place, who at first were not allowed to form unions, but welfare organizations. There were further strikes in 1940 and 1956. Since the British in Northern Rhodesia always felt, established and acted as gentry or master caste, they granted their workers certain rights, but never equality. Since these workers were all black Africans, this conflict quickly took on a class struggle dimension.

In 1946 the Federation of African Welfare Societies was founded, the first “pre-political” Bantu party to emerge from their labor movement. They wanted equal rights. In 1958, 70,000 whites lived in the Copperbelt and dominated the Bantu-speaking peoples politically, economically, socially and culturally. There are stark contrasts in the way of life between Europeans, who were increasingly influenced by the apartheid policy of South Africa, where Northern Rhodesia promised a northern bulwark against African aspirations for independence, and the villages, to a lesser extent the factory settlements of black Africans. The last smallpox epidemic in 1963/64 hit the unvaccinated black Africans, not the British.

Independence

The Second World War marked the end of colonialism. A phase of reorganization followed, but it did not last. In 1953 (until 1964) Northern Rhodesia became part of the Central African Federation , together with Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ) and Nyasaland (now Malawi ). These three countries had nothing in common, politically and economically, apart from being British colonial territories. Northern Rhodesia had a monoculture of copper mining. There was never a notable agriculture of British colonists, as it characterizes Zimbabwe and can be found in Malawi as a plantation economy on a small scale. In Northern Rhodesia there was no broad economic or social impetus from the colonial power. The copper had made a lot of quick money, but left much less in Northern Rhodesia than in the other two countries from resources that were much more difficult to use. This should shape the political goals of the independence movements of all three countries and their political parties to this day. All three countries have adopted their specific economic policy emphasis from the colonial era to this day.

The constitution of 1959 guaranteed European, Indian and black African women and men the right to vote, albeit with strict restrictions on citizenship, residence status, education and property. These restrictions created a large imbalance in favor of the white population. The first direct elections were held on October 30, 1962, with significantly expanded voting rights. These led to the independence of Zambia and were the first elections in which the active and passive right to vote was valid. In October 1964, universal suffrage for adults was achieved with independence.

Kenneth Kaunda (1983)
Zambia after independence

On October 24, 1964, Zambia gained independence from Great Britain under the presidency of Kenneth Kaunda , but remained a member of the Commonwealth . In the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, Kenneth D. Kaunda won government power with the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in 1964 and achieved independence. Three people determined the spirit of this time: Kenneth Kaunda, Simon Kapwepwe and Alice Lenshina . All three came from the Chinsali district , were first comrades-in-arms, then dangerous opponents. Kaunda actually continued the principle of economic monostructure, encouraged settlement in the metropolitan areas on the railway line and was unable to develop any prospects for rural subsistence farmers . That worked as long as the copper price on the world market was high and the export ports were accessible. When Rhodesia closed the border with Zambia in 1965 because the country was sanctioned by the United Nations after the unilateral declaration of independence by the large white farmers, the Benguela Railway remained the only access to the sea for Zambia, which became increasingly unsafe due to the civil war in Angola has been.

In 1964 the University of Zambia was founded in Lusaka , which was initially based heavily on the formerly respected Rhodes-Livingstone Institute of Social Research (which mostly worked in ethnosociology throughout Central Africa) . From 1965 onwards, Zambia increasingly supported political black African revolutionary organizations in neighboring countries such as the Union for the Total Liberation of Angola ( UNITA ), the Zimbabwe African Peoples' Union ( ZAPU ), the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) and South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO). Then the government resorted to economic power. From 1969 the Zambian government gradually took over a 51 percent majority in the copper mines and smelters. The white administrative staff were replaced by Zambians. But increasing corruption and incompetence in companies and administration undermined the foundations of Zambian politics.

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The decline of Zambia was therefore only a question of the world market development for domestic copper. In 1972, all political parties except UNIP Kaundas were banned, and in 1973 Kaunda declared Zambia a one-party state after unrest over the new constitution . When the copper prices on the world market, the country's most important export product, began to fall continuously from 1975 onwards, a screw began to turn downwards that has kept Zambia on the ground to this day. GDP has since fallen by 30 percent. The government began to put the country into debt. She cut the food subsidies. Supply and infrastructure deteriorated noticeably. When the TAZARA railway line, which was built with Chinese funding and technical assistance, began operating to the port of Dar es Salaam in 1976 and the Benguela Railway collapsed for a long time in 1978, there was no economic solution. Zambia's exports and imports have long since passed through the port of Durban in the Republic of South Africa . Instead of, for example, making a U-turn in the political orientation towards the smallholders, as brought Malawi to some development and stability under Hastings Kamuzu Banda , the Schwend farmers were left without artificial fertilizers, seeds, development of new forms and types of cultivation, which quickly depleted the soil . When the first case of AIDS was reported in Zambia in 1984, cholera and typhoid were still endemic.

The democracy

In 1990, after massive domestic political pressure and pressure from international donor countries, Kaunda allowed the first democratic multi-party election since the first republic. In 1991 Frederick Chiluba was elected as the new president after a constitutional amendment and associated party formation, the new ruling party was now the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD).

Levy Mwanawasa

But in 1995 Zambia's per capita debt was one of the highest in the world. On January 2, 2002, Levy Mwanawasa became president in a controversial election that EU observers describe as chaotic and unfair . However, he died in office on August 19, 2008. The acting Vice President Rupiah Banda has been elected as his successor and is leading the term to the end. In 2011 Michael Sata ( Patriotic Front , PF) was elected President. He died in office on October 28, 2014. Vice President Guy Scott served on an acting basis. In January 2015 Edgar Lungu (also PF) won the presidential election; Inonge Wina became Vice-President for the first time as a woman.

On August 11, 2016, presidential, parliamentary and local elections were held simultaneously. A constitutional amendment was also voted on. Lungu was re-elected with a narrow majority in the first ballot.

See also

Web links

Commons : History of Zambia  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International Encyclopedia of Women's Suffrage. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , p. 7.
  2. ↑ - New Parline: the IPU's Open Data Platform (beta). In: data.ipu.org. October 30, 1962, accessed October 13, 2018 .
  3. ↑ BBC News, August 11, 2016 , accessed August 11, 2016
  4. ^ Zambia: opposition claims fraud in presidential vote. Wall Street Journal August 15, 2016, accessed August 15, 2016