Kenneth Kaunda
Kenneth David Kaunda (born April 28, 1924 in the Lubwa Mission near Chinsali , † June 17, 2021 in Lusaka ) was the first President of Zambia from 1964 to 1991 and one of the most important politicians in the context of the liberation movements in southern Africa .
Life
Kenneth Kaunda was the youngest of eight children. He was at the mission Lubwa the Church of Scotland Mission born in Chinsali that in today Muchinga Province is located in Zambia. His father was David Kaunda, pastor, missionary and teacher of the (Reformed) Scottish Church , who was born in northern Malawi and then moved to Chinsali to work in the Lubwa Mission. His mother was a teacher and the first woman in this region to do this job. Kenneth Kaunda grew up in the traditional Bemba environment .
Education and early years of work
Kenneth Kaunda was the child of a religion teacher sent to Lubwa by the Presbyterian Mission in Livingstonia . He graduated from the Lubwa Mission School and attended the Munali Secondary School in Lusaka from 1941 to 1943 for teacher training. Then he became a teacher at the secondary school and boarding school teacher in Lubwa. From 1943 to 1947 he taught at this school. Kaunda also taught in Tanganyika for two years . Around 1949 Kaunda worked as a boy scout, soccer coach; he was also employed as a social worker for the Nchanga mine in the Copperbelt . In 1949 he ran a farm with two partners. He then moved to Lusaka to become an army instructor, but was turned down. Kenneth Kaunda then went to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ) and worked in mining operations in Bindura and around Salisbury .
In 1946 he married Betty Kaunda .
The struggle against British colonial rule
In April 1949 Kaunda returned to Lubwa to work as a part-time teacher. He resigned in 1951 because he was the organizing secretary of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress (NRANC), first for a district and in 1952 for the northern province, which then included the province of Luapula . On November 11, 1953, he moved to Lusaka to work there as Secretary General of the NRANC under Chairman Harry Nkumbula . But the combined efforts of Kaunda and Nkumbula to mobilize the local population against the colonial authorities and their Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland were ineffective. In 1955 they were both arrested and sent to prison for two months of hard labor for distributing subversive writings. Kaunda became heavily politicized by this experience. In 1957 he was a guest of the Labor Party in Great Britain and attended a conference for Commonwealth politicians. In the meantime he has become estranged from Nkumbula, who was increasingly under the influence of British liberals and wanted to compromise on the subject of "rule by the black majority". Nkumbula's autocratic leadership style also worked in this direction in the NRANC. In any case, Kaunda left the NRANC and founded the Zambian African National Congress (ZANC) in October 1958 . ZANC was banned as early as March 1959, and on March 12, Kaunda served a nine-month prison sentence for undesirable political activity, which he served first in Lusaka and then in Salisbury .
While Kaunda was in custody, another nationalist, Mainza Chona , separated from the NRANC in October 1959 . Chona became chairman of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), the successor party to ZANC. But Chona never saw himself as the founder of UNIP. When Kaunda was released in January 1960, he was elected chairman of UNIP. In July 1961, Kaunda organized a campaign of civil disobedience in the Northern Province, known as the Cha-cha-cha Campaign, which set schools on fire and blocks roads. In 1962 Kaunda ran for UNIP. A coalition of UNIP and ZRANC followed with Kaunda as Minister for Local and Social Affairs. In January 1964 UNIP won the first general election under the new constitution, whereupon Kaunda became Prime Minister and on October 24, 1964 the first president of independent Zambia. Simon Kapwepwe became the first vice president.
Kaunda published the book Humanism in Zambia and a guide to its implementation (eg: "Humanism in Zambia and a guide for its implementation," three parts) to arrived later than writings of his followers Fundamentals of Zambian Humanism ( "Principles of Zambian humanism" ) by Timothy Kandeke, Zambian humanism, religion and social morality ( "Zambian humanism, religion and social morality") of Cleveland Dillion Malone and Zambian humanism: Some major spiritual and economic challenges ( "Zambian humanism: Some great spiritual and economic challenges") by Justin B. Zulu.
Kaunda as President
Domestically, Kaunda was challenged in the year of independence by the Lumpa movement , a Christian, sharply anti- traditional Pentecostal church of Alice Lenshina in the region around his hometown of Chinsali, which had already challenged the British, which had cost numerous lives. Kaunda himself was initially shaped by similar lines of thought in his political stance and ethics.
Julius Nyerere , the first president of Tanzania , gained more influence on Kaunda's concept of humanism in Zambia from 1964 with his ujamaa concept. It comprised values that he proclaimed as traditional African values based on pillars such as “mutual aid”, “trust” and “loyalty to the community ”. Kaunda was by no means the only African leader of its kind in this.
Alice Lenshina opposed any form of secular power, against that of the British as well as against the Kaundas, whereupon he dispatched police forces, which resulted in numerous deaths. These riots caused Kaunda to declare a state of emergency.
Educational policy
At the time of independence (October 24, 1964), there were just 109 university graduates among the black population in Zambia. Zambia had one of the least developed school systems under British colonial rule, which was essentially based on schools from the numerous missions operating in the country. A state school system first had to be built up after independence was achieved. Kaunda had a policy that all children, regardless of their parents' solvency, should receive books and stationery when they went to school. Parents were required to buy school uniforms for their children, pay school fees and send their children to school. This approach also pursued the goal of promoting the most gifted students to university.
In 1966 the University of Zambia was opened in Lusaka . Kaunda became university rector and conducted the first graduation ceremony in 1969. The previous Rhodes-Livingstone Institute for Social Research , which emerged from significant ethnological research, was initially an important founding element, but was later neglected. The main campus was on the Great East Road , the medical campus on Ridgeway near the university clinic and in 1979 another campus was added in Kitwe for the Zambia Institute of Technology , which was upgraded to Copperbelt University in 1988 and offers studies in economics and manufacturing - and environmental sciences. The University of Lusaka offers courses in agriculture, engineering, natural sciences, education, law and social sciences, medicine, veterinary medicine and mining. Studies last four years, in engineering and medicine five and seven years.
Kaunda also built up an advanced training sector, a vocational school that was subordinate to the “Department for Technical Training and Advanced Training”. This also included the Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts and Commerce and the Natural Resource Development College in Lusaka, the Northern Technical College in Ndola , the Livingstone Trades Training Institute in Livingstone and several universities of teacher education.
economy
At the time of independence, Kaunda took over an economy focused solely on copper mining, which was also completely under the control of foreigners. The British South Africa Company (BSAC) held investments and mining rights which it claimed to have acquired through the concessions it received from the Bulozi Litunga in 1890 (Lochner Concession). The BSAC withdrew here to a purely private-law position, which it was not entitled to as a company commissioned by the British government, also with sovereign rights. Only by threatening to expropriate them immediately after independence was Kaunda able to persuade the BSAC to hand over their rights to the new government. During the time of the "Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland", the profits from copper mining flowed into what is now Zimbabwe, as the white Rhodesians were the dominant economic and political group in Zambia. They did their jobs as managers and in administration, while Zambia contributed the profits from copper mining and Nyassaland the black workforce. When Zambia became independent, Salisbury was far more developed than Lusaka.
From the beginning, Zambia took over the approach of the Eastern Bloc countries to draw up a five-year plan. Under the leadership of the National Commission for Development and Planning , first the Preliminary Development Plan 1964–1966, then the First National Development Plan 1966–1971 was drawn up. These two plans, which included major investments in infrastructure and industry, were largely implemented and proved successful. All the plans that followed then failed to achieve their goal.
A fundamental change in Zambia's economy came with the Mulungushi reforms in April 1968. The government announced its intention to acquire the majority of several foreign companies in order to let them be managed by the Industrial Development Corporation (INDECO). In January 1970, Zambia had acquired a majority stake in the two largest foreign mining companies, the Anglo American Corporation and the Rhodesia Selection Trust (RST). They became the Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines (NCCM) and the Roan Consolidated Mines (RCM). Kaunda announced another semi-public company, the Mining Development Corporation (MINDECO). The Financial and Development Corporation (FINDECO) enabled the government to take control of construction companies and insurance companies. The foreign banks successfully withstood the takeover pressure, including Barclays, Standard Chartered and Grindlays. INDECO, MINDECO and FINDECO were combined under one umbrella company in 1971, the Zambia Industrial and Mining Corporation (ZIMCO), which became one of the largest companies in sub-Saharan Africa. Kaunda took over the chairmanship of the board. The contracts to merge Anglo American and RST were signed in 1973 and in 1982 NCCM and RCM became Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd. (ZCCM) merged.
Due to the strong fixation on a few branches of the economy, the five-year plans did not lead to success in the crisis of the 1970s. Because in 1973 the oil price rose enormously and the copper price on the world market halved by 1975. Since Zambia achieved 95 percent of its export revenues from copper, this was a disaster for the country. Zambia already experienced a payment crisis in 1976 and quickly fell into debt with the International Monetary Fund . The Third National Development Plan 1978–1983 had to be abandoned in favor of crisis management.
In the mid-1980s, Zambia was one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world in relation to gross domestic product . The IMF insisted that Zambia stabilize and restructure its economy to overcome its dependence on copper. The proposed measures were: ending price controls, devaluing the Zambian kwacha , reducing government spending, removing subsidies for food and artificial fertilizers, and increasing prices for agricultural products. When Kaunda cut these subsidies, basic food prices got out of hand. The urban population reacted with violent unrest. For this reason, Kaunda broke the agreements with the IMF in May 1987 and decided on the New Economy Recovery Program in 1988. This led to a renewed understanding with the IMF in 1989. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, on which Kaunda and his Zambian policy were based Having sustained humanism, the time had come for fundamental political upheaval. Kaunda announced that it would partially privatize the semi-public companies. But this change came too late to keep him in power. It was the copper price on the world market that withdrew it from him.
"One-Party Participatory Democracy" and African Socialism
Kaunda became increasingly intolerant of the opposition over time. After the unrest of the 1968 election, he banned all parties except UNIP. In addition, his first foreign minister and now challenger Simon Kapwepwe had left UNIP and created his own apparatus with the United Progressive Party, which immediately banned Kaunda. In February 1972 Kaunda set up the Chona Commission , named after its chairman Mainza Chona , which was supposed to work out a draft constitution. This commission, in turn, was not empowered to discuss Kaunda's decision itself. The ANC, however, stayed away from the commission and unsuccessfully sued the Zambian Supreme Court against the constitutional amendment. The report of the Chona Commission was presented in October 1972 and was largely understood as a comparatively liberal document.
Kaunda proclaimed one-party participation democracy in Zambia, which is to be seen as a form of dictatorship . In the end, he neutralized Harry Nkumbula from the ANC by persuading him to give up the ANC and join UNIP. This happened on June 27, 1973 with the signing of the so-called "Declaration of Choma". After the National Assembly was dissolved in October 1973, the ANC ceased to exist. A personality cult around Kaunda was also staged and approved by himself. But he always refrained from political death sentences against his opponents.
The liberation movements
Kenneth Kaunda supported liberation movements in Angola , Mozambique , Zimbabwe and the Republic of South Africa . However, its financial support fell with the price of copper on the world market. In addition, it did not stop him from taking cover in South Africa. On August 25 and 26, 1976, he met with the South African Prime Minister, Balthazar Johannes Vorster , at the Victoria Falls and on April 30, 1982 with his successor, Pieter Willem Botha, on the border with Botswana , to discuss the political situation in the southwest - and to speak of South Africa. Kaunda was heavily criticized for this, but he was able to secure the southward transport routes for Zambia's foreign trade. His support for the liberation movements had previously resulted in the interruption of the Benguela Railway and the TAZARA railway to Tanzania built by the People's Republic of China was insufficient for freight traffic.
Foreign policy
In terms of foreign policy, it became significant that Kaunda pragmatically recognized the People's Republic of the two Chinas and the Federal Republic of the two Germanys; he commented that he had ever taken the larger state.
During the early part of his presidency, Kaunda was an avowed supporter of anti- apartheid movements and an opponent of the white minority government in Rhodesia . Kaunda allowed a number of liberation movements such as the ZAPU and ZANU from Southern Rhodesia or the African National Congress from South Africa to set up their headquarters in the state capital Lusaka . Joshua Nkomo maintained a military base of his ZAPU at the dam of the Mulungushi River . In return, Rhodesians and South Africans carried out a number of bomb attacks and were on site with spies. Herbert Chitepo , a ZANU leader, died in a car bomb explosion in Lusaka in 1975. The struggle with Rhodesia, South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique brought heavy economic burdens as these countries were Zambia's trading partners. This difficult situation lasted for twenty years, until the end of apartheid in South Africa. Kaunda was chairman of the OAU from 1970 to 1973.
During the Cold War, Kaunda was an avid supporter of the Non-Aligned Movement . He had this movement hold a conference in Lusaka in 1970 and was its chairman from 1970 to 1973. He maintained a remarkable friendship with Yugoslavia's head of state Josip Broz Tito , for whose visit to Zambia he even had a house built in Lusaka. He had frequent differences with US President Ronald Reagan , whom he met in 1983, and Margaret Thatcher over what he called "their blind eye for apartheid". Good relations developed with the GDR; There was a GDR embassy in Lusaka until the GDR joined the FRG in 1990. Kaunda always had excellent relations with the People's Republic of China, which TAZARA had built for him. Kenneth Kaunda was also on friendly terms with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and President Kim Il Sung , and the KDVR had a large embassy in Lusaka, Rhodes Park Area. In the late 1980s, Kaunda had relationships with Saddam Hussein , with whom he concluded several agreements for oil supplies for Zambia. With the attack on Kuwait, the First Gulf War and the following embargos, however, they were over.
Kaunda's turn to autocracy
Kaunda's autocratic leadership style is most strongly expressed in the voting results of the Second Republic in 1969 and 1988. He personally appointed the members of the UNIP Central Committee, even if the party congress decided on these appointments by approving them. In return, this Central Committee consistently nominated him as the only candidate for the presidency in Zambia. The people were then allowed to vote yes or no at the ballot box. Since the presidential election was always held at the same time as the national assembly, every parliamentary candidate was encouraged to campaign for the president. The semi-public companies, such as the Zambia Industrial and Mining Corporation (ZIMCO), were also required to place advertisements for the president in the Times of Zambia and the Zambia Daily Mail .
The elections to the National Assembly were also heavily controlled by Kaunda. The candidates were submitted to the UNIP Central Committee, which selected three candidates (not just one) for each constituency. One candidate could be excluded from the election by the Central Committee without justification. In this way Kaunda was able to completely block access to politics for anyone who did not like it. He used this tactic when he thwarted Nkumbula and Kapwepwe's candidacies in the 1978 elections. On this occasion, the UNIP statutes were supplemented, which made it impossible for both candidates to stand for election. Kapwepwe was told that he could not run because he had not been a party member for five years. Nkumbula was outmaneuvered by the new rule that every candidate would need the signature of 200 delegates from each province, but that his political base was the southern province. A third candidate, Chiluwe, was so beaten up by the UNIP youth organization that he could not submit his nomination.
The loss of power
The Kaundas case came with the end of the “Cold War”. The copper exports no longer produced the previous surpluses, Zambia was heavily indebted. The central administration economy has long since proven to be inefficient and, above all, corrupt. UNIP and with it Kaunda were no longer considered capable of reform. The IMF had forced reforms, but neither UNIP nor Kaunda were able to implement them. People who had not dared to criticize him before now began to challenge him politically. His admired friend Julius Nyerere had resigned as President of Tanzania back in 1985 and was quietly trying to convince Kaunda to do the same.
In January 1989 Kaunda sent a delegation to the founding congress of the Humanist International in Florence, which Zambia intended to join as a member. In a subsequent visit by the delegation of the Humanist International (1989), which also included Silo , the representatives of the Humanist International laid down the conditions for Zambia's admission, including the abolition of the one-party system and holding free elections within a year and the release of political prisoners.
The pressure for a return to the multiparty system grew. Kaunda finally faced a multi-party election. This 1991 election in Zambia was won by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), and Kaunda easily handed over his presidency on November 2, 1991 with the inauguration of his successor Frederick Chiluba . After Mathieu Kérékou in Benin , he was only the second president of the African continent to allow and accept his removal through free multi-party elections.
In January 1992 he also gave up the chairmanship of UNIP.
Kaunda's political afterlife
After the Chiluba government fell into disrepute, Kaunda took over the chairmanship of UNIP again from 1995–1998. Chiluba tried to eliminate Kaunda politically for good by denouncing him as a Malawian and excluding him from running a further candidacy through a constitutional amendment that stipulated that both parents of a candidate had to be Zambian. The 1996 election in Zambia took place without Kaunda. When he was charged with attempting a coup in 1997, he finally withdrew from active Zambian politics.
In the meantime, he was well respected as an elder statesman . From 2002 to 2004 he was an African President in residence at Boston University. He managed to position his son, Tilyenji Kaunda , as chairman of the UNIP. In the 2001 election in Zambia, he was able to win ten percent of the vote as a presidential candidate. UNIP won 13 seats in the National Assembly. But the success was not permanent. For the 2006 election in Zambia , UNIP itself no longer ran, but within the United Democratic Alliance .
In 2000 he was the initiator of the Jubilee 2000 debt relief initiative for developing countries. In early 2007 he gave the opening speech at the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya . In January 2008, Kaunda led a delegation of African heads of state who sought mediation between Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his opponent Raila Odinga during the civil war-like unrest in Kenya.
Kaunda has modernized Zambia and pragmatically kept at a distance with all its commitment to liberation movements from political conflicts. He has integrated his state into a nation and at least created essential foundations in education policy.
Orders and decorations
In 1975 Kaunda was honored with the Grand Cross of the Portuguese Order of Infante Dom Henrique . On March 21, 2010, he was awarded the highest order in the Republic of Namibia as part of the 20th anniversary of Namibian Independence Day. He personally accepted the Welwitschia Mirabilis Order 1st Class. On August 17, 2010, Kaunda, together with the Namibian founding president Sam Nujoma and Hashim Mbita, received the “Sir Seretse Khama SADC Medal”, the highest award of the development community in southern Africa .
miscellaneous
Kenneth Kaunda played the single Spirit of Zambia in 1990 together with the American singer Oliver Cheatham . In addition, a recording of the national anthem of Zambia (Zambia National Anthem) , which was also released on record , was made in his official residence in Lusaka in the same year .
After Michael Sata was elected president, he had the capital's Lusaka International Airport renamed as Kenneth Kaunda International Airport . A district in South Africa is named Kaunda in honor of Dr Kenneth Kaunda . A street in Namibia's capital Windhoek has been named after Kaunda since 2013 . His home in the 1960s, Chilenje House 394 in Lusaka, was turned into a museum.
Works
- Zambia shall be free: an autobiography / Kenneth D. Kaunda . Heinemann Educational , London 1962.
- A humanist in Africa: letters to Colin M. Morris from Kenneth D. Kaunda, President of Zambia . Longmans , London 1966.
- Zambia: independence and beyond . Nelson , London 1966 (co-author: Colin Legum).
- Humanism in Zambia. Imba-Verlag, Freiburg i. Ue. 1973.
- Letters to my children - Dedicated to the youth of Zambia. 1972 (German 1980 by Uta Pelkmann and Frank Kürschner).
Web links
- Literature by and about Kenneth Kaunda in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d Ronald Segal: Political Africa. A Who's Who of Personalities and Parties . Frederick A. Praeger, London 1961, pp. 130-132.
- ^ Former Zambian Leader Kenneth Kaunda Dies. AllAfrica.com, June 17, 2021.
- ↑ a b c d Sheila Keeble (Ed.) SPP Kutumela, A. Booley: The Black Who's Who of Southern Africa Today . African Business Publ., Johannesburg 1979, 1st edition, p. 139.
- ^ Big reunion at the state banquet in Windhoek, Allgemeine Zeitung, March 24, 2010
- ↑ SADC award to Kaunda, Nujoma and Mbita, Allgemeine Zeitung, August 17, 2010 ( Memento of August 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Spirit of Zambia (with Oliver Cheatham) .
- ^ Zambia National Anthem , Images .
Kenneth Kaunda | Frederick Chiluba | Levy Mwanawasa | Rupiah Banda | Michael Sata | Guy Scott (acting) | Edgar Lungu
Kenneth Kaunda | Mainza Chona | Elijah Mudenda | Mainza Chona | Daniel Lisulo | Nalumino Mundia | Kebby Musokotwane | Malimba mask | Office not occupied today
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kaunda, Kenneth |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kaunda, Kenneth David |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Zambian President (1964–1991) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 28, 1924 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lubwa Mission near Chinsali |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 17, 2021 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Lusaka |