By Emeka Alex Duru
Announcement of his passage, would ordinarily be heralded by booms of gun shots, sending the message in neighbouring communities, amplified by eerie silence, in the normal African setting. In shock, half-clad women, the mothers, barely covering their upper region, would steal peeps from the door posts, ensuring that the kids were raked in, discussing in hushed tones that ‘night has fallen in day time’. The men, heads bowed, would simply utter, ‘an Iroko has fallen’. And in line with the mood of the moment, a certain feeling of darkness would seem to descend all over the community. An Icon had moved on!
That sums the shock and feeling of loss which trailed the death of Zambia’s founding president and liberation hero, Kenneth David Kaunda (KK) on Thursday June 17, at the age of 97. Kaunda was born on April 28, 1924. He died at a military hospital in the capital, Lusaka, where he was being treated for pneumonia. Kaunda ruled Zambia from 1964, when the Southern African nation won its independence from Britain, until 1991, when he lost power to Frederick Chiluba, in the first multi-party election in the country.
Many things to many people
While alive, the late President represented different things to many people. To the British authorities and the white minority regime in the then Northern Rhodesia (later, Zambia), he was a trouble maker, a thorn in the flesh and someone that needed to be held in close checks, hence the occasional terms of imprisonment landed on him. To the locals in the then Nyasaland (Malawi), where his parents original hailed from and Lusaka, the Zambian capital, he was a teacher and mobiliser. To freedom fighters and agitators of self-determination struggles in Africa, he provided the shoulders to lean on and ears for their complaints. Kaunda was a hero to his kinsmen and an African statesman who played stabilizing role in many parts of the continent. His brand of activism was spiced with hardcore nationalism and unique intellectual engagement which saw him, authoring many books most especially, the sizzling, “Zambia shall be free”.
Africa mourns, celebrates KK
It is therefore hardly surprising that baskets of tributes and eulogies have been coming his way since the announcement of his death. “On behalf of the entire nation and on my own behalf, I pray that the entire Kaunda family is comforted as we mourn our first president and true African icon,” Zambian President, Edgar Lungu, stated in lamenting the loss. As a mark of honour, the authorities in the country, have declared 21 days of mourning for the liberation hero.
Elsewhere, reminiscences of what the late leader represented, resonated. Nigeria’s former vice president, Atiku Abubakar described him as one who epitomised liberation. “Former President Kenneth Kaunda was the last of his generation that epitomised the liberation struggle on the African continent. His passing away is the end of an era. We remain eternally grateful for his services to Zambia and the continent. May his soul rest in peace,” he said.
To the former Senator for Kaduna Central in the National Assembly, Shehu Sani, Africa has lost a patriot in Kaunda. In tow, versatile journalist and newspaper editor, Tony Iyare, acknowledged that “Kaunda, nursed, mobilized and worked for freedom for his dear country. He was indeed one of Africa’s icons”.
Kaunda’s influence was felt beyond his native Zambia. Former Nigeria’s External Affairs Minister and Permanent Representative at the United Nations, Joe Garba, in his well-received book, Diplomatic Soldiering, accorded deserving credit to the departed Pan Africanist for his untiring role in ensuring the independence of Zimbabwe, especially in managing the fragile relationship between the two key figures in the struggle, Abel Muzorewa and Robert Mugabe. Mugabe later became the president of the country. Garba also recalled Kaunda’s untiring commitments with the likes of Nigeria’s General Olusegun Obasanjo in fighting apartheid and instituting black majority government in South Africa.
Down here, Evangelist Elliot Ugochukwu-Uko, the facilitator of Igbo Youths Movement (IYM), recalls the principled position of the former Zambian President in standing with the defunct Biafra when the still-born republic was at the receiving end of the bestiality of the Nigerian government and its foreign collaborators, in the 1967 – 1970 civil war. Kaunda also worked closely with Haile Sellasie of Ethiopia to package all the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) interventions aimed at ending the war and minimising the human waste being recorded on the Biafran side.
The man, his struggle, his politics
In place of comfort and privileges of the middle class in the colonial Northern Rhodesia which some of his contemporaries preferred at the time, Kaunda chose nationalism and sacrifice to father land. Commitment to the struggle, saw him resigning his teaching appointment in 1951 and taking up the hazardous job of Organising Secretary of Northern Province’s Northern Rhodesian African National Congress. On 11 November 1953 he moved to Lusaka to take up the post of Secretary General of the Africa National Congress (ANC), under the presidency of a fellow comrade, Harry Nkumbula. In 1955 Kaunda and Nkumbula were imprisoned for two months with hard labour for distributing subversive literature. Rather than being cowed by the prison experience, Kaunda became more daring in engaging the colonial masters.
Differences in strategy and conviction, saw breaking from the ANC and forming the Zambian African National Congress (ZANC) in October 1958. ZANC was banned in March 1959. In June Kaunda was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment. He later joined forces with other activists under the United National Independence Party (UNIP), the successor to ZANC. In January 1964, UNIP won the next major elections, defeating their ANC rivals and securing Kaunda’s position as prime minister. On 24 October 1964 he became the first President of an independent Zambia. He held on to the position till 1991 when he lost to Frederick Chiluba, the leader of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy. Afterwards, he became became one of the most committed activists against HIV/AIDS in Africa.
In KK, Africa has indeed, lost a great patriot.