The last post: All said, written and done, so who was Kaunda?

Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia, during his official visit to Sweden in September 1971. (Photo by Stringer/ Pressens Bild/AFP)

VICTOR KALALANDA, Lusaka July 7, 2021*

If his motorcade had ever skirted this roundabout in the last seven years of his life, he must have seen the three mausoleums that had come up near it, but perhaps he never imagined that the fourth one would be his.

But the latest sepulchre would be his, though in a more conspicuous position before the imposing frontage of Zambia’s old-established Cabinet Office building. It would understandably be set so to make an enduring statement that while the other three late presidents buried in this area are historically important, it is Kenneth Kaunda who had paved the way for them as the founding father of the nation they all once served.

And it is right here at the presidential burial site in Lusaka, Embassy Park, that Dr Kaunda’s body will be interred today after a long and largely illustrious life of 97 years, one noted for independence struggle and politics, sacrificial conflict resolution skills, keen religious awareness, a white handkerchief, fashion, music and sports, to mention but a few.

When he died on July 17, 2021 after a bout of pneumonia, many writers in the local and international media scurried off to write obituaries of the late former president, but certain media published disappointing journalistic estimates which either downplayed Dr Kaunda’s accomplishments at home or chose to ignore the complex geopolitical system which complicated the governance of the country he loved.

In a dismissive and over-simplistic conclusion, for example, the Deutsche Welle (DW) wrote that “Zambia's charismatic state founder (Dr Kaunda) was respected worldwide. But his people suffered from corruption, poverty and an authoritarian one-party regime.”

And the much-vaunted magazine, so-called The Economist, scathingly passed the verdict that “[Dr Kaunda] led his country to ruin,” in a write-up that prompted a reader to refer to the publication on Twitter as “a rag”.

The magazine went on to state that “some leaders are born to greatness. Some rise to it in office. And some achieve it only after they have stepped down. One such was Kenneth Kaunda . . . .”

But to mourn Dr Kaunda in a dignified way, a conscientious obituarist who jabs his pen at the legacy of the Zambian leader should do so empathetically, realising that as a pioneering African leader, the late former president never had a template for leadership. But he had to start leading his country from scratch, and with much ambition came much creativity, imagination and experimentation.

By the way, a call to objectivity for writers isn’t about treating Dr Kaunda’s story with kid gloves or an airbrush, but it’s about considering the bigger picture which he operated in during his time as a leader.

From the outset, it is important to note that from the time of his birth in a nondescript village at Lubwa Mission in Chinsali on April 28, 1924, there was enough indication that Dr Kaunda would live to mark the destiny of mankind, in ways never known before.

And there is also enough evidence in death, even as scores of small children lined up the streets to wave replica handkerchiefs at the funeral procession of the late anti-colonial leader, that Dr Kaunda was no ordinary man.

Many may not have seen him in his prime, but many wish they did, because Kaunda throughout his life had become a genuine symbol of so many qualities such as generosity, personal grit and determination, excellence, fearlessness and compassion.

The UK’s Guardian Newspaper said of him that Dr Kaunda “stood out as one of the most humane and idealistic African leaders in the post-independence age. A man of great presence and charm, he played a notable role as a leader of the ‘frontline states’ in the long confrontation between independent black Africa and the white-dominated south of the continent, which came to an end only in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa.”

And even at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has tried to make death commonplace, the demise of Dr Kaunda still hit the world like the major global event it is, turning Lusaka into the media capital of the world, compelling Southern African leaders to vie with each other in varying their countries’ mourning periods. Kaunda had actually moved the world so much and so well that commiseration had to come from a country as far afield as Serbia.

In his epic narration of the funeral of Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill, Patrick O’Donovan wrote that “this was the last time that such a thing could happen. This was the last time that London would be the capital of the world. This was an act of mourning for the imperial past. This marked the final act in Britain's greatness. This was a great gesture of self-pity . . . .” And so much of the same could be said about the death of Dr Kaunda in relation to Zambia, especially that for the longest time the man had become synonymous with the country and represented its best ideals.

He was born almost as a surprise child after his teacher parents, David (also a missionary) and Hellen, had been in marriage for 20 years. His name Buchizya, which means the “unexpected one”, would be a lingering reminder of what his birth meant for what would be a family of eight children, but most importantly of what implications it would have for the destiny of then Northern Rhodesia.

Truly the unexpected one, by the age of 39 Kaunda had accomplished numerous feats for someone his age—already having received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Fordham University—but at the same time he had previously known what it was like to struggle for existence when he looked for teacher jobs.

Unlike other pioneering leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah who became politically active after obtaining university education abroad, Kaunda found his crucible of political and intellectual engagement partly at Munali Secondary School in Lusaka, after which he later abandoned his teaching career to dedicate his life to the struggle for independence.

So when he led Zambia to self-determination in 1964 at the age of 40, a no mean achievement at all, Dr Kaunda had experienced just as fast a life as that of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., who had attracted global attention in his 30s.

Fondly known as KK—initials that were first used by this newspaper back when it was called Central African Mail—Dr Kaunda leaves behind a legacy of multiple dimensions, which should now be reduced to a simple and straightforward memory for all Zambians.

Dr Kaunda became president at a time when being a national leader entailed being a global one, in pronounced political diplomacy, because of oppressive Western governments and because of continued instability in neighbouring countries.

Dr Kaunda was therefore caught up in an inescapable global role, which meant that while he was promoting development and unity at home, he was supposed to be answerable to other African countries that also needed freedom.

For this reason, the New York Times has observed that “Zambia endured painful retaliation, militarily and economically. Zambian soil was bombed and raided by Rhodesian and South African forces on missions to root out guerrillas, including many from South Africa’s banned African National Congress. And no country was more economically harmed by Africa’s white-minority regimes than Zambia in the 1970s and 1980s, when Zambians formed long lines to acquire scarce staples.”

It is this economic harming, facilitated by the non-cooperation of American and British governments to end the domination of white-minority rule in Africa, which uninformed writers use to portray Dr Kaunda as a poor economic manager who destroyed what could have been a very prosperous country after 1964.

Such views are conceived in mediocrity because they fail to appreciate that Zambia’s economic problems were inflicted by a global order led by Britain and America.

Dr Kaunda thus went beyond Zambia to promote internationalism while America exercised reluctance to discourage investment in Apartheid South Africa and also while the UK under Margaret Thatcher started forcing economies like Zambia to restructure their economies and embrace so-called economic liberalisation.

This in itself frustrated much of Dr Kaunda’s economic reforms at home and his historic efforts at promoting peace and freedom in countries like South Africa.

As a well-read leader who had seen capitalism lead to imperialism in Africa, and one who was careful not to be identified as a communist but essentially as an African socialist, Dr Kaunda believed in nationalisation while neutrally mobilising Western and Eastern economic support for the common good of all Zambians.

Using this approach, Kaunda most notably managed to establish Zambia’s first university and also built the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA).

He actually organised scholarships for Zambia’s future leaders like Rupiah Banda, and went on to establish much of what are still considered today to be Zambia’s strategic institutions in the health, education and industrial sectors.

Dr Kaunda therefore was a selfless and futuristic leader, who cannot even be overshadowed by his benign autocracy, because much of what he did was dictated by the challenges of his time as a pioneering president.

Obsessed with unity, as evidenced by the ethnic diversity of his cabinet and appointments, Dr Kaunda went on to prove his magnanimous with power by cutting short his 27-year rule to allow for multiparty democracy in Zambia.

In his long life he had become the unifying force of the country, often calling for peace when Zambia went to the polls, while standing in solidarity with leaders from all political parties, whether Patriotic Front (PF), United Party for National Development (UPND) or Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD).

Thus in his address during Dr Kaunda’s state funeral, Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera was right when he said  that "though we weep at [Dr Kaunda’s] passing, the tears we shed today will water the soil beneath us until this seed we are planting today becomes a harvest of hope within us. Though we lay Dr Kaunda to rest, we will never give his pan-African dream any rest . . . .”

As the global statesman is finally put to rest, the last post should be the message that history absolves Dr Kaunda as a pioneering African leader, who operated in a hostile economic environment compounded by years of imperialism and emerging forms of necolonialism, but who sought to do his best for Zambia and African and global humanity—this was Dr Kaunda.

*This was published as the lead feature article in the Zambia Daily Mail's special edition in honour of Dr Kenneth Kaunda on July 7, 2021