Arthur Greene
Like both his parents, Kenneth Kaunda started out as a teacher but rose to become one of the most influential – and beloved – Pan-African statesmen of the twentieth century.
On 28 April this year, Sierra Leonean-Gambian journalist Ade Daramy wrote a 97th birthday wish to KK, Zambia’s founding president, on social media. The tagline was: “The only African independence leader from the 1960s still alive.”
That Daramy grew up almost 8,000 km away from Zambia in Sierra Leone, but still at the time felt the impacting reach of KK, says a great deal about the influence of the man from a small village in Southern Africa.
After spending two years as a headteacher from 1943 to ‘45 at a school in Lubwa Mission in Chinsali, Kaunda joined the country’s fight for independence from British rule.
An absorbing and expressive man, KK travelled the country with his famous white guitar, singing his own liberation songs and freely crying in public.
He once appeared on the Dali Tambo show and belted out one of his own tunes while Pik Botha, the apartheid-era minister of foreign affairs, cooked a steak tenderised with his secret recipe – Coca Cola.
However, KK, a famous vegan, couldn’t then eat any of Pik’s steak.
(He became a vegan in protest against a policy that forced Africans to go to a separate window at butchers’ shops to buy meat.)
Kaunda became the country’s founding president at age 40.
A fierce critic of apartheid in SA, and of white minority rule in Zimbabwe, he welcomed freedom fighters from these countries, and allowed the ANC to make Lusaka its base.
At the same time he played a crucial role in the diplomacy and negotiations that led to change in the region, especially Zimbabwe, Namibia and ultimately South Africa.
Nelson Mandela travelled to Zambia, the headquarters of the exiled ANC, just two weeks after being released from prison in 1990. For him it was an emotional reunion as he first got to know KK when he was travelling outside the country in the early sixties.
In those days Zambia was still called Northern Rhodesia, Kaunda was still just a party leader, white rule remained entrenched in Southern Africa and Mandela’s 27 and a half years in prison had not begun.
Over his 27-year rule, KK worked to improve the lives of Zambians, saying his wish was that everyone should be able to have an egg for breakfast every morning, along with a pint of milk.
But economic mismanagement and the global collapse of copper prices dealt severe blows to Zambia’s economy.
With people tired of one party rule Kaunda was voted out of office after he opened the country up to multiparty elections in 1991.
After leaving office, Kaunda devoted a considerable amount of his time to fighting the Aids epidemic in Zambia, after his son died with the illness in 1986.
Kaunda remains one of only a handful of southern African politicians, a group which also includes Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, to admit to losing a loved one to the disease.
KK died aged 97 on Wednesday 16 June, at a military hospital in Lusaka where he was being treated for pneumonia, his son, Kambarage, confirmed.
Decades after leaving office, as the country faced an economic crisis and political repression, Kaunda’s era was remembered with fondness and many Zambians expressed grief at his passing.
South African author Max du Preez remembers KK: “Pres. Kenneth Kaunda was a giant, a very special human being. A life well lived. Sad to see him go. (I had the privilege of breakfast with him in State House in Lusaka in 1983. He lectured me on Afrikaner history & advised me to drink & smoke less & eat more vegetables.)”
Image source: @BBCAfrica
