Saturday, 6 September 2014

ZAMBIA NEEDS TO BREAK AWAY FROM BAD POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF 27 YEARS OF KENNETH KANUDA RULE


By Nalubinge Ngwende
Kenneth Kaunda

Zambia’s first president Kenneth Kaunda was, is and will forever remain a tyrant whose irreparable damage to the country’s political and economic culture will never have anyone take responsibility for, unless the country stops extoling this man and break away from his ways.  

The first step to severing our present and future from Kaunda’s bad examples of managing this country is to stop seeing him as an infallible hero and ask him to apologise.

A hero, he is, for being among the freedom fighters that fought for our independence. But a closer look at how he dispensed his power as the country’s first President, the heroism is lost. Kaunda becomes a villain that lost Zambia’s battles to safeguard democracy and ensure sustainable economic growth, leaving the country in an abyss of economic darkness and political intolerance. 

As first President of this Southern African Nation that had vibrant and intelligent opposition political leadership and seen as a very wealth newly Independent nation, Kaunda’s arrogance to monopolise/personalise ideas of running the country did extensive damage to democracy and economic activity of the independent Zambia.  

Kaunda authored and engraved the economic miseries the country grapples with today for the 27 years he remained President. Today at 50 years of Independence, the country still struggles to rewrite and offer solutions to the problems that KK created during his over two decades rule.